Population Balance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in the United States but with a global focus. Our mission is to inspire narrative, behavioral, and system change that shrinks our human impact and elevates the rights and wellbeing of people, animals, and the planet. We use an anti-oppression lens to draw connections between pronatalism, human supremacy, social inequalities, and ecological overshoot, and offer pathways that build resilient, life-affirming alternatives.

We do this through our two podcasts, presentations and media appearances, as well as publications.

One of our key goals is to help reduce humanity's outsized impact on the planet and the rest of life by helping to stabilize and reduce human population to bring it in balance with all life on Earth. While human overpopulation is not the only factor driving social and ecological crises, it is the most neglected one, and the factor that intensifies every crisis confronting us. Leading institutions such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Royal Society, and many scientists’ warnings endorsed by tens of thousands of leading scientists have identified overpopulation as a key driver of climate change, the biodiversity crisis, species extinction, global toxification of the land, air, water systems, zoonotic diseases, and resource scarcity. This is why we must tackle overpopulation along with the other major drivers of ecological overshoot, including growthism, overconsumption, pronatalism, human supremacy, and technological fundamentalism.

Ecological overshoot represents an ecological state in which human beings—through the combination of our growing population and consumption—are demanding far more from ecosystems than they are able to regenerate, and are producing waste far in excess of what natural systems are able to absorb. For 300,000 years of human history, the human population did not exceed ten million. But in just the last 200 years, it has grown exponentially from 1 billion to 8.2 billion—a phenomenon ecologists consider an aberration for any species. There is nothing normal about the way in which we have colonized our planet and decimated most other life on Earth. As our population has grown eightfold, our consumption has grown 100-fold. Today, we are in 80% ecological overshoot, which means, we are living as if we had 1.8 Earths. These excessive demands are occurring at the expense of other species, who are going extinct 1,000 times faster than natural rates, and the majority of marginalized current and future humans. Ecological overshoot is a meta problem, which encompasses all other ecological crises, including climate change, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, deforestation, soil degradation, and pollution of the biosphere.

Pronatalism refers to the societal and institutional pressures to have children, which often show up as pressure to have children or grandchildren by family members; media narratives that romanticize pregnancy and parenthood while stigmatizing childfree or single people; religious messaging to “be fruitful and multiply;” and political pressures to grow the military, specific racial and ethnic groups, and the economy. These pressures are a product of at least 5,000 years of patriarchal norms established to subjugate women and girls and drive population growth for institutional agendas. Pronatalism is the oldest and most pervasive form of reproductive control and prevents people, especially women, from making informed and liberated decisions.

Human supremacy is the worldview that human beings are superior to all other species, who are valuable only as they serve us. This way of thinking treats the natural world as nothing more than 'natural resources' that deliver 'ecosystem services'. And it reduces animals to their usefulness to humans, whether as food or clothing, as 'livestock' or 'game', or as sources of companionship as 'pets'. This worldview drives our population growth, our unlimited expansion across the planet, and our exploitation of nature and animals—where we and the animals that we kill for food represent 96% of the total mammalian biomass, leaving a mere 4% as free-living wild animals.

Growthism refers to the constant pursuit of eternal growth, in our population, our technology, and in our economy for the interests of a small minority of elites at the expense of planetary health, other species, and the wellbeing of the vast majority of people. The ideology of “development” is an extension of growthism rooted in the colonial takeover of native people and lands globally, and has led to an immense loss of traditional knowledge and cultural systems as well as destruction of the natural world. The ecological devastation caused by this attitude is worsened by the faith that technological solutions can fix the problems caused by previous technologies.

Overpopulation is a result of patriarchy and pronatalism, which undermine not only reproductive choice but also the rights of children to be born into conditions conducive to their wellbeing—socially, materially, and ecologically. The dismissal of overpopulation as a factor in our social and ecological crises is often rooted in concerns over coercive population control measures of our recent past, especially in the world’s high-fertility poor regions. While we must denounce any top-down coercive policies and perspectives to reduce our population, we cannot deny the scientific and ecological fact that there are too many people consuming too much.

We also cannot downplay the integral role that voluntary family planning efforts have played in benefiting women and the environment. Most women and girls are unable to make liberated reproductive choices. More than 640 million women and girls alive today were child brides. Over 220 million women worldwide have an unmet need for contraception. More than half of all pregnancies are unintended—that’s 121 million each year worldwide. These are results of state, economic, and religious forces that rely on women and girls remaining disempowered. Since pronatalism is the oldest and most pervasive form of reproductive control, overpopulation should be one of the major areas of feminist concern.

When women achieve reproductive freedom and the means to regulate their fertility, they tend to have fewer or no children. Empowering girls and women, specifically by confronting harmful patriarchal and pronatalist norms, is the pathway to a smaller global population that can enjoy a high quality of life within an ecologically flourishing biosphere.

Over the last 200 years, population has grown 8 times as large and consumption 100 times larger but this growth has been deeply unequal, both between countries and within countries. The hyperconsumerism of the global north countries and the growing middle and upper classes of the global south is playing a huge role in outsourcing ecological degradation to the global majority, both through their extractive practices as well as our ecological impacts.

The global south represents over 75% of the world’s population, many of them living in absolute poverty. People do not choose to live this way and deserve to raise their standard of living significantly. In fact, the global middle class is the fastest growing population, with the majority of its growth coming from Asia. Since we’re already in extreme overshoot, even slight increases in consumption in high-population regions means an even more dire future for all.

To be able to live comfortably and sustainably, which requires that natural systems be protected and restored, there needs to be fewer of us consuming a lot less. So, the question of whether it is population or consumption is a false dichotomy. They are two sides of the same coin.

Fertility rates are indeed falling in many countries, but this should not be cause for concern. This is one of the most positive trends in recent human history, reflecting greater reproductive choice—whenever and wherever women gain reproductive autonomy and access to reproductive healthcare information and services, they choose to have smaller families and birthrates fall.

The only institutions that frame declining fertility rates as a problem to be fixed are those in positions of power who rely on women’s reproductive labor to grow the number of laborers, consumers, religious followers, taxpayers, and soldiers. Pronatalism became institutionalized with the rise of patriarchy about 5,000 years ago, and our population has grown from a few million to over 8 billion today, heading towards 10 billion this century. Billions are projected to suffer and die due to devastating ecological and social consequences, especially in parts of the world that are already the most impoverished. As such, it is an ethical imperative to not only allow this trend of declining fertility rates to unfold as it naturally is, but to also accelerate it by confronting harmful patriarchal and pronatalist norms, such as child marriage, abortion bans, sanctions on contraceptives, and stigmatization of people choosing no or fewer children.

The most just and sustainable path forward is not to increasingly control women but instead to embrace and adapt to declining fertility rates and eventually a smaller population. We must abandon the growth-obsessed economic model that primarily enriches elites while killing the planet in favor of caring economies that respect ecological limits.

Using an anti-oppression framework that advances the rights and wellbeing of all, we advocate: liberated and informed reproductive choices for ourselves and the planet, including adopting broader understandings of “family” with our human and nonhuman kin; a radical shift in our relationship with all animals and with the entire natural world—from one of domination and exploitation, to one of reverence, justice, and care; and shifting away from unjust, growth-driven socioeconomic systems that exploit and disempower people and threaten all life on Earth towards systems that respect ecological limits and advance social justice.

We use our two podcasts, presentations and media appearances, as well as publications to disseminate our message and inspire narrative, behavioral, and system change.

Our tagline 'shrink towards abundance' is a call to action for humanity to collectively shrink our outsized impact on Earth and embed ourselves within a more abundant and ecologically-flourishing biosphere. It is also a call to action for individuals to shrink our outsized egos and make room for an abundance of care and connection with one another and with the larger living world.

Thank you for your interest in supporting our work. We are a small, dedicated team working with a modest budget. You can see the scope of our accomplishments in our annual reports and our year-end videos. The most helpful contribution that you can make is a financial one. Most of our work is funded by individual donors and a few small foundations. Of all our funding, 80% goes toward our programs, and to maintain a non-hierarchical organizational structure our executive and our staff make the same salary. To learn about different ways in which you can donate, please visit this page.