Fact-Check: Jane Goodall Didn't Advocate for Depopulation at a WEF Event

Jane Goodall was about from over population, among many other things at the 2020 World Economic Forum conference.

A video of primatologist and conservationist Jane Goodall talking about overpopulation at a World Economic Forum's (WEF) event is going viral on the internet.

The claim: Goodall called for depopulating the world and is part of the "depopulation agenda" by the WEF.

• There are two versions of the video going viral on the internet. While in one, Goodall says, "We cannot hide away from human population growth. Because it underlies so many other problems. All these things we talk about would not be a problem if there was a size of population that there was 500 hundred years ago."

• Another version of the video has the audio muted and a floating caption that reads, "We can solve all the world's problems if we reduce the population to where it was 500 years ago."

(Archives of more such posts can be found here and here.)

The context: Conspiracy theorists have often used "depopulation agenda" in relation with the WEF to claim that global "elites" are planning on decreasing the population by killing them with the COVID-19 vaccines and enslaving the remaining people. Such claims have been debunked by several fact-checking organisations, including The Quint's WebQoof.

The truth: Goodall's comments were taken out of context in the first video and were misrepresented in the second video. Goodall talked about overpopulation, as she has for years, but didn't call for depopulating or killing people.

How did we find that out:

• We conducted a reverse image search using a screenshot from Goodall's speech and supplemented it with relevant keywords like "WEF event", "population", etc.

• We found that Goodall's talk was from the 2020 World Economic Forum conference in Davos, Switzerland.

• At around the 27-minute mark, answering the moderator, Mishal Husain's asked Goodall what steps needed to be followed to ensure that the trees planted under her One Trillion Trees Project aren't cut.

• Goodall said that five factors needed to be mitigated to ensure that - addressing poverty, eating less meat, reducing forest land used for cattle grazing, eliminating political corruption, and human population growth.

• "Finally, we cannot hide away from human population growth, because, you know, it underlies so many of the other problems. All these things we talk about wouldn’t be a problem if there was the size of population that there was 500 years ago," she says.

• Furthermore, Goodall has earlier advocated for combating deforestation, protecting local livelihoods and empowering women to slow down human population growth.

Conclusion: An old video of conservationist Jane Goodall has gone viral to claim that she advocated for depopulating the earth.

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