Welcome to the Population & Development program, known as "PopDev".
We exist to change conventional thinking and policies about population growth that threaten reproductive rights, social justice and our environment. Our tools for change are research, facts, expert analysis and activist and educational publications.
Widely held views that population growth is responsible for poverty, hunger and environmental degradation are dangerous. For example:
- Blaming environmental problems on overpopulation lets the real culprits off the hook. The richest fifth of the world's people consume 66 times more resources than the poorest fifth.
- People go hungry because they do not have land on which to grow food or the money with which to buy it. Not because world agriculture cannot produce enough food.
- Some population control programs lead to unsafe contraception and involuntary sterilization.
There's much more. Read, use and disseminate the resources on this website including issue papers, blog, news and our high school/college curriculum. And donate to help fuel the facts for change.
You'll find us on the campus of Hampshire College.
STAFF
Betsy Hartmann is the Director of the Population and Development program and Professor of Development Studies at Hampshire College. A longstanding activist in the international women's health movement, she writes and speaks frequently on the intersection of reproductive rights, population, environment, and security issues. Her books include Reproductive Rights and wrongs, the co-edited anthology Making Threats: Biofears and environmental Anxieties, and the recent political thriller Deadly Election. For more on Betsy, visit her website.
