About Us

PERN logo

Mission and Organization

PERN's mission is to facilitate scientific analysis and dialogue about population-environment relationships. It is an Internet-based network that is open and free to all who are interested in population-environment research. PERN's activities include hosting cyberseminars, running workshops, and providing information on meetings, grant and job opportunities and member research through our What's New newsletter.

IUSSP logo

The Population-Environment Research Network was launched in 2001 by the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP).  PERN is a scientific panel of IUSSP and is a sustained partner of Future Earth, a global research platform to accelerate our transformations to a sustainable world. PERN receives in-kind support from the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC), managed by the Center for Integrated Earth System Information (CIESIN) at Columbia University, which hosts the website.  Additional funding sources since PERN's inception can be found on the bottom of this page.

PERN is fully Internet based, which promotes efficiency and inclusiveness, and members sign up free online. Via the Internet, PERN

  • facilitates global dialogue between scientists by holding regular cyberseminars on selected topics, and by promoting and archiving (on the Internet) real-time workshops and conference sessions.
  • provides member services such as a regular What's New with upcoming conferences, workshops, job and grant opportunities, and a keyword-driven searchable member database.

 

Sponsors

PERN was launched in February 2001 with initial funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur foundation. Since its inception PERN has received in kind technical support for web site development/maintenence and network management from the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC).

Over the years, the Network has received modest financial support from a number of donors (listed in alphabetical order):

  • Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina.
  • International Social Science Council (ISSC).
  • International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) .
  • MacArthur Foundation, Population, Consumption and Environment Initiative (sub-grant from Sara Curran, Princeton University, for the Cyberseminar on Population, Consumption and the Environment).
  • Programme on the Intereactions between Population, Development and Environment (PRIPODE) of the Committee for International Cooperation for Research in Demography (CICRED) .
  • United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) via IUSSP and the Global Science Panel hosted by theInternational Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria.