The Optimum Population Trust (OPT) is a registered United Kingdom charity, think tank, and campaign group concerned with the impact of population growth on the natural environment, specifically natural resources, climate change and biodiversity. With respect to population growth, it researches climate change, energy requirements, biodiversity, and other environmental factors. OPT campaigns for population stabilisation and gradual decrease both globally and in the United Kingdom. It advocates improved provision of family planning and sex education, better education and rights for women and that couples voluntarily "stop at two". For the UK, it advocates greater effort to reduce the high rates of teenage pregnancy and unintended pregnancy and that immigration is brought into balance with emigration. OPT is funded by its membership and charitable grants.

The OPT believes that an optimal or sustainable population taking into account environmental and resource factors using the ecological footprint approach lies in the following ranges: for the world 2.7 to 5.1 billion; for the UK 17 to 27 million.¹

History

The Optimum Population Trust was founded in 1991 by the late David Willey, its first chairman. Its purpose was to collect, analyse and disseminate information about the sizes of global and national populations, and their relations with the carrying capacities of different countries and the quality of life of their inhabitants. It was intended that such information should help people to make informed choices about policies affecting their and their descendants' welfare. Special emphasis was given to the situation in the United Kingdom.

The need for this function was seen in the failure of UK governments to act on the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Population in 1949, the Parliamentary Select Committee on Science and Technology in 1971 and the Government Population Panel in 1973 to set up a mechanism for monitoring and policy guidance on issues affected by population changes - such as welfare, education, labour supply, population ageing, immigration and impact on the environment.

The need was also seen in a general neglect of the role of population pressure by bodies concerned with the relief of poverty and protection of the environment. OPT was granted charitable status on 9 May 2006.

Policy

OPT recommends the following population policies:

Globally, that full access to family planning should be provided to all those who do not have it, that couples should be encouraged to voluntarily "stop at two" children to lessen the impact of family size on the environment, and that this should be part of a holistic approach involving better education and equal rights for women. In the UK, that population should be allowed to stabilise and decrease by not less than 0.25 per cent a year to an environmentally sustainable level, by bringing immigration into numerical balance with emigration (zero net migration), by making greater efforts to reduce teenage pregnancies, and by encouraging couples to "Stop at Two" children.²

Further, the OPT has lobbied for stricter controls on immigration to the UK:

OPT notes the recent House of Lords committee report that immigration has brought no overall benefit to the UK. We welcome recent Government measures to restrict immigration. However, migration monitoring is weak. Additionally, there is no control over intra-EU migration, and no target for net migration has been set. OPT urges the Government to improve monitoring, work with other EU Governments to further limit immigration to the EU, and set a target of zero net migration for the UK. ³

However, despite campaigning for a stable UK population size, the OPT specifically rejects the idea that any racial, ethnic or cultural criteria should be applied for would be in-migrants and has a neutral position regarding maintaining the UK's existing ethnic make-up ⁴

Patrons

• Sir David Attenborough, Television writer and presenter and campaigner on wildlife, climate change and sustainability.
• Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta, Frank Ramsey Professor Economics, University of Cambridge
• Professor Paul R. Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies, Stanford University
• Jane Goodall PhD DBE, Founder, Jane Goodall Institute and UN Messenger of Peace
• Professor John Guillebaud, Emeritus Professor of Family Planning and Reproductive Health, UC London
• Susan Hampshire OBE, Actress and population campaigner
• James Lovelock CH CBE FRS, independent scientist, inventor and author, and proposer of the Gaia hypothesis
• Professor Aubrey Manning OBE, Professor of Natural History, University of Edinburgh
• Professor Norman Myers CMG, Visiting Fellow, Green College, University of Oxford, and at Universities of Harvard, Cornell, Stanford, California, Michigan and Texas, and adjunct faculty at Duke University
• Jonathon Porritt CBE, Programme Director of Forum for the Future and Chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission.
• Sir Crispin Tickell GCMG KCVO, Chancellor of the University of Kent, Director of the Policy Foresight Programme at the James Martin Institute, and former UK Permanent Representative on the United Nations Security Council.

See also

• Birth rate
• Carrying capacity
• Conservation ethic
• Ecological footprint
• Demography of the United Kingdom
• Environmentalism
• Environmental degradation
• Environmental movement
• Family planning
• Global Footprint Network
• Neo-Malthusianism
• Overpopulation
• Population control
• Resource depletion
• Sustainability
• Sustainable development
• World population

References

External links

• Optimum Population Trust
• Jack Parson's Archive
• Letter to New Scientist from David Willey
• Guardian article: Citizens arrest
• Independent article: Overpopulation is main threat to planet
• Telegraph article: UK unable to sustain population, says study
• New Statesman article: Planet Overload
• New Generation Society article: The Silent Crisis
• Times article: David Attenborough to be patron of Optimum Population Trust
• Times article: Having large families is an 'eco-crime'