Organizations Dealing with Family Planning, Population growth, and Overpopulation

Global, international:

United Nations Population Fund – UNFPA is the United Nations reproductive health and rights agency. Their mission is to deliver a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person’s potential is fulfilled.

Population Media Center – This organization conducts mass media campaigns to help achieve the stabilization of the human population at a level that can be sustained by the world’s natural resources. Their Global Population Speak Out campaign focuses attention on the growing crisis posed by overdevelopment and excessive human populations.

Population Reference Bureau – PRB is a private, nonprofit organization in the USA, providing information from all around the world regarding population, health, and the environment. It specializes in the translation of population demographics and health research, analysis of the United States and international demographics, social and economic trends, and expanding the platform for general database research.

Population-Environment Research Network –  The PERN seeks to advance academic research on population and the environment by promoting online scientific exchange among researchers from social and natural science disciplines worldwide. They host cyberseminars, collect and annotate recent publications, and syllabi in an online database, and provide information on meetings, grant and job opportunities and member research.

Worldwatch – Through research and outreach that inspire action, the Worldwatch Institute works to accelerate the transition to a sustainable world that meets human needs. The Institute’s top objectives are universal access to renewable energy and nutritious food, expansion of environmentally sound jobs and development, transformation of cultures from consumerism to sustainability, and an early end to population growth through healthy and intentional childbearing.

Population Balance – PB’s mission is to educate people on the impacts human overpopulation and overconsumption have on the planet, people, and animals, as well as offering solutions to the problems. The organization advocates for empowering people to make informed decisions about having children, changing our relationship to the natural world, and challenging growth-driven systems.

Population Institute – The Population Institute is an international non-profit organization that seeks to promote universal access to family planning information, education, and services. Through voluntary family planning, they strive to achieve a world population in balance with a healthy global environment and resource base.

Population Council – The Population Council conducts research to address critical health and development issues, such as voluntary family planning, HIV, and girl empowerment. They conduct research and programs in more than 50 countries

Population Action International – PAI is a global organization advancing the right to affordable, quality contraception and reproductive health care for every woman, everywhere.

Partners in Population and Development – PPD is an Intergovernmental Alliance of developing countries committed to improving the quality of life of people through sustained advocacy, capacity building, networking, knowledge sharing and management and transfer of technology in the fields of reproductive health, population and development within the framework of South-South Cooperation

International Planned Parenthood Federation – IPPF is a locally owned, globally connected civil society movement, that provides and enables services and champions sexual and reproductive health and rights for all, especially the under-served.

Rutgers WPF (World Population Found) – Rutgers WPF is a renowned center of expertise on reproductive health and rights. Its activities are mainly carried out in the Netherlands, Africa and Asia. Its aim is to improve reproductive health and rights throughout the world. Rutgers WPF supports partner organizations and professionals in their work to increase their expertise on reproductive health and rights and issues surrounding it.

DSW (Deutsche Stiftung Weltbevoelkerung) – DSW is an international non-governmental organization based in Germany. It focuses on promoting sustainable demographic development, empowering women and their role in society, reducing and limiting the spread of HIV/AIDS, and improving the quality of life of young people in developing countries.

Family Planning 2020 – FP2020 works with governments, civil society, multilateral organizations, donors, the private sector, and the research and development community to enable 120 million more women and girls to use contraceptives by 2020. The commitment of FP2020 has been further extended as FP2030, continuing their work to secure access to family planning around the world.

Population Communication was founded in 1977 to research and distribute information on population, reproductive health and family planning to world leaders. It aims to assist governments in developing family planning and women’s reproductive health programs, and to determine the most efficient path towards achieving population stabilization.

Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health is a 18 years old program at the University of California. They advance reproductive health policy and practice worldwide through research, training and advocacy.

Transition Earth is a project of Earth Island institute. Their mission is to promote human rights and nature’s rights in a world of unsustainable population and economic growth. They advocates for global systems change to enable the shift to a sustainable planet for all.

Our Carbon Footprint is an organization with the aim to educate and inspire individuals to consider the impact their decisions have on the environment. They advocate the importance of consuming sustainably as well as the importance of choosing smaller families.

BOCS Foundation, Hungary, is drawing attention to the global problems and their causes, promoting conscious family planning and training and educating people about ecological problems and sustainability. The organization has been working since 1975, and based on the non-violence and the responsibility towards the next generations, the poor, and the oppressed, it primarily deals with the philosophical, ethical, educational, and social aspects of ecology, and strives to teach nonmaterial richness, and non-consumerist happiness.

Pathfinder International is a help organization that works together with local partners around the globe to advance contraceptive services, comprehensive abortion care, and young people’s sexual and reproductive rights. They work under the conviction that all people have a right to decide whether and when to have children and to lead the lives they choose.

Stable Planet Alliance is an international group of organizations and dedicated people that acknowledge the need to stabilize and then reduce population and consumption. Their focus lies on shifting norms and narratives about these two mistreated issues.

The Jane Goodall Institute is a UK-based charity that supports projects in Africa and the UK. While much of their work is focussed on protecting chimpanzees and reversing deforestation, they acknowledge the detrimental effect of population growth and work with providing family planning services and education to communities.

Europe:

Population Matters – Population Matters is a membership charity in the United Kingdom that addresses population size and environmental sustainability. It advocates for family planning and immigration policies to achieve stable populations in the UK and throughout the world.

The Ten Million Club Foundation – This Dutch Foundation aims to bring about public awareness of the need to reduce the Netherlands’ population significantly, so as to create a truly sustainable society.

Rientrodolce – An Italian association which concerns itself with overpopulation, environment and energy. Its name comes from Marco Pannella’s idea of a “mild return” to a world with 2 billion human beings. The association considers overpopulation the primary cause of the humanitarian, environmental and energy crises plaguing our planet.

MinderMensen wants a sustainable and humane future for everyone by balancing the human population size with its environment. The organization campaigns in Belgium to place the issue of overpopulation on the political and social agenda. By raising awareness they hope to create sufficient support to make change possible.

European Alliance for a Sustainable Population (eurASP) unites several member organizations from around Europe that all work with informing the citizens in their respective countries about achieving a sustainable population in balance with nature. EurASP aim to clear up misconceptions about population by providing scientific evidence about how population size, density, and consumption patterns affects the Earth.

America:

NumbersUSA Education & Research Foundation provides a civil forum for Americans of all political and ethnic backgrounds to focus on a single issue, the proper numerical level of U.S. immigration. The group favors reductions in immigration numbers toward traditional levels that would stabilize the U.S. population.

Center for Biological Diversity – The Center’s Population and Sustainability project focuses on common-sense solutions for a just and sustainable future, including the empowerment of women and girls, universal access to reproductive healthcare and education, a healthy and secure food system, clean energy, and a societal commitment to giving all species a chance to live and thrive.

Scientists and Environmentalists for Population Stabilization – SEPS’ mission is to improve understanding within the U.S. scientific, educational and environmental communities of the fact of overpopulation and its social, economic and environmental consequences at both national and global levels. They advocate for U.S. population stabilization followed by its gradual reduction to a sustainable level by humane, non-coercive means.

Negative Population Growth – This national nonprofit membership organization aims to educate the American public and political leaders about the devastating effects of overpopulation on the environment, natural resources and the overall standard of living. They advocate for a significant reduction in current population numbers in the U.S.

Population Institute of Canada – PIC campaigns for smaller, environmentally sustainable populations through universal access to voluntary family planning. The institute empowers women, promotes sustainable development, enhances prosperity, and creates a healthier, more stable planet through family planning.

Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) – This organization works to formulate and advance policies and programs designed to stabilize the population of California, the U.S. and the world at levels which will preserve the environment and a good quality of life for all.

Canadians for a Sustainable Society – This organization serves as an information base for the broad spectrum of activists and people investigating population dynamics and consumption patterns at various levels.

Blue Planet United – This organization promotes integrative thinking and action on local, regional, national, and global challenges of sustainability, as they relate to human population growth, per capita consumption patterns, and the enjoyment and protection of wild places.

Population Connection – Population Connection is a non-profit organization that raises awareness of population challenges and advocates for improved global access to family planning and reproductive health care.

Population Education, a program of Population Connection, is the only national program with a strong emphasis on curriculum resources and professional development that focuses on human population issues. Since 1975, PopEd has developed age-appropriate curricula to complement students’ science and social science instruction about human population trends and their impacts on natural resources, environmental quality and human well-being.

Australia and Asia:

Sustainable Population Australia – Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) is a non-partisan special advocacy group that seeks to establish an ecologically sustainable human population. It works on many fronts to encourage informed public debate about how Australia and the world can achieve an ecologically, socially and economically sustainable population.

Stop Population Growth Now – This is a registered political party in South Australia. Their aim is to reduce Australia’s rate of population growth to zero as rapidly as possible, by reducing immigration and discouraging families of more than 2 children, whilst continuing to welcome 1 or 2 child families.

Sustainable Australia – Sustainable Australia is a party aiming to secure an economically, environmentally and socially sustainable Australia through (among other measures) stabilization of the Australian population.

Shyam Institute – Sri Shyam Sundar Institute of Public Cooperation and Community Development in India does research, training and outreach in topics of population, health and development, and related fields.

Africa:

CHASE Africa is a UK charity that works with partners in East Africa to provide family planning and healthcare clinics. Their mission is to enable access to family planning, healthcare, and human rights in a way that protects the environment and builds resilience to climate change.

Rejoice Africa Foundation is a charitable foundation founded by indigenous people in Uganda with the aim of building resilience against climate change. They have identified several challenges, one of which is overpopulation, which they tackle through education, access to contraceptives, religion, and calling on stakeholders and leaders to commit to ending population growth.

African Solutions to the African Migration crisis (ASAM) is an organisation that tackles the African migration crisis through awareness promotion and working to change  development policies. This they argue needs to be done through addressing the African population explosion, changing detrimental laws, and adopting fair trade.

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Gallery of infographics – Learn more about overpopulation and environment

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