The Ten Million Club Foundation

The Ten Million Club Foundation (De Club van Tien Miljoen) is a non-governmental organization based in the Netherlands which promotes global overpopulation awareness. For the Netherlands, it advocates to match the population size with the carrying capacity of the area. Initially, the foundation was calling for a shrinking population; later on the emphasis was also put on a reduction of the ecological footprint of the inhabitants of the Netherlands. The club was set up as a private foundation by the Dutch historian Paul Gerbrands in 1994.

10 million inhabitants
As the Ten Million Club was founded, the Netherlands counted over 15 million inhabitants. The Club argued for a target number of 10 million people instead, as was the situation in 1950. However, measurements of the ecological footprint of the Dutch revealed that this number was still far too high, given the population's consumption and pollution level. According to recent calculations of the Global Footprint Network the Dutch are using 6,2 times more global hectares than their country provides. With an actual population of more than 17 million people this would amount to a sustainable population of just 2,7 million people. A huge part of this overshoot is caused by the carbon footprint of the Dutch. A rapid transition to renewable energy as well as a substantial reduction of consumption could make a higher number of inhabitants possible, without the necessity to rely on or even exploit other countries.

Overpopulation as a global problem
Calculations of the ecological footprint of all countries in the world show exactly where the biocapacity and the available global hectares of a country are exceeded. The Ten Million Club considers population pressure an essential cause of this overshoot. The global overshoot problem cannot properly be solved by a mere reduction of consumption levels. If we would accept a Human Development Index (HDI) of 7.0 - which is the present HDI of countries as Egypt or Indonesia - for all people in the world, with the corresponding ecological footprint, then many countries would still exceed their bocapacity. In 2021 the foundation changed its name into 'OverBevolking', stressing the priority of overpopulation in The Netherlands as its main concern.

Overpopulation awareness
The foundation OverBevolking, the former Ten Million Club, tries to raise public awareness of overpopulation as a national and international problem by providing information on the drawbacks of population pressure. The foundation maintains a website with several articles on overpopulation. It publishes a newsletter three times a year,  gives lectures and supports students writing a thesis on the subject. The foundation also maintains a presence on Facebook. In a 10 minutes documentary titled "Overpopulation in Europe: Can we survive?" the Ten Million Club highlights different aspects of overpopulation as well as its detrimental consequences.