For much of my adult life I’ve lived outside the UK, my country of birth. Therefore, I’ve been curious about the dynamics of social change occurring in different contexts, including the environmental movement and profession. That is why I wrote my book with an eye on how it might be useful to the environmental movement in parts of the Majority World, and therefore I look forward to learning from the responses after recently launching the Spanish and French editions, with a focus on how they may be received in Latin America and Francophone Africa. It also meant I was pleased to read recently that one of Indonesia’s leading environmental commentators, Jalal, is reading my latest work, and contextualising it with my previous decades working in corporate sustainability. I gave it attention, as Indonesia is the country I have chosen as home for the last few years, and where I’ve invested into a social enterprise for collaborative resilience in the face of collapse – Bekandze Farm School. His essay reviewing my intellectual journey was one of the best I’ve read, and so I had it translated into English, to share with you here. I don’t expect or ask you, or anyone, to change direction in the way I have done, but to allow an awareness of collapse to transform your own priorities, as and when you ready – as there is not one right response. But there are some benefits! If you are interested in exploring your own path with peers, then please consider our online course (next one starts late January).
Learning about the climate crisis from Jem Bendell
By Jalal
Jalal is an Indonesian sustainability consultant and environmentalist with over 25 years in the field. He has worked with multilateral organizations and corporations, while leading several sustainability consulting firms. He incorporates best practices from executive education courses at MIT, Harvard, Oxford University and elsewhere. He is a prolific author, having written and edited more than 10 books and over 350 articles.
Translation from Indonesian language of the following.
In 2018, Jem Bendell rocked the world. His publication stated that the world was doomed to collapse due to the climate crisis.
On a Sunday morning last July, I watched the documentary “Breaking Together: A Film about Collapse”, released by a Dutch TV network. Jem Bendell, the central figure in the documentary, is an emeritus professor of sustainability leadership who has been on a remarkable journey that is now encouraging environmentalists like myself and others to reflect on our future focus. I had known about Professor Bendell for more than two decades through his edited book on business and civil society collaboration for sustainability (Terms of Endearment: Business, NGOs and Sustainable Development, 2000). The anthology received much praise, and I, who was then relatively new to business sustainability, was very interested in reading it.
That book was followed by several other works, mostly on the same theme, at least until exactly a decade ago. After writing many articles in journals, his next book, The Corporate Responsibility Movement Five Years of Global Corporate Responsibility Analysis from Lifeworth, 2001-2005 , was published in 2009. Only a year later, Bendell then released the book Evolving Partnerships A Guide to Working with Business for Greater Social Change. I came to both books with a much more extensive and diverse knowledge of the subject, so I could better appreciate the complexity that Bendell described.
Bendell is not ‘just’ an academic. Yes, he studied geography at Cambridge University and then continued to earn a doctorate at Bristol University. Plus, he taught at several universities, including in the corporate social responsibility program at the University of Nottingham, taught management at Griffith University, and was appointed professor of sustainable leadership at the University of Cumbria, where he founded the Initiative for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS). Now, Bendell’s status is an emeritus professor at the university, at a relatively young age of 51.
However, Bendell is also an activist. After graduating from Cambridge University, he joined the environmental group WWF, where he was instrumental in developing the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and establishing the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). His focus on the partnership between business and social movements made him a natural fit for building both of these highly regarded initiatives. It was with WWF that Bendell wrote the landmark 2007 report, Deeper Luxury: Quality and Style When the World Matters. It was that report, and the extensive media coverage that followed, that first brought the social and environmental aspects of luxury brands to the public’s attention.
Although Bendell was as an advocate of collaboration between companies and NGOs, he was also critical from the start. In his 2005 article, In Whose Name? The Accountability of Corporate Social Responsibility , Bendell argued that CSR programs are rarely satisfactory in terms of accountability to their target groups—especially in the global South. But Bendell’s most trenchant critique of the whole practice of ‘corporate sustainability’ came in his book, Healing Capitalism: Five Years in the Life of Business, Finance and Corporate Responsibility, which he co-wrote with Ian Doyle and published exactly a decade ago. The 480-page book explains that capitalism is sick, and the cure, Bendell and Doyle say, is to enforce Capital Accountability for those affected by corporate decisions and operations. This analysis and prescription is not uncommon. But the book contains a wealth of evidence that is laid out without mincing words. Commenting on the book’s brutal honesty, Jonathon Porritt says “… when it comes to capitalism, there is no healing without a lot of pain.”
After that, I saw Bendell’s reflection on the increasingly critical state of the world. In 2018, he shook the world with his publication stating that the world was likely to collapse due to the climate crisis. He did not say that there was no need to slow down the damage, but said that Deep Adaptation, the idea that was also the title of his paper, needed much more serious attention. The paper, along with a revised version published in 2020, has now been downloaded more than a million times and has become a source of heated debate, especially because of Bendell’s belief that societal collapse is inevitable.
Bendell and Rupert Read then published the anthology Deep Adaptation: Navigating the Realities of Climate Chaos in 2021. Leading climatologist and planetary boundaries expert Professor Will Steffen commented on the book as follows: “Collapse followed by transformation is a common way that complex systems evolve. Perhaps collapse of our high consumption, climate-destabilising society can lead to transformation towards a brighter human future. The Deep Adaptation framework outlined in this book is a helpful way to seek that transformation.” However, another leading climate change expert, Michael Mann, stated that Bendell’s conclusions were “ wrong on the science and impacts: There is no credible evidence that we face ‘inevitable near-term collapse.’” For Mann, Bendell’s conclusions could jeopardise the fight to mitigate greenhouse gases.
Responding to criticism from Michael Mann and others, Bendell stated in an interview titled The Darkest Timeline which was published in The New York Times, “My own conclusion that it is too late to prevent a breakdown in modern civilization in most countries within our lifetimes is not purely based on an assessment of climate science. It’s based on my view of society, politics, economics from having worked on probably 25 countries across five continents, worked in the intergovernmental sector of the U.N., been part of the World Economic Forum, working in senior management in environmental groups, being on boards of investment funds.”
I myself strongly agree that “Deep Adaptation” is absolutely necessary, regardless of whether the collapse is indeed inevitable, or whether it will be experienced by our generation alive now. The 4R formula that he proposed, namely “ Resilience: what do we most value that we want to keep, and how? Relinquishment: what do we need to let go of so as not to make matters worse? Restoration: what could we bring back to help us with these difficult times? Reconciliation: with what and whom shall we make peace as we awaken to our mutual mortality?” in my opinion, can be a guide for anyone who wants to adapt to the climate crisis conditions that we are currently facing and will continue to face.
Last May, The Guardian surveyed 380 climate scientists about their strongest guesses about what temperature increases would look like by the end of this century, and 77% of them said there would be at least a 2.5 degree Celsius increase, or 1 degree above the safe threshold recommended by the IPCC. Recently, the Copernicus Climate Change Service showed that we have consistently exceeded that threshold for the past 12 months. Of course, this information makes Bendell’s thoughts even more relevant. What surprised me was that after his more recent conclusions, in 2020 Bendell decided to move to Ubud, Indonesia, and chose to become an activist in regenerative agriculture. He lives as he prescribes in his recent work.
Last year, he published Breaking Together: A Freedom-Loving Response to Collapse, which he made available in epub format for free on the publisher’s website and his own. The film I mentioned at the beginning gives some insight into the book and gives some background on why Bendell ended up in Ubud. But of course, it would be much better to read Bendell’s entire argument in full, so that we can appreciate—or not—his position adequately.
At the end of the book, Bendell summarises what he believes as follows: “We certainly know what’s happening already; scientists aren’t trained to integrate from outside their specialisms; technology cannot fix multisystem collapse; protesting teenagers often evolve into salespersons for green business; whereas our passions are unleashed by recognizing the full destructiveness of elites; blaming realists for being right is obviously moronic; voluntary self-governance will be better than constant manipulation and control; because our faith in humanity and the divine means we trust our freedom to care for each other and nature once freed from the cowardly and narcissistic officers of Imperial Modernity.” That conclusion made me reflect, and I am confident that anyone who reads this book will feel invited to do so.
I am not a scientist, but I enjoy integrating as many different perspectives from as many disciplines as possible, so I feel free to draw conclusions about it. However, I have been a demonstrator since I was a child, and now a proponent of sustainable business. Worse than just being one of its salespeople , I have sat with decision makers in many companies for the past two decades until now. From that position I can see and make changes between incremental and fundamental. However, in some cases I also found myself deceived by company executives, investors, and banks who I had previously believed would make changes. So, instead of trying to make changes by persuading, encouraging, facilitating companies to change, is it better for me to focus on working with communities at the grassroots level to strengthen resilience and regeneration?
Coincidentally, Breaking Together was published half a century after EF Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful, with similar echoes of his stance. That made the urge to reflect even stronger within me.
—
Jem here: I would be soooo grateful if you could help support the organic farm school to teach locals how to farm that way. We need donations to do so.
Donate to keep Jem writing / Read his book Breaking Together / Ask JemBot a question / Read Jem’s key ideas on collapse / Subscribe to this blog / Study with Jem / Browse his latest posts / Read the Scholars’ Warning / Visit the Deep Adaptation Forum / Receive Jem’s Biannual Bulletin / Receive the Deep Adaptation Review / Watch some of Jem’s talks / Find Emotional Support / Jem’s actual views on Covid
Discover more from Prof Jem Bendell
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
