Jem Bendell
Jem Bendell is an emeritus professor of sustainability leadership at the University of Cumbria in the United Kingdom and the founder of the Institute for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS) there.[1][2] With a background in geography from the University of Cambridge and a PhD, he spent over two decades as a researcher, educator, and advisor in sustainable development, working with businesses, United Nations agencies, and non-profits before entering academia.[3][2] Bendell gained international prominence in 2018 with his working paper "Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy," which contends that climate-driven environmental disruption will likely lead to near-term societal collapse and proposes three responses—resilience, relinquishment, and restoration—to foster personal and communal adaptation amid such breakdown.[4] The paper, initially hosted on an academic journal's site before being removed due to its unconventional conclusions, has since been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times and inspired a global forum and movement focused on psychological and practical preparation for climate chaos, challenging prevailing assumptions in sustainability discourse that emphasize mitigation over inevitable disruption.[4][5] In addition to academic contributions, Bendell co-edited the 2021 book Deep Adaptation: Navigating the Realities of Climate Chaos, expanding on these ideas through essays on living with potential collapse, and he took early retirement from the University of Cumbria in 2023 to pursue independent work on metacrisis and consciousness.[6][7] His framework has sparked both endorsement for its realism in addressing empirical trends like accelerating extreme weather and criticism for potentially undermining motivational efforts toward systemic change, reflecting tensions in climate scholarship between adaptation and avoidance of dire scenarios.[4][8]