Our Australian colleagues from Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) have published an interview with eurASP co-founder Fons Jena in their latest newsletter (August 2025). You can read the newsletter here (PDF) but we also copied the interview here below:
For this edition of ‘Sister Organisations’ we were fortunate to interview Fons Jena, Chairperson of The European Alliance for a Sustainable Population (eurASP).
SPA: Tell us a little about yourself and how you first became involved in the population sustainability movement.
Fons: I have a background in industrial engineering but switched to completely other fields: ecology and philosophy. That combination – a concern for environmental degradation and the love for critical thinking alongside the search for root causes – is what brought me to the topic of population. My father was also a UNFPA representative, so the importance of family planning and population for development and wellbeing was well known to me. I started to become a population activist after my studies volunteering keeps me busy and satisfied. I wrote a book and founded a Belgian non-profit to bring awareness to the issue. I currently work as an environmental officer at the local level where I’m confronted daily with the conflict between population growth and sustainability. For example, we keep on giving permits for new houses and apartments, while trying to meet our climate and sustainability goals.
SPA: Tell us about EurASP, when it started, how and why it formed, how it has evolved, and why collaboration between groups has been useful.
Fons: In 2021, members of various organisations grew increasingly frustrated that their dedicated efforts were not being heard. This led several committed individuals to connect internationally, aiming to share workloads, pool resources, and enhance their collective outreach. As a result, eurASP was officially established in August 2021 in Switzerland, built on the principle of cross-border cooperation to amplify voices in the fields of a sustainable human population. Since then, more organisations have joined the network. This collaboration offers many advantages: sharing experiences across borders strengthens both strategy and impact. Joint efforts have already led to several publications, which are available on our website. By combining expertise, networks, and communication tools, members can increase visibility and influence more effectively. Together, we are stronger, louder, and better equipped to make a meaningful difference.
SPA: What would you say are the key population concerns impacting continental Europe and the challenges encountered when trying to communicate these concerns?
Fons: Europe is a relatively small continent – the smallest after Australia – but with a larger population than North America. Population density in Europe is one of the highest in the world, second only to Asia. This translates into huge pressure on the environment, both inside and outside Europe. Europe is already in an ecological deficit, most of its territory is heavily anthropised with limited space for natural areas and wildlife. Several countries periodically experience shortages of energy and/or water. Other relevant issues related to population concern housing, welfare and social cohesion. Even if these problems are deeply felt, there is a strong reluctance to connect them to population numbers, especially in the media and among policymakers. Instead of welcoming the fact that in Europe fertility is low and overall, the population is no longer growing, many people perceive this as a problem. Moreover, since the main factor counteracting Europe’s demographic declining trend is currently immigration, advocating for a population de-growth is seen as an anti-immigration position and therefore immediately labeled as “racist”. This makes communicating our message a hard challenge.
SPA: What have been some recent or upcoming events, projects or campaigns for EurASP?
Fons: eurASP actively pursues its goals through projects and events, focusing on knowledge sharing, collaboration, and policy influence. A yearly highlight is the Summer Symposium, a platform for discussing future plans and exchanging knowledge and ideas. These gatherings strengthen the bonds between national organisations and their members, attracting scientists for lectures on specific topics. On our website we share selected papers and publish articles. These include a position paper on immigration and a historical overview of influential publications on overpopulation. This year, an open letter to Elon Musk was published, and new articles have already been submitted. In coordination with eurASP, Sustainable Population Germany, has taken the initiative to send a letter to the COP30 NGOs. The aim is to ensure that population growth is adequately addressed within the context of world climate conferences, and that a portion of the climate adaptation fund is dedicated to measures curbing birth rates. Finally, as a future step towards political awareness raising, we aim to engage with EU institutions. We would like to contact European parliamentarians and their political factions. They need to be convinced that population shrinkage in the EU should be seen as an opportunity instead of a problem that needs to be ‘fixed’.
SPA: Why do you believe collaboration is important between international organisations and colleagues, even as far away as Australia? How can SPA members get in touch with EurASP?
Fons: The benefits of collaboration on a European level can be extrapolated to the international scene. Although we all have our local differences, we share the same goals and obstacles from movements on the other side of the globe. This is why we recently have started to make contact with organisations in the US and Australia. Forming a federation helps being more relevant on the international scene. Instead of individual European groups making contact with international groups we communicate through eurASP. This means we are a unified voice for people and organisations outside Europe. The same if they want to contact us in Europe: they can use the common eurASP mailbox and we forward or inform the relevant national members. A bit like the European Union for foreign affairs and international politics, but with the exception that we have a real unified voice!
EurASP can be contacted on their website www.eurasp.org or by email info@eurasp.org.