GIRL PLANET . EARTH

JOIN THE CONVERSATION

GirlPlanet.Earth provides a global platform for girls and women to openly discuss human population, hyper-consumption and climate change, and share stories and solutions.

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For far too long, people haven't acknowledged a big elephant in the room. Or they've pointed fingers at 'population versus consumption' -- rather than naming them as two related, fundamental problems.

Without addressing both, it's just not possible to sustain human life, planetary health, or economic well-being. 

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Join us.   Start the conversation, share solutions. Help solve some of our society’s biggest challenges.  We welcome women and teenage girls to our global dialogue on Facebook, here.

We encourage men to share these conversations in your communities, and on your platforms. We appreciate your allyship.

These issues are crucial to our collective survival on the planet.

MONICA LAMBON-QUAYEFIO

GHANA

'I have always believed that education is a powerful tool to empower women in sub-Saharan Africa, where it has been known to reduce early marriage and fertility, increase the likelihood of wage employment and improve autonomy in decision making. What I underestimated is the formidable force of social and cultural norms on the road to complete women empowerment.   Read on...

ANAIDA WELCH

PANAMA

'My mom had six children, five girls and one boy.  In her own family there were only three siblings, two brothers and herself.  When I was a teenager, I never thought of kids or getting married.  My major concern was to finish school.  Read on...

BEYONCE KNOWLES

UNITED STATES

'Who run the world?  Girls!'

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CASSIE KING

UNITED STATES

'I'm the Communications Director for the international animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere and I work with the Fair Start movement advocating for the first and foremost human right: an ecosocial fair start in life. Read on...

ONAJITE OKAGBARE
NIGERIA

'My country is blessed with natural resources, but the issue is sustainability in the wise use of our resources. Our government officials amass wealth for themselves instead of using resources wisely for the masses.  Read on...

MALINDA GARDINER

SOUTH AFRICA

'My parents had 5 children, of whom three had one child each and the other two none. My parents taught us to be frugal. They were farmers and we had to help with various tasks. This made us realise what it takes to put food on the table and clothes on our backs. We were taught the value of nature.

Read on...

JAYNE STEPHENS

IRELAND

'The more people, the more consumption, but it's not that simple, is it? ... Things are changing rapidly and unlike the generation before us, now most of my friends, women and men, are choosing not to have children. There is a shift happening, conversations of overpopulation and overconsumption are being had.  Read on...

GRACE PAM

NIGERIA

LAURA O. AGHWANA

NIGERIA

'People need training that recognizes the value of wisdom, wisdom that goes beyond what we learn from the walls of a conventional school.  The wisdom we learn by paying attention to everything around us, nature and people, and learning to have deep respect for life, and nature, beyond just humans. Nature teaches us wisdom all the time, if we care to listen. Read on...

'I am a Legal Practitioner from southern Nigeria, Delta State... Being an Urhobo by tribe with a culture which recognizes having many children as an evidence of a man’s wealth and the 30th child in a polygamous family of about 8 wives and 47 children, left me with no choice but to be  independent early on.  I knew there were so many persons to cater for and I wouldn’t get the sufficient provision I needed.  Read on...

KARINE

PAYET-LEBOURGES

FRANCE

MARIA ROSA MURMIS

ARGENTINA / CANADA

KAROLINA GOLICZ

GERMANY

BROOKE MORALES

UNITED STATES

'I am profoundly saddened by the state of the Earth. I feel shame that greed and foolishness drive species extinction and ecosystem degradation.... My career, personal interests and sensitivity have brought me to the worldview that humanity, and planet Earth as a whole, have clearly stepped into an era of a massive collapse.  Read on...

'I am an environmental and climate change advisor specialized in international cooperation and also a farmer transitioning to agroecology. I am very happy to have found a space to discuss the role of population in global sustainability and wellbeing for all... When I was studying in Toronto and later Berkeley, the concept of overpopulation became very controversial, even unspeakable. Yet it is hard to be concerned about the carrying capacity of the planet and not be aware that population has a role in it, as well as consumption, of course.  Read on...

'I’ve just thrown the trash out. A large plastic bag filled with used nappies, baby napkins, food remains, and many other ‘necessary’ things of convenience. The bag I threw away fell on top of countless other plastic bags, carton boxes and old household appliances. And I felt like crying... This trash is so mixed; it’s never going to be recycled. Even if it were, this would be a drop in the ocean. It is going to be shipped to Indonesia or Turkey, and children my niece’s age are going to swim in our trash.   Read on...

'As our population grows and higher demands of consumption are to be met, the lives of billions of animals are industrialized. Through factory farming, animals turn into merchandise. Humane living conditions are traded for the maximization of profits. Labels such as “free-range” barely carry any solid legal standard. This issue is one of the most difficult to face and to discuss. Many of us and our loved ones support this industry. No one wants to be faced with the truth of how their animal products were made, especially when consuming them is so normalized. Read on...

NANDITA BAJAJ

INDIA / CANADA

LINDA LARA-JACOBO

MEXICO / CANADA

ZUZIWE NYARELI

SOUTH AFRICA

ILHAM HADDADI

MOROCCO

'Current pronatalist structures around the world are mired in a type of population control that pressures, and often coerces women into procreating. Driven by patriarchal, religious, cultural, political, or economic ideologies, such pressures prevent women and couples from making liberated, informed, and responsible family size decisions, including how they define family.  I feel an urgent need to pierce through overpopulation denial so that we can collectively begin to dismantle the power structures that are threatening all life on earth.  Read on...

'I am originally from Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico (Kumeyaay Land), now living in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada (Mississauga Land). I am the eldest sister in a family of two daughters. I was born and raised in a family of scientists, where research, curiosity, and science were the main pillars of the family. My mother, a scientist and expert in organic chemistry and education, gave me my first microscope when I was 4 years old and prepared slides to observe and learn about cells.  Read on...

'It was a delightful experience growing up in semi-arid rural areas of the Eastern Cape near Tsomo, South Africa, with my three sisters. Between the 1970s and 1990s, we lived in less crowded and polluted environments as our parents were self-sufficient through farming, organic food production, sewing projects, and other income-generating activities in the absence of government subsidies. But child pregnancy was never as common as it is now. Read on...

'I used to think that education is a right for all in my country and that all kids go to school, since I grew up in a city where all girls my age attended school. Unfortunately, I discovered another reality when appointed as a teacher in a remote area (a small village in the Middle Atlas Mountains). I noticed that the majority of my students were boys and that the few girls attending were shy and hardly talked during my class. I asked myself: why there are only a few girls? I learned later that they drop out of Junior school and get married.  Read on...

JOSHEENA NAGGEA

MAURITIUS

VICKI ROBIN

UNITED STATES

BELA SCHULTZ

UNITED STATES

SANDRA CUADROS

PERU

'Conflicts over vital resources combined with anthropogenic pressures will result in more dire human-caused disasters. But in conversations about overpopulation and how we are pushing our planet home to its limits, we must recognize different perspectives across cultures and acknowledge the many traditions which promote respectful and responsible use of our resources.

Read on...

'I am childless by choice and know many women choosing the same who feel belittled. Let's celebrate both joys: children and child-free.  In 1994, the UN held a global conference on population in Cairo. Students of my "frugality = freedom" book, Your Money or Your Life, joined me in a caper.  Every city where Timothy Wirth, US's representative, held a public meeting, we took to the microphones saying: "Consumption is the population issue of the United States. A child born here, in its lifetime, will use many times the resources of a child born in Africa."  Read on...

'Despite a worsening climate crisis, I never questioned if I would have children. Not having a child was a sacrifice I wasn’t willing to make – but how could I justify that decision as someone committed to addressing climate change? I found the answer when I became a big sister at the age of 20. I now have two brothers, ages 3 and 5, who do demand a lot – time, money, resources. But children aren’t only vacuums for resources – they can be raised into intentional and educated actors who are forces for change. I know my future child will be.  Read on....

'As I learned more and more about our relationship with nature, I realized how challenging is to make significant sacrifices that actually heal the planet. At the same time, I was lucky to have a mother that never pushed me to have children (unlike many families here in Peru). It is a hard decision because there is a lot of social pressure on women, so much that I even had doubts. However, another thing changed my life: I became a teacher of environmental sciences, and when this happened, I realized that you can have a special bond with many kids, and have a meaningful impact on their lives without being a mother. Read on....

TATIANA ANDROSOV

BELGIUM/ USA

CATHERINE SARAH YOUNG PHILIPPINES / AUSTRALIA

YUKA TANAKA

JAPAN

AGNES WANGUI IRUNGU

KENYA

'It was 1976. I was standing at the desk of Addis Ababa’s most luxurious hotel complaining to fellow UN colleagues that we were in a bubble, far from the realities of life.  A distinguished man turned to me and asked, “Would you like to see reality?”  I recognized the respected minister of a former European colony.  “Yes,” I whispered.  “Your name?” he asked.  I gave him my nickname.  “Tanya! Like Che Guevara’s love!”  I trembled.  “I’ll take you!” he added.  Read on...

'As an artist, I believe that women contain in them universes of stories. I grew up in the Philippines, which has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancies in Asia. I saw how young women who went from having limited choices to even more limited ones. As I write this, the pandemic has brought upon more work upon women when it comes to childcare, housework, among other things, highlighting the inequalities we have already faced before COVID-19.. Read on...

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'Fossil fuels have been dug limitlessly, energy has been consumed limitlessly, trees have been burned limitlessly, and the world’s population has grown limitlessly.  In such a situation, climate change is unavoidable, that we have entered an era in which each one of us should live every single day being conscious about the health of this planet. What we as individuals do every day as a matter of course is not what “only we” do but also what billions of other people do every day. Read on...

'I would like to write my story about gender and climate change. Growing up in Kenya's rural highlands has given me a chance to closely observe the climate change that has gradually come into place. In rural Kenya, women are involved in agricultural activities but mostly do not have the rights to own land, so they cannot make the maximum out of it.  Read on...

GABRIELA FLEURY (they)

BRAZIL/ UNITED STATES

GRESË SERMAXHAJ

KOSOVO

SHEREEN SHABNAM

U.A.E. / FIJI / SPAIN

FU-TZU YANG

TAIWAN

'Human populations and wildlife have always lived alongside each other, but current times have made the complex landscape of human-wildlife interactions even more complex.  I do research in Sub-Saharan Africa to examine how to mitigate conflict from wildlife and people living in closer and closer proximity to each other. Read on...

When Phoebe asked me to join Girl Planet Earth Voices, at first I was reluctant, since I thought I don’t have one major success story on how I fought overconsumption or how I saved nature and our planet. Then, it occurred to me that indeed, neither I, nor we, do not have to do it all by ourselves.  Read on...

As a journalist from Fiji Islands, a nation most affected by climate change, I like talking about climate change. The more you find out how global warming impacts smaller nations, the more aware and cautious you will become about wastage in your day to day lives. I have been through numerous cyclones in Fiji and lost every piece of belonging during the many hurricanes.  Believe me, it is not a situation you want to be in. Read on...

'Peng Hu Islands, composed of 90 islands and islets in Taiwan, is my hometown. I grew up by the sea. Stone fish weirs are obstructions built in tidal areas, and are one of the remaining methods of traditional fishing in the world, and despite population sprawl, many old stone weirs remain.  Read on...