People & Planet

People & Planet is Britain's largest student network campaigning on global poverty, human rights, and the environment. The network has over 2,000 active members at 50 universities and 79 schools and colleges across the UK.

People & Planet groups are autonomous and there is no formal membership system. The organisation is overseen by a Board of Trustees,[1] the majority of whom are student members elected by the network. The support office, based in Oxford, provides training, outreach and resources to support groups and campaigns.

People & Planet is funded primarily by grants from trusts and foundations.[2] People & Planet has a Fundraising and Activist Network called the FAN Club, allowing members to make regular monthly donations that provide invaluable unrestricted income to support the organisation's work.

People & Planet members at the Carnival of Climate Chaos, part of Shared Planet 2006

The organisation was founded in 1969 as Third World First by a group of students at Oxford University, supported by NGOs including Oxfam. In 1997, the network voted to change the name to People & Planet.

Third World First was instrumental in setting up the magazine, The Internationalist which was later reincarnated as the now popular activist-magazine, The New Internationalist.

People & Planet's current campaign areas are climate action and migrants' rights .

People & Planet's University League is the only comprehensive and independent ranking of UK universities by environmental and ethical performance. In 2019, the People & Planet University League was published in The Guardian.

The People & Planet University League was first published in 2007, as a way of driving forward environmental performance within the university sector. The People & Planet University League publicly benchmarks the sector's green credentials by combining universities' estates performance data with information about their environmental policies and management practices.

It initially scored UK universities on four key institutional factors needed to drive forward significant and sustained improvement in environmental performance, as highlighted by the Going Green report.[10] These criteria were:

• The active, public support of senior university management for a programme of environmental performance improvement.
• Full-time staff dedicated to environmental management.
• A comprehensive review to investigate all the environmental impacts of the institution, and performance monitoring.
• A written, publicly available environmental policy.

Since the first Green League in 2007, People & Planet has widened the criteria to assess both policy and performance of higher education institutions.[11]

The University League is widely credited with shifting the UK's Higher Education sector towards improved environmental management and performance. In 2012, People & Planet awarded 46 First Class awards in the University League, compared to just 15 in 2007. Notable improvements have been measured in areas such as the proportion of renewable electricity used by universities (72%, up from 12% in 2007) and in the number of Fairtrade Universities (112, up from 41 in 2007).[12]

In 2012, People & Planet held its first ever Green League Graduation Ceremony in Westminster, celebrating the achievements of its top-ranking universities.[13]

People & Planet runs several events each year across its network.

Power Shift is a yearly camp which prepares student activists for the year ahead with training, workshops, bonfires and a ceilidh.

Regional Events are held annually, organised by student regional organisers, in Scotland, the North & Midlands, South West & Wales, South East, and All-Ireland.

• “Over the last three years People & Planet has become an extraordinary organisation which attracts student supporters on a scale unmatched within the UK charity and campaign sector. More than any other youth organisation it is encouraging the emerging generation to see themselves as global citizens with a responsibility for taking action on global problems of poverty and the environment.”

Lord Joel Joffe, CBE, Chair of Oxfam, 1999.

• “People & Planet is one of the most vibrant and effective campaigning organisations in the country. What marks it out from the others is its focus on inspiring and supporting young people. By questioning underlying assumptions and conventional wisdom, and by challenging organisations that are much bigger and more powerful than itself, People & Planet demonstrates its political courage and its independence of thought. I am privileged to be part of People & Planet and hope that this review will give you a glimpse of some extraordinary campaigning by some extraordinary young people over the last year.”

George Monbiot, Guardian columnist, writer and environmentalist, 2007.

• Guy Hughes (1974–2006) was head of People & Planet's Campaigns until 2004 when, following the outbreak of war in Iraq, he set up Crisis Action, a UK initiative to help co-ordinate NGO responses to crisis situations.
• The environmental campaigner and journalist George Monbiot is patron of People & Planet.
• Former members include Mark Lazarowicz, MP; Catherine Stihler, MEP (alumna and current Rector at the University of St Andrews); and Mark Ballard, former MSP and Rector (at the University of Edinburgh) where the People & Planet group was instrumental in his election in 2006, against a field including Magnus Linklater, Boris Johnson and John Pilger.
• The internationally published hymn writer and theologian Brian Wren is a former Coordinator of People & Planet.

• People & Planet website
• History of Third World First