Jem Bendell

Jem Bendell is a British professor of sustainability leadership and founder of the Institute for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS) at the University of Cumbria.[1] He has written about monetary economics and the need for 'Deep Adaptation' in response to environmental crises. He regularly comments on current affairs and approaches that may help humanity face climate-induced disruption. In 2019 he founded the Deep Adaptation Forum to support responses to societal disruption from dangerous climate change.

Jem Bendell
Bendell presenting a keynote address on climate anxiety to the UK Council for Psychotherapy.
Born
London, England
EducationUniversity of Cambridge
University of Bristol
Websitejembendell.com

Career

Bendell graduated from Cambridge University in 1995, beginning his career at the World Wide Fund for Nature.[2] There, he helped to develop the Forest Stewardship Council and the Marine Stewardship Council. He specialised on relationships between NGOs and business, pointing out their potential, despite the power inequities and the way in which business agendas tend to prevail over those of the non-profit sector.[3]

He also became involved in the anti-globalisation movement, later writing a United Nations report on the conflict between business and civil society.[4] He founded Lifeworth, a progressive professional services company mostly working with UN agencies and worked part time as an associate professor of management at Griffith Business School.

After his time consulting for the United Nations, in 2012 Bendell joined Cumbria University and founded the Institute for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS). On account of this work, the World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader.[2] He soon expanded his focus to monetary reform and complementary currencies.[5]

In 2006, Bendell worked with the WWF-UK, where he analyzed and ranked the social and environmental performance of luxury brands. His resulting report, Deeper Luxury: Quality and Style When the World Matters, was discussed internationally in over 50 newspapers as of late 2007.[6] The report argued that luxury brands were not meeting the expectations of customers for high performance on social and environmental issues.[7]

In the 2017 United Kingdom general election, he provided strategic communication advice to the Leader of the Labour Party.[8]

As of 2008, he had published over fifty publications, two books, and four United Nations reports.[6]

Deep Adaptation
This section is an excerpt from Deep Adaptation[edit]

Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy is a paper self-published in July 2018 by sustainability leadership professor Jem Bendell. The concept of "deep adaptation" purports that humanity needs to prepare for a fundamental collapse of society due to climate change, with a likelihood of complete societal collapse. Unlike climate change adaptation, which aims to adapt societies gradually to the effects of climate change, Deep Adaptation is premised on accepting abrupt transformation of the environment as a consideration for making decisions today. Vice noted that it had a very large readership for an academic paper, having been downloaded more than 100,000 times as early as February 2019[9][10] (and more than 600,000 times as of November 2019).[9] In March 2019 Bendell founded the Deep Adaptation Forum to support practitioners and concerned citizens involved in preparing for what he considers as a very likely collapse of industrial civilisation.[9]

Deep Adaptation was not published in an official scientific journal, and was rejected from the Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal for failing the peer-review process. Climate scientists Michael E. Mann and Gavin Schmidt have criticized the paper. Mann has claimed Bendell is "wrong on the science and impacts: There is no credible evidence that we face 'inevitable near-term collapse,'" while Schmidt pointed out inaccuracies: "Model projections have not underestimated temperature changes, not everything that is non-linear is therefore 'out of control.' Blaming 'increased volatility from more energy in the atmosphere' for anything is silly. The evidence for 'inevitable societal collapse' is very weak to non-existent." In the same article, lead author of the 2019 UN global disaster risk assessment, Scott Williams, said "Bendell is closer to the mark than his critics,” as the UN report was “close to stating that ‘collapse is inevitable’."[9]

Subsequent to the paper's release in July 2018, more climate scientists have warned of societal collapse. In June 2020, climate scientist Will Steffen has explained that “collapse is the most likely outcome of the present trajectory” and former lead author with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber said “there is a very big risk that we will just end our civilisation.”[11] Steffen told the BBC: "With global emissions continuing to rise, and no signs that the Paris targets will be respected, Jem Bendell has some justification in taking the strong position that it is already too late and we'd better prepare to deal with the collapse of the globalised economic system.. I can't say for sure that Jem Bendell is right… but we certainly can't rule it out."[12]

Selected bibliography
  • McIntosh, Malcolm; Bendell, Jem (2013). "Chapter 14: Currencies of transition". The Necessary Transition: The Journey Towards the Sustainable Enterprise Economy. Greenleaf. ISBN 978-1-906093-89-1.
  • Bendell, Jem; Doyle, Ian (31 March 2014). Healing Capitalism: Five Years in the Life of Business, Finance and Corporate Responsibility. Greenleaf Publishing. ISBN 9781906093914.[13]
  • Bendell, Jem (1 September 2017). "Currency innovation for sustainable financing of SMEs: context, case study and scalability". Journal of Corporate Citizenship. 2017: 39–62. ISSN 2051-4700.
  • Bendell, Jem (2018-07-27). "Deep adaptation: a map for navigating climate tragedy".
  • Bendell, Jem (2019). "Chapter 11: Doom and bloom: adapting to collapse". In Extinction Rebellion (ed.). This Is Not a Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook. Penguin. pp. 73–80. ISBN 9780141991443.[14]

References
  1. "IFLAS - University of Cumbria". Cumbria.ac.uk. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
  2. Tsjeng, Zing (27 February 2019). "The Climate Change Paper So Depressing It's Sending People to Therapy". Vice. Retrieved 20 April 2020.
  3. In the Company of Partners, ISBN 9781861340177, Accessed 20 March 2019
  4. Barricades & B/oardrooms: A Contemporary History of the Corporate Accountability Movement, SSN 1020-8216, Accessed 20 March 2019
  5. "IFLAS - Jem Bendell, PhD - University of Cumbria". Cumbria.ac.uk. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
  6. "Jem Bendell, director of Lifeworth". New York Times. The International Herald Tribune. 26 October 2008. Retrieved 22 April 2020.
  7. Menkes, Suzy (29 March 2009). "Sustainability Is Back in Fashion". The New York Times. Retrieved 23 April 2020.
  8. James, Sam Burne. "Spinners, secondees and speechwriters: the people behind the General Election campaigns". Prweek.com. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
  9. Ahmed, Nafeez (9 January 2020). "The Collapse of Civilisation May Have Already Begun". Vice. Retrieved 19 December 2019.
  10. Green, Matthew (11 April 2019). "Extinction Rebellion: inside the new climate resistance". Financial Times. Retrieved 18 December 2019.
  11. Moses, Asher (5 June 2020). "'Collapse of Civilisation is the Most Likely Outcome': Top Climate Scientists". Voice Of Action. Retrieved 9 June 2020.
  12. Hunter, Jack (16 March 2020). "The 'climate doomers' preparing for society to fall apart". BBC News. Retrieved 20 April 2020.
  13. Benardete, Georgie (23 September 2015). "Why we are all responsible for solving climate change". World Economic Forum.
  14. O’Keeffe, Alice (7 August 2019). "This Is Not a Drill review – an Extinction Rebellion handbook". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 18 December 2019 – via www.theguardian.com.
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