Daniel Lee Carrigan, founding father of the GAIA Earth-Steadiness Basis, died on 4 March 2024 after an extended battle with coronary heart illness. We gratefully commemorate his contribution to inhabitants and sustainability efforts.
by Jane O’Sullivan
Like a taking pictures star, Dan Carrigan’s dynamic power lit up the population-sustainability world for a short few years. In its wake, it left some vital change for the higher: seeds sewn in grassroots initiatives, networks strengthened and folks energised with a way of group and a renewed dedication to succeed in for the attainable.
Dan Carrigan first contacted me in Might 2020, in response to a weblog I had written. He was in search of recommendation on how finest to direct his life-legacy towards making a extra sustainable world. His was not an unlimited fortune, however just a few million {dollars} he thought higher spent “discovering a legacy that displays my values” than left as inheritance. Nonetheless, it was clear he was not merely on the lookout for a worthy recipient for a bequest: Dan would play a major function in designing any challenge he supported.
Our correspondence quickly moved his considering from the prospect of a pilot challenge paying ladies in high-fertility nations a small incentive to undertake long-acting contraception, to in search of to affect coverage discourse round inhabitants and improvement. This included rekindling political will for household planning applications and addressing the developed world’s nervousness about inhabitants ageing and decline.
This led to a dialogue with Robin Maynard of Inhabitants Issues (PM) within the UK in regards to the potential to type an “Ecological-Growth Economics Institute”. Dan provided funds for a researcher to do a feasibility examine. PM recruited the good Monica Scigliano to do that groundwork. Nonetheless, with hold-ups because of the pandemic and different points on PM’s plate, and Dan’s deteriorating well being heightening his impatience, his plans moved on. The train was not wasted, because it strengthened networks and result in PM’s 2022 convention ‘Growth or Bust: Financial system, Wellbeing and Inhabitants’. Monica continued with PM to analysis and write an essential report on the current rise in coercive pronatalism, ‘Welcome to Gilead: how inhabitants fears drive ladies’s rights abuses’.
After profitable coronary heart surgical procedure in 2021, Dan had new power for exploring his choices. He arrange the Gaia Initiative for Earth-Human Steadiness as a charitable basis, able to distribute funds. He additionally met a brand new life companion, Zee Berl, who turned a useful collaborator in his new endeavours.
Dan’s new thought was to supply plenty of small grants of $10,000 for organisations to undertake initiatives regarding decreasing inhabitants development in high-fertility nations, or dispelling the inhabitants taboo in media and political discourse. Over the course of two years, 13 organisations benefited, together with The Overpopulation Undertaking. Dan’s donations enabled us to increase the part-time appointment of our multi-talented assistant, Pernilla Hansson, with out whom we might be a lot much less productive.
Different beneficiaries elevating inhabitants discourse included Inhabitants Steadiness, the Inhabitants Institute and Middle for Organic Variety within the US, and Inhabitants Issues within the UK. Direct assist for household planning and girls’s well being and training actions was offered to Kilimanjaro Medical Analysis Institute (Tanzania), Regenerate Africa (Uganda), Household Medical Level Abaita (Uganda), Rwanda Affiliation of Midwives, CHASE Africa and Margaret Pyke Belief (UK-based charities working largely in japanese and southern Africa), OASIS (US-based charity working primarily in west Africa) and Inhabitants Media Middle (US-based, working in lots of nations).
In Dan’s personal phrases, these mini-grant initiatives included:
- all kinds of population-focused on-the-ground initiatives in World South high-growth nations – together with household planning training, media for teenagers/younger adults on FP, examine of cultural/non secular elements influencing FP adoption, women/ladies’s autonomy together with things like broad-based group/village training on household planning, on feminine genital mutilation, and on the impression of obtainable low price “cup-menstrual administration.”
- initiatives in World North coping with birth-choice influencers – types of cultural pronatalism and decision-assist sources for younger adults relating to alternate selections – from short-term contraception to everlasting childfree for all times.
Dan very a lot loved his relationships with these organisations and was grateful for the training he gained. Nonetheless, the extra Dan engaged with the inhabitants problem, the extra annoyed he turned with its avoidance and misrepresentation in mainstream media. In his phrases,
“All of us want for a greater world – with much less oppressive poverty and higher stability between people and the planetary atmosphere.
“Inhabitants-reduction advocates all know that voluntary household planning applications have the very best efficacy and are most cost-beneficial as poverty prevention measures in poor creating nations with sky-high fertility charges.
“And but – the superstition and anti-science and hyperbolic apoplectic reactivity to previous historical past not directly fosters extra poverty, extra struggling, extra generations of dire poverty – satirically amongst those that these advocates want to assist.”
He turned more and more centered on shifting the tradition within the developed world, each on “excessive consumerism” and the unfavourable attitudes towards the prospect of inhabitants decline. In response, the late 2022 grant spherical would concentrate on the general public coverage challenges of depopulation in america.
In 2023 he determined to discontinue the small grants in favour of fewer giant, multi-year initiatives “to constructively encourage a change in our societal serious about the impacts of inhabitants.” Nonetheless, it proved tough to seek out candidates matching his imaginative and prescient of ventures able to shifting the discourse. A few initiatives had been supported however not of the dimensions he hoped.
By late 2023, Dan’s well being was deteriorating and he scaled again actions of the muse. His final challenge was to help a contest for high-school college students, hoping to have interaction them deeply in sustainability points.
Dan lived longer than he had anticipated when he launched into the Gaia Earth-Steadiness Basis. His loss of life however got here as a shock, so quickly after animated emails pursuing his newest challenge. I’ll miss the random emails sharing articles he had come throughout and in search of a sounding board for his concepts. Inhabitants and household planning activists will miss the stimulus he offered for our work. The Overpopulation Undertaking, specifically, is grateful for his help.
NOTE: with the passing away of our two fundamental monetary supporters (Laszlo Szombatfalvy and Dan Carrigan) of TOP since 2018, we welcome new donations for our work. Particularly, we want to help, by wage, younger college students which can be keen on working with us on analysis and outreach. As well as, we’re engaged on a world movie challenge on the historical past of household planning, and the options to overpopulation.
