On 15 November, Robin Maynard featured on a number of radio programmes, including the Jeremy Vine show on BBC R2 (from 5 mins) and a very interesting discussion with Nihal Arthanayake and the BBC Population Correspondent Stephanie Hegarty on R5 Live (from 7.10).  

TRT is a Turkish public service broadcast and on Thursday 17 November, they ran a segment about the world's population hitting 8 billion. In it, Robin was invited to debate the issue alongside Max Lawson, Head of Inequality Policy & Advocacy at Oxfam.  

The answer; cuts, cuts and more cuts.

The key takeaway from this article on Bond is that it's the most vulnerable countries that have been hit hardest by the UK’s cut in aid spending, and that's not likely to change anytime soon.

Alistair Currie, PM Head of Campaigns and Communications, and volunteers from Population Matters’ London Group gathered outside of the Apple store on Regents Street with an oversized “smartphone” bearing the message, “Upgrade your home, not your phone.”

"I’m not naturally a pessimist, but I wouldn’t say I like the hypocritical flowery language around the 8 billion people milestone when we have already stunted billions of human lives, particularly young girls and women. I fear that this language is encouraging pro-natal governments to up their game in making young girls and women baby machines."

If you read one thing today, we recommend it's this powerful piece from PM consultant Florence Blondel. 

"Over 270m women worldwide still lack access to and choice over family planning; nearly 130m girls are out of school [...] The United Nations Family Planning Association has estimated it would cost about $70 billion to deliver family planning for all by 2030. Not a huge amount of money – less than a third of Elon Musk’s personal fortune of $274 billion."

Read Robin Maynard's personal take on the 8 billion milestone, where the conversation falls short and what needs to be done. 

Debanjana Choudury is an Indian gender and reproductive rights campaigner, and after worrying reports of population 'control' proposals in in Uttar Pradesh last year, we commissioned her to investigate the current situation in India. Here she reports her findings.

In March 2022, Robin Maynard attended the Population Conversation Symposium in Kilifi, Kenya. The event brought together diverse stakeholders to discuss the wide-ranging impacts of rapid population growth and to identify the actions needed to mainstream the crucial ‘population conversation’. 

Earlier this month, we sent a small team of people to Pattaya City, Thailand, to attend this year's ICFP. With over 3,500 delegates, it was a great opportunity to meet like-minded people and hear many inspiring stories from those working on the ground. Empower to Plan Project Coordinator, Catriona Spaven-Donn, reflects on the conference.

While at ICFP, we held a Live Event looking at the issue of nationalist pressure on reproductive rights. During the event, we presented PM’s Welcome to Gilead report and highlighted certain population policies in India recently reported on for PM, including measures introduced in a number of Indian states imposing penalties on people with more than two children, (as mentioned in the story above).