Past Event

Speaker: Professor Sarah Harper, Director, Oxford Institute of Population Ageing (Member of Oxford Martin School); Professor of Gerontology, Oxford University.

Summary: Many countries around the world are experiencing a demographic transition that is occurring due to increased longevity combined with low fertility rates. However, demographic momentum means that the global population is expected to continue to increase until at least the middle of the century, likely peaking near 10 billion.

Despite debates that put population growth at the centre of many global environmental challenges, the demographic transition is less about an increase in population size than about the impacts of population distribution, density and composition. A more sophisticated analysis of demographic change is therefore required in order to understand the complex interactions between people and the environment.

Biography: Prof Harper serves on the Royal Society working group on “People and the Planet”, is a member of the WEF Global Agenda Council on Ageing, and on the Advisory Board of the World Demographic Association. She is also a Governor of the Pensions Policy Institute, contributor to the UK government Foresight Programme on Global Migration, and author of “Migration, Ageing and the Environment”.
 

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