Optimum Population Trust Events
If your organisation would like an OPT speaker for a lecture, talk, debate or other event, please email our
LONDON, 19 April 2007
Royal Statistical Society:
Environmentally sustainable population - why the statistics matter
Full texts available from
Royal Statistical Society
Chair Philip Turnbull, RSS
Speakers (Optimum Population Trust)
Martin Desvaux PhD CPhys MInstP and Rosamund McDougall
Discussant: Professor David Coleman, Oxford University
Details: Thursday 19 April 2007. Tea 4.30 pm, Lectures 5.00 - 6.00 pm, followed by discussion 6.00-7.00 pm.
Venue:
Royal Statistical Society, 12 Errol Street, London EC1Y 8LX.
Issues: Rosamund McDougall will cover the ways in which population statistics
are gathered globally and in the UK and how they are interpreted, used,
and abused in policy formulation. She will explore the reasons for
persistent UK government failure to consider population policy
as part of environmental strategy and suggest how this might change in the future.
Martin Desvaux will describe population development since 10,000 BC
and factors which controlled them. He will discuss how ecological footprint
statistics can be used to assess sustainable population sizes.
Possible scenarios will be examined to underline the challenges
facing the development of sustainable populations.
MANCHESTER, 6 November 2006
Cafe Scientifique UK:
Population - the issue that dare not speak its name?
Speaker: David Nicholson-Lord (Research associate, Optimum Population Trust)
Date: 6.30 pm, Monday 6 November 2006
Venue: Cafe Muse, The Manchester Museum, Oxford Road, Manchester
M13 7QQ. Tel: 0161 275 3220. See also Café Scientifique's website.
HONITON, 27 October 2006
The Tenth Annual Offwell Lecture:
Population: the unmentionable problem
Speaker: Dr Pippa Hayes (Optimum Population Trust)
Date: 7.30 pm, Friday 27 October 2006
Venue: Mackarness Hall, High Street, Honiton, East Devon (next to St Paul's Church).
For tickets phone the Offwell Woodland and Wildlife Trust. Tel: 01404-831 375
BBC WORLD TV DEBATE Saturday 14 & Sunday 15 October 2006
The BBC World Debate:
Advancing sands: deserts and migration
Broadcast dates 12.10 and 19.10 GMT 14th October and 01.10, 07.10, 17.10 GMT
15th October 2006, BBC World
Moderator Zeinab Badawi
Panellists: Sunita Narain (director of India's Centre for Science and Environment);
Fatima Jibrell (executive director of Horn Relief, Somalia); Dr Christian Mersmann (managing director of
the Global Mechanism established under the UN Convention to Combat Desertification); Martin Sommer
(director of the Natural Resources and
Environment Division of the Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation);
Ibrahim Thiaw (acting director-general of IUCN, the World Conservation Union);
Rosamund McDougall (advisory council, Optimum Population Trust).
Discussion points: Why is the world ignoring desertification? Is competition for
dwindling resources in dryland areas a major contributor to ethnic conflict? To what extent does
desertification contribute to illegal migration to rich countries? There is a human and
livestock population boom in the drylands - what will happen if it's business as usual? Is
it a creeping disaster or an age-old phenomenon that vested interests deliberately exaggerate?
See also
BBC World Desertification Debate and
dev.tv
LONDON, 14 MAY 2006
Ethical Society:
Population and the Environment: the greatest good for the greatest number?
Speaker: Rosamund McDougall (Advisory Council, Optimum Population Trust)
Venue: Library, Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1, 11 am (Open to the public)
LONDON, 22 MARCH 2006
Global Development Forum:
Human population growth is a bigger threat than climate change
Chair: Dr Camilla Toulmin, Director of the International Institute for Environment
and Development
Panel: Dr Saleemul Huq (IIED),
David Nicholson-Lord (Research Associate, Optimum Population Trust), Professor Chris Rapley
(Director, British Antarctic Survey and Patron, Optimum Population Trust).
A few years ago slowing down the growth of population was seen as the key issue of world poverty.
Is this one of the hidden issues that cannot be mentioned?
A summary of this debate is available from the
Global Development Forum
website.
LONDON, 15 FEBRUARY 2006
CSFI-OPT-NEF Round Table: Reconsidering population growth
On 15 February 2006, 60 experts attended a Round Table on the economic, financial and
environmental implications of population growth, sponsored by the
Optimum Population Trust, the
Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation and the
New Economics Foundation .
Speakers were The Rt Hon Peter Lilley MP, Professor David Coleman (Oxford University),
Rosamund McDougall (Optimum Population Trust) and David Nicholson-Lord (Optimum Population
Trust/New Economics Foundation). The meeting was chaired by Dr Andrew Hilton (CSFI).
SUMMARY
Peter Lilley MP, a former Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer who is currently working on the issues
of globalisation,
focused on the effects of immigration on overpopulation and explained the
severe flaws in economic
arguments made in favour of mass immigration, pointing out that the government
denies the true costs of population growth.
David Coleman, professor of demography at Oxford University,
discussed the prospect of population decline -
environmental relief or economic threat - and
concluded that modest and slow decline might be welcome,
provided it can be halted. Rosamund McDougall
drew attention to some similarities between
systemic risk in financial systems and the bankrupting of
ecosystems by human activities, concluding that policies to allow populations to stabilise and gradually
decrease cannot be excluded from environmental policies. David Nicholson-Lord introduced the concept of
the ecological footprint into the discussion, which dramatically increase when an individual moves from a poor
society to a rich one, or from a developing country to a developed one. He concluded that human beings as
individuals must be responsible for the state of our own societies and nations. Experts present at the
meeting were able to put questions during the presentations,
though time for concluding discussion unfortunately proved too short.
OXFORD, 23 SEPTEMBER 2003
Population pressure: the need for sustainable populations
This seminar was held at the Green College Centre for Environmental Policy and Understanding, Oxford
Speakers: Dr Brenda Boardman (Environmental Change Institute),
Dr Jim Currie (Former Director-General, DG Environment, European Commission),
Professor John Guillebaud (Co-chair, OPT),
Professor Aubrey Manning (Natural History Broadcaster and Patron, OPT),
Rosamund McDougall (Co-chair, OPT), Sir Crispin Tickell (Former UK Ambassador to the United Nations,
Director GCC, Patron, OPT).
Note: The Optimum Population Trust is a registered charity (No 1114109).
It is funded by its members,
receives no political or government funding and is independent
of any political or
commercial interests.
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This website launched June 2002
Items last updated 28 April 2008
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