Regardless of what our personal views are in regards to population, hopefully most of us can agree that empowerment of women, choice and agency in regards to family size and worldwide access to affordable family planning and contraception services is a moral imperative. These are essential human rights no matter where we happen to live on the planet. Once these are in place, it so happens that people tend to have smaller family sizes, which is a better outcome for families, for communities and for the planet.

World Population Day is "celebrated" on 11 July, and this year’s goal is to raise awareness of women’s and girls’ sexual and reproductive health needs and of their vulnerabilities during the pandemic.

In the first episode of our 2 part world population special, PGAP interviews -

• Terry Spahr, director of 8 Billion Angels – a feature length documentary that explores the environmental consequences of collective human impact in the USA and India – and why family planning is one essential solution to the many problems that we face on a global scale. Terry is also director of Earth Overshoot.

• Robin Witt and Georgia Burford from CHASE Africa. CHASE works on the grass-roots level in Kenya by partnering with local community to provide quality family planning and health education.

At PGAP we are in awe of the tireless dedication, passion and love of the environment that is so evident in all three of our incredible guests – for a cause that is so often contentious and misunderstood by the broader community. It is time we work together to unpack these misconceptions!

In the episode we also play the audio excerpt from our new video ‘Meet The Patrons of Sustainable Population Australia.’ This is a talking head compilation of the video interviews of SPA’s patrons. Included in the excerpt is National President Sandra Kanck who is joined by Dr Katharine Betts, Dr Paul Collins, Professor Ian Lowe and Professor Bob Carr.

We also play the track ‘Blind Freddy’ from South Australian band ‘RockPool’. RockPool are band of dedicated environmentalists and ‘Blind Freddy’ explores the issues of the endless growth of human impact and human population. The perfect theme the podcast series and this episode!

Stick around for World Population Day (part b) when we interview Dave Gardner from World Population Balance and Joao Abegao, academic based in Portugal.

Special Guests: Georgia Burford, Robin Witt, and Terry Spahr.