MEDIA ALERT: Experts Available for Interviews on COP27, ICFP and the 8 Billion Global Population Milestone
November 2, 2022
Source: Stable Planet Alliance www.stableplanetalliance.org
MEDIA ALERT / INTERVIEW OPPORTUNITIES
Contact: Stephen Kent, skent@kentcom.com, 914-589-5988
This month, global population hitting 8 billion, the COP27 climate summit,
and the International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) will all happen
at the same time.
But it’s more than just coincidence; it’s a convergence. Population,
climate change, and family planning are deeply interconnected.
Leading experts are available to explain how.
WHAT? Internationally recognized experts on population and sustainability are available for comment and interviews on population growth, climate change, and family planning, which are visibly converging this month. World population is hitting the 8 billion mark, with an official UN observance on November 15. The COP27 climate conference in Egypt takes place November 6 – 18. And the International Conference on Family Planning in Thailand takes place November 14 – 17.
This is more than just coincidence. Although population, climate change, and family planning issues have long been siloed, they are vitally interconnected. Population growth globally is driving global overshoot, overconsumption, carbon emissions, climate change, environmental degradation, and other negative impacts. Despite this, pronatalist ideologies and policies that encourage or coerce women to bear children are on the rise. Family planning and other services that empower women and girls to exercise more reproductive choice is one of the most powerful levers for slowing population growth, reducing consumption, and fighting climate change.
“Scientists’ Warning on Population” a justice-based research paper in Science of the Total Environment, finds that “stabilizing and ultimately reducing the human population size is necessary to ensure the long-term wellbeing of our species and other life on Earth.” It makes a global appeal for women and men to have at most one child and for more education, empowerment and family-planning services for girls and young women.
Leading experts listed below are raising these issues in international fora, including as presenters at COP27 and the International Conference on Family Planning. They’re available and uniquely well qualified to discuss them with your audience.
WHO? The following leading experts on population and sustainability issues are available for comment and interviews:
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Nandita Bajaj, executive director of Population Balance and cohost of the Overpopulation Podcast. She is the leading voice calling out coercive pronatalism globally and will present on the topic at the International Conference on Family Planning in Thailand November 16.
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Phoebe Barnard, PhD, CEO of the Stable Planet Alliance, University of Washington professor of environmental and societal futures and author of several scientists’ warnings. She will attend COP27 and screen the trailer of her new film on climate restoration.
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Eileen Crist, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech and lead author of “Scientists Warning on Population.”
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Paul Ehrlich, PhD, Bing Professor of Population Studies, Emeritus and President of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford. He is the author of the seminal 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb, and a co-author of “Scientists Warning on Population”
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Bill Rees, PhD, population ecologist, ecological economist, Professor Emeritus and former Director of the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning. He is a co-author of “Scientists Warning on Population”
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Bill Ryerson, president of the Population Media Center. He has a current oped in The Hill on the 8 billion population milestone.
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Chris Tucker, PhD, president of the American Geographical Society and author of A Planet of Three Billion.
WHERE & WHEN? These experts are based in the US and Canada. They are available for comment and interviews starting now.
For more information, or to arrange an interview, please contact Stephen Kent, skent@kentcom.com, 914-589-5988
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Earthlings Gallery - a new lens on love, despair, joy and grief for this exquisite, beleaguered planet
July 18, 2022 -
We know that most people feel moved by compelling images of beauty, emotion, nostalgia, horror or pain - much more than by the evidence and facts that relate to them.
Earthlings Gallery is a new feature of Stable Planet Alliance's work to shift conversations and perceptions of our human impact on this exquisite, often beleaguered planet Earth. Showcasing the extraordinary images of women photographers around the world, Earthlings Gallery will allow the lens to tell vivid and compelling stories that words and policy papers simply can't convey.
Est. viewing time: 15 memorable minutes.
Photo: Serena Dzenis, Australia/ Iceland in the July/August 2022 Earthlings Gallery
GirlPlanet.Earth wins the 2022 Change Champions Award for Best Online Campaign
July 11, 2022 -
GirlPlanet.Earth, our platform for women and girls around the world to tell their stories about culture, population, consumption, life goals and personal choice, won the 2022 Change Champions Award by the UK-based global population nonprofit, Population Matters, for Best Online Campaign. Thanks, Population Matters!
GirlPlanet.Earth started in early 2021, even before Stable Planet Alliance itself, as a means to let women around the world talk about navigating life among our dizzyingly fast planetary changes, and their personal and professional lifestyle choices.
The Change Champions Award came with a unique sculpture and a cash prize to be donated to a worthy grassroots project. We passed the cash prize onto the Ugandan tree-planting project "Faith in Trees", founded by GirlPlanet.Earth storyteller Faith Patricia Ariokot.
Est. reading time: 1 min.
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Focus on women changemakers in Yes! Magazine
April 27, 2022 -
Veronika Perkova's article "To Save a Forest, Look to the Women," quoting Stable Planet Alliance's Phoebe Barnard, is a great profile of some strong, wise, fearless women working in the field for the future of our planet, biodiversity, and civilization.
Est. reading time: 3 mins.
Ninfa Carianil Damaso, first female forest ranger of Fundación ProAves, poses in front of a nature preservation sign.
Photo: Fundación ProAves
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Nandita Bajaj appointed Advisory Board Chair
March 15, 2022 -
We're thrilled to appoint humane educator and scholar of human and planetary rights and coercive pronatalism, Nandita Bajaj, as chair of Stable Planet's Advisory Board. Nandita is a passionate advocate for planetary health, deeply interested in the intimate links between pronatalism, anthropocentrism and overpopulation, and their impacts on human rights, animal protection, and environmental preservation. In addition to her roles as executive director of Population Balance and co-director of the Fair Start Movement, she is on faculty at the Institute for Humane Education at Antioch University, where she teaches human rights, environmental ethics, and Pronatalism and Overpopulation, a course that she designed (the first of its kind).
Our board is a powerhouse of skilled and dynamic people, deeply committed to making our civilization work better for humanity, ecosystems, other species, and our beautiful planet. We have a diverse array of sociologists, economists, global change scientists, conservationists, gender and public policy specialists, legal and ethics scholars, demographers, women's leadership specialists, conservationists, writers, philosophers, historians, artists and media specialists. Nandita's bold, yet calm, steady, leadership is warmly welcomed by all. Congratulations, Nandita!
Est. reading time: 1 min.
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People's impacts and rights matter in the SDGs -
let's acknowledge and correct policy errors of the past
Open letter to Mr Liu Zhenmin, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA)
28 February, 2022 -
In an open letter to the UN's Under-Secretary-General, Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA), Stable Planet Alliance has urged UN-DESA to formulate positions on population and consumption. We recommended the following guidelines:
1. Treating demographics/population and consumption as tightly integrated issues gravely impacting the planet, society and civilization;
2. Centrally addressing the crucial role of family planning and related development policy reforms in order to make progress on the climate and other environmental and social crises, and successfully implement the Sustainable Development Goals.
3. Taking a child-centric approach that prioritizes equitable and sustainable development, positive human empowerment, and goals of the Children's Rights Convention regarding current and as-yet unborn children.
4. Acknowledging that past policies should have been better formulated for demographic sustainability and human rights/autonomy, and taking powerful steps to correct these in the abundant evidence of our planetary and societal crises.
Read our open letter here. Est. reading time: 1 min.
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World Scientists and Economists Recommend Urgent Actions for Survival of Civilization
NEWS RELEASE - October 28, 2021
For immediate release
Media Contacts (US):
Prof Phoebe Barnard
+1 360 914 2307
phoebe.barnard@stableplanetalliance.org
Stephen Kent
+1 914 589 5988
Media Contact (UK):
Edmund Gemmell
+44 20 8123 7517
News provided by Stable Planet Alliance and Scientists Warning Europe - Nov 12, 2021, 17:00 PT
[MOUNT VERNON, Wash., Oct. 28, 2021] – The nonprofits Stable Planet Alliance (Stable Planet) and Scientists Warning Europe (SWE) today announced the launch, at COP26 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, of the “World Scientists’ Warnings into Action” (SWIA) paper, a solutions-oriented framework and follow-up to the “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency” paper published in 2019.
The new paper goes beyond the reach of traditional scientific papers, and even existing “scientists’ warnings” in that it not only warns of impending climate harms, but articulates what we need to do to avoid them. It recommends specific, urgent, large-scale transformative actions and solutions to the multi-faceted planetary overshoot emergencies faced by humanity.
Addressed to leaders around the world at multiple scales, from householders and community leaders to heads of state and the UN Secretary-General, the paper is a collaboration: of top world scientists, economists, and governance specialists, identifying a framework for action to protect the planet and society for future generations, by 2026, 2030 and 2050.
"This framework shows the main ways that we can bend the needle on the climate and biodiversity crises, by systemic reforms at different levels,” said co-lead author, Professor Phoebe Barnard of the University of Washington and Stable Planet Alliance. “Six areas were originally identified for urgent action in the World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency paper in 2019 – Energy, Atmospheric Pollutants, Nature, Food Systems, Population Stabilization, and the Economy. Not all are equally amenable to action by individuals or households, but many are very much under local control. In this new paper, we look at six scales of action, from individual and household levels through communities, cities, districts, nations and global levels, and how soon these need to happen. And while much of the solution to our planetary overshoot needs systemic change, individual households can play strong roles in several of these areas, including nature, food systems and population stabilization.”
Read the full press release here.
Stable Planet Alliance in the news
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October 12, 2021 -
World scientists, economists, governance specialists produce framework for local to global action
Our "World Scientists Warning into Action" paper on planetary action, led by Stable Planet Alliance CEO Phoebe Barnard, also an affiliate full professor of environmental and societal futures at University of Washington, guides time-sensitive priority actions for 2026, 2030 and 2050 to avert the worst of the climate and biodiversity emergencies, strongly recommended to planners and policymakers in communities, governments and companies at scales from local to global around the world.
Scientists Warning Europe is assisting the authors in obtaining over 20,000 scientists' co-signatures to the paper from every country of the world - providing the ultimate framework for climate action for COP26 and beyond.
Have a degree in the natural, social, political, health or education sciences? Read and co-sign the paper or its 2-pg summary here.
Est. reading time: 6 mins.