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What is a Global Sustainability Non-Profit?

Joseph J. Bish, MS Mar 09, 2022

What does PMC mean when it says “the global sustainability non-profit?”

Population Media Center is continually creating a more equitable, flourishing world for all people and ecosystems across four vital, interconnected dimensions—individual, social, economic, and environmental. In so doing, we benefit the world of today and the planet of tomorrow.

What is Global Sustainability?

Today, global sustainability remains a destination. A hoped for, imagined future that is fundamentally desirable and practically possible — given steadfast commitment, impassioned hard work, and enough serious long-term investments are made. Global sustainability promises a renewed, truly respectful and healthy relationship between humans and the living Earth. It will arrive when the guiding paradigms of human civilization have evolved to become compatible with flourishing biodiversity. It will arrive when the economic and social relationships of humanity uphold equality, fairness, and compassion among ourselves and other species as well. It will arrive when the size of human civilization has become more ecologically right-sized.

In a truly just and equitable world, all people will have an equal claim to the sustainable yield of the planet’s renewable resources. An ecologically right-sized humanity will be able to live their lives with comfortable, equal standards of living, while nested benignly within the complex systems of nature. Global sustainability, when it happens, will not be just for humans. It will be for the co-evolving, complex, living system that we are a part of. Global sustainability will be, first and foremost, ecological in nature.

As the global sustainability non-profit working towards this beckoning future, Population Media Center is focused on conducting activities, programs, and communications work that provide immediate and transformative opportunities for the people of today.

Why are Human Population Size and Growth Important?

The issues of human population size and growth are important to the viability of human civilization because of their ecological relevancy. If humans were ethereal beings, which could operate irrespective of the Earth’s living systems, then there would be no problem with any number of people. The reality, however, is that the size of our population creates a baseline scale of minimum human needs — and the attendant and unavoidable environmental impacts on Earth.

As a global sustainability organization, Population Media Center offers opportunities for ecologically informed, concerned environmentalists, and other progressive donors who want to contribute to the intergenerational, long-term effort to ensure a much smaller, more ecologically right-sized number of humans in the future.

The population issue is nested within the larger problem of the overexploitation of the Earth, also known as ecological overshoot. The unfortunate reality is that humanity is well into ecological overshoot, and has been since the early 1970’s. The enormous size and ongoing growth of human population is one of many factors contributing to this overshoot, and a serious obstacle to global sustainability. Fortunately, there are well-understood, progressive, and human rights enhancing ways to create the conditions for population growth to slow, eventually stop, and then reverse.