Deep Adaptation

Professor Will Steffen, Australian National University Climate Change Institute

Edited by Jem Bendell and Rupert Read

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Copyright © Jem Bendell and Rupert Read 2021

The right of Jem Bendell and Rupert Read to be identified as Editors of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2021 by Polity Press

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ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4685-5

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Names: Bendell, Jem, editor. | Read, Rupert J., 1966- editor. 

Title: Deep adaptation : navigating the realities of climate chaos / edited by Jem Bendell & Rupert Read. 

Description: Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: “A new agenda for how we can prepare for societal collapse in an age of climate chaos”-- Provided by publisher.¬†

Identifiers: LCCN 2020052406 (print) | LCCN 2020052407 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509546831 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509546848 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509546855 (epub) 

Subjects: LCSH: Climatic changes--Social aspects. | Climate change mitigation--Social aspects. | Climate change mitigation--Social aspects.

Classification: LCC QC903 .D443 2021  (print) | LCC QC903  (ebook) | DDC 304.2/5--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020052406LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020052407

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The editors thank Katie Carr for providing editorial support for this book and the Griffith Centre for Sustainable Enterprise (Griffith University, Australia), with its director Dr Rob Hales, for helping to finance that support. We also thank Atus Mariqueo-Russell for editorial help and each chapter contributor for responding courageously to our call to apply their hearts and minds to this difficult topic.

We also thank the Club of Rome for their enthusiasm for this book, which joins the vital and vast conversation they began in 1972 when they warned of societal collapse. Jorgen Randers helped us in the earliest stages of the planning. We hope that our focus in this book about preparing to soften the impact and harm of any and all such collapses will be a useful, though unfortunate and stressful, addition to their ongoing dialogue and policy initiatives.

Jem Bendell : I thank the many volunteers in the Deep Adaptation Forum around the world, most of whom I have never met in person and yet feel admiration and affection for. Your decision to step up and help people come together in new ways for new initiatives at this difficult time has felt like a balm for my soul. I also thank the people who have been important to my intellectual journey in recent years, including Katie Carr, Richard Little, Matthew Slater, Zori Tomova, Vanessa Andreotti and all the authors cited in chapter 5.

Rupert Read : I thank many colleagues in and beyond Extinction Rebellion: the journey of transformative and deep adaptations will be a defining one of the 2020s; thanks to the post-XR ‘TrAd’ group for helping me pathfind (especially Oona, April, Simon, Skeena). And I thank my academic colleagues (and next-door neighbours) Jo Clarke and Nick Brooks for invaluable discussions on the same topics: what starts in Merton Road doesn’t stay in Merton Road. Thanks finally to the AHRC for grant support that helped provide some time and resources for me for this book.

Jem Bendell,PhD, is a University of Cumbria professor and founder of the Deep Adaptation Forum ( deepadaptation.info). As a researcher, educator and advisor, he specializes in leadership, communication, facilitation and currency innovation for deep adaptation to climate chaos. He authored the viral ‘Deep Adaptation’ paper, downloaded around a million times. He has worked for over 25 years on social and organizational change, in more than twenty countries, with business, voluntary organizations and political parties. With 100-plus publications, including five for the United Nations, and involvement in developing multistakeholder initiatives, he was recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

Tereza Čajkovahas been working in the field of education for sustainable development, focusing on questions related to what kind of learning and skills we need to face unprecedented global challenges together. She is currently working towards a PhD at the University of British Columbia. Her research is oriented on extending theories of social innovation beyond prevalent paradigms to support more socially and ecologically accountable innovation practices.

Katie Carr, MA, is a facilitator of collaborative learning with seventeen years’ experience within formal education, with communities and within organizations. Her practice focuses on bringing conscious, loving awareness to the relational space between people where we can explore what it means to be human and alive together. As Senior Facilitator for the Deep Adaptation Forum (DAF), Katie has led the development of a community of practice for facilitators. Katie teaches leadership at Masters level and also acts as a guide and coach to senior leaders in the voluntary, private and public sectors who are working on the climate crisis.

Gauthier Chapelleis a Belgian author, lecturer and in-Terre-dependent researcher in biomimicry and collapsology, as well as a father, naturalist, agricultural engineer and doctor in polar biology. He was one of the pioneers of biomimicry in Europe (2003) and of the Work that Reconnects, inspired by Joanna Macy (2010), which he still offers with Terr’Eveille. Since 2015, he encourages organizational and ‘low-tech’ biomimicry in anticipation of the civilization collapse, alongside his friends and co-authors Pablo Servigne (‘Mutual aid, the other law of the jungle’) and Raphaël Stevens (‘Another end of the world is possible’, with Pablo Servigne).

Jonathan Goslingis Emeritus Professor of Leadership at Exeter University. He is now an independent academic with roles in the Forward Institute, promoting responsible leadership in government, NGOs and business; and supporting the frontline leadership of HIV and malaria control programs in Africa. He represented UK universities at the Rio+20 UN Sustainability summit and contributes to the ‘greening’ of management education, e.g. as co-author of the textbook Sustainable Business: A One Planet Approach and co-founder of One Planet Education Networks (OPEN). He worked for many years as a community mediator, co-founded Coachingourselves.comand is a keen sailor.