A Pivotal Moment:
Population, Justice and the Environmental Challenge

“Here’s the book on population we’ve been waiting for–not a nativist screed that lays the blame for our environmental woes on overbreeding others, but a clearheaded and smart look at the ways that justice, anti-materialism, and women’s rights can help limit both our numbers and their impact.”

Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and Deep Economy

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About

The Population Justice Project seeks to shape a new public conversation about population and the environment, with a framework based on the values of equality, justice and sustainability. Framing the public discourse in this way will lay the political groundwork for policies that support sexual and reproductive health, alleviate poverty, and promote gender equality.

What is “population justice”?

The “population justice” framework draws inspiration from the reproductive justice and environmental justice movements, both of which grew from the struggle for civil rights in the United States. Reproductive justice asks us to look at the totality of women’s lives, and especially at inequalities of gender, race and class that shape and constrain women’s choices. For example, a legal right to abortion doesn’t mean much to a woman who cannot afford one, or whose abusive partner insists that she carry the pregnancy to term. And reproductive choice remains elusive where families lack health care and other resources they need to raise healthy children. Similarly, the environmental justice movement looks at the inequalities that affect environmental quality by, say, influencing which neighborhood gets the polluting bus depot or waste incinerator, and which people are exposed to harmful toxins and wastes.

In this vein, population justice takes a broad view of the population-environment nexus. It calls for a nuanced understanding of the relationship between human numbers and environmental harm–and the inequitable patterns of consumption that mediate that relationship. And it urges attention to the inequalities–both gender and economic–that underlie rapid population growth.

History

Since the project was launched in 2007, PJP has catalyzed a new public conversation about the population/environment nexus. In September 2007 PJP convened the New Population Challenge (NPC) conference, which drew more than 60 activists, scholars and donors to the UN Foundation’s DC headquarters. With representatives of several major environmental groups and leaders of the reproductive health/rights movement, the NPC conference marked the first attempt in more than a decade to bring the two groups together. The conference produced the beginnings of our justice-based approach to population and environment issues, which is explored in more depth in A Pivotal Moment.

PJP has also worked to spark interest in population/environment issues among new constituencies–especially among young activists. To that end, PJP organized a New Leaders’ Convening on Population, Justice and the Environment in February of 2008. That meeting drew 35 US and internationally-based advocates from a range of disciplines to Washington, DC–and mobilized a nucleus of young activists who can shape the population-environment message for a new generation. PJP continues to work with the young men and women who attended the meeting, in order to unite those working on reproductive health and rights, the environment, and social justice issues in support of population justice policies.