Optimum Population Trust

The Optimum Population Trust is a registered United Kingdom charity, think tank and campaign group concerned with the impact of population growth on the natural environment. With respect to population growth, it researches climate change, energy requirements, biodiversity and other environmental factors. OPT campaigns for stabilisation and gradual population decrease globally and in the United Kingdom. It advocates full access to family planning, better education and rights for women and that couples "stop at two". For the UK, it advocates greater effort to reduce the high rate of teenage pregnancies and that immigration is brought into balance with emigration.

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 5.1bn; for the UK 17 to 21m. [http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.optimum.html] ]

Patrons

*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
*Susan Hampshire OBE, Actress and population campaigner
*Professor John Guillebaud, Former Co-chair of OPT, Emeritus Professor of Family Planning and Reporductive Health, UC London, Ex-Medical Director, Margaret Pyke Centre for Family Planning
*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
*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.

Policy Directors

*Rosamund McDougall. Former Co-chair of OPT, Founder/MD Peridot Press, financial journalist (The Banker, Financial Times) and family planning campaigner (Family Planning Association).
*David Nicholson-Lord, Former Environment Editor, Independent on Sunday and Deputy Chair of the New Economics Foundation. Chair of the Urban Wildlife Network.

References

External links

* [http://www.optimumpopulation.org Optimum Population Trust]