Aims and Objectives

June 2005

Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) was established in Canberra in 1988 under the name Australians for an Ecologically Sustainable Population (AESP). The people who founded AESP felt that, since the major environmental groups were failing to address the issue of population numbers, a separate organisation was needed.

While SPA is primarily an environmental organisation, it also addresses the social and economic implications of population growth.

SPA has grown into a national organisation with members in all states and territories and branches in eight major cities.

Until her death in the year 2000, the poet Judith Wright was AESP's sole Patron. Now five eminent Australians are Patrons of SPA: Professors Frank Fenner, Ian Lowe and Tim Flannery and Drs Mary White and Paul Collins.

SPA's quarterly newsletter is sent to its members and is available on its website: (www.population.org.au).

Objectives

• To contribute to public awareness of the limits of Australian population growth from ecological, social and economic viewpoints.
• To promote awareness that the survival of an ecologically sustainable population depends on its renewable resource base.
• To help promote policies that will initially lead to stabilisation of Australia’s population by encouraging near replacement fertility rates and low immigration rates.
• To promote urban and rural lifestyles and practices that are in harmony with the realities of the Australian environment, its resource base and its biodiversity.
• To advocate low immigration rates while rejecting any selection based on race.
• To help promote policies that will lead to the stabilisation, then reduction of global population.