 Okay, welcome everybody to a lecture. My name is Gem Bandel. I'm a professor of sustainability leadership at the University of Cumbria, where we would have been meeting each other today for those of us who could get to the beautiful Lake District, but we're doing it on video instead. I'm just going to do a share screen to start the lecture. So now, this should be coming up. There we are. So the title of my lecture today is Universities Facing Climate Chaos, Approaching Deep Adaptation. And this is the first time that I have sought to make a connection between the new work I've been doing over the last couple of years on what's called now deep adaptation with my work as an academic. And so this lecture, when I came to think about it, it's really, I'm mainly intending to speak to people in academia, either as lecturers themselves or as scholars who are interested in academia, current students, funders, regulators, basically anyone who's interested in some way in higher education institutions. And I have given quite a few talks over the years and also quite a few Q&As and sessions on this topic of deep adaptation. And in preparing for this, I realized I'm nervous and I realized it's because I'm actually trying to bring this agenda to universities, to academia. And I think it's quite funny. When people come as students on my courses, we talk about how many of us, because most of the students I teach are so-called mature students, my age, for example. And we talk about some of the ideas that we have, the assumptions we have about academia and universities and learning. And I realized I have some of those hang-ups as well about how things should be done. And the material we're about to talk about in this next hour is really, really tough, really troubling. It's huge. It touches on everything. And so how do you begin to approach that in a way which sort of seems somehow educational and such like? So it was quite a daunting thing for me. So thank you for joining. 60 participants. It's wonderful. I'm looking forward to the Q&A. And I would really enjoy feedback as well on how does one even go about talking about this topic in a university context? I mean, I have done it in lectures, small lectures, but not as an open lecture like this. I have worked on environment since forever, really. I mean, my first job after university in 1995 was with WWF. But I think even since 1987, I was an environmentalist and very interested in what was happening with the world's environment. And even then with climate change. 1987 was when the UN adopted the Bundtland report, which said that climate change is happening, it's causing it and it's dangerous. 1987. And I realized that when I talk about climate change and the climate emergency, that is quite new to a lot of people. And therefore perhaps some people don't realize how we have for decades, those of us who've been aware of this, been trying to push for significant change. And efforts have included lobbying governments, businesses, banks, and others advocating to the general public and also trying to create alternatives. However, as this graph shows, this graph is from Dr. Wolfgang Neur, who's a deep adaptation advocate. But importantly, 25 years as a climatologist with quite senior roles in that field. He shows here a history of efforts to try and do something to curb carbon emissions. And he shows how emissions have pretty steadily grown 1.65% on average a year over that time. So basically just show that we've been trying and things have not been changing. And just recognizing that and knowing that there is a 40 year time lag for the full heating effect of all those carbon emissions over that time means there's a lot of global heating and also related volatility in our weather to come no matter what we do to try and cut and draw down carbon. And for me, I have been working or had been working for decades with the assumption that we could still do something to prevent climate change. And I was worried as more and more news came across my screens about how bad climate change is. And therefore I decided I needed to take time away from university, took a year's unpaid leave to actually look into it. And what I found was that actually the intergovernmental panel on climate change was understating the existential risk, meaning the risk to our society and even our species from climate change. And that's because they needed to find consensus and where it couldn't be found, they would leave out a whole range of important information. So if you're interested in that, this paper was What Lies Beneath is important to look at. Now these aren't sort of radical outliers. The foreword is written by a major figure in the history of the IPCC, Hans Joachim Scheldhuga. And so it's important to realize that here, that story we heard say in October 2018 that we still had in 12 years to prevent the worst of climate change, well actually that's an extremely conservative and contested view. And we keep now seeing more and more research coming out to show how actually there's been this kind of political compromise that's been going on. So this new paper, April 2020, which shows how over decades the climate science world and climate policy community have basically reframed the challenge in order to be able to keep people talking and to allow for basically failure to meet effective targets for mitigation. Now we see therefore that the predictions were less than what's actually now occurring. So we can debate about the science, but actually what we're seeing through measurements is really important. For example, this just from last year, 70 years sooner than predicted Arctic permafrost melting. And of course that is very scary because it releases methane into the atmosphere which is an intense carbon, sorry, intense greenhouse gas. And we're also seeing scientists now looking at feedbacks like that and finding that actually many of the feedbacks and so-called tipping points look like they've been reached. And this again is something in nature. These are top climate scientists, Timothy Lenton, Johan Rockström and so forth. What's really interesting is that their views are somehow often watered down when they reach the public. So for example, environmental journalist here concluded when writing about this study that the world may almost, maybe almost out of time to prevent what they call existential threat to civilization. Well, they didn't say almost. They said the world may be out of time. And we keep seeing scientific views watered down by journalist, activists, consultants, politicians and such like commentators because all kinds of reasons, but it is really troubling. It's really scary to think that actually humanity we may no longer be in control. We can still try to cut carbon and draw down carbon, but the future seems to be out of our hands and the catastrophe is on the way. Some climatologists decided recently that they needed to be clear about the implications of their findings because as scientists you typically just say what you can and can't say from particular methodology from your particular study. So you don't often join the dots and make conclusions about what does that mean for humanity. But this is a letter in the Guardian from 12 senior professional climate scientists on May the 10th, 2020. It is game over for preventing dangerous climate change now that governments are planning the cheapest and quickest return to consumption which is incompatible with keeping the average global temperature rise below 2 degrees C, let alone 1.5 degrees C. It is time to acknowledge, they say, our collective failure to respond to climate change and identify its consequences and accept the massive personal, local, national and global adaptation that awaits us all. So there's no easy way. There should be no easy way of reading that or for me to read that out to you and it not to be sobering and not to sort of take your breath. I work on this now and so maybe I become a bit numb to it but there it is in black and white professional climatologists saying such a thing and knowing the kind of backlash that can come to them because a lot of their colleagues do not want to hear this message for themselves, for their families and also for their story of self and so many of them will say that this is somehow irresponsible. However, if you're talking like this you're not saying that we should stop carbon and draw down carbon that we should try and give humanity as best chance as possible but what we are saying is that it's time to look at these really unbearable possibilities and actually start to talk about what if it's coming and start to look at how we can adapt, how can we prepare for terrible effects. More scientists are beginning to recognize that is the case and are beginning to talk about the possibilities for global systemic collapse and they're beginning to point out how traditional academic disciplines and traditional forms of academia have sort of inhibited our ability to join those dots and actually get the message out because you tend to look at things in isolation rather than drawing things together and then say what might that mean. This is a study from 200 scientists signed on to this with different disciplines saying that we now risk global systemic collapse because of all kinds of factors including abrupt climate change. It is important when esteemed universities begin to talk like this the MIT Technology Review so American University MIT last year came out and said welcome to climate change basically climate change is here in the future it's damaging all of our lives in some way right now and there's quite a lot of anxiety spreading around the world as people wake up to that and of course what's our climate anxiety is one thing and it's tough to live with and it's really important to look at but also we shouldn't lose sight of the fact but for other people it's actually leading to starvation right now and climate change is identified as one of the main factors leading to hunger around the world and we have a billion people undernourished on this planet and now hundreds of millions in Africa are actually facing starvation this year with one of the key factors being what's happened with climate change for example the plagues of locusts as to do with the changing monsoon rains but also the droughts damaging agricultural production in sub-Saharan Africa and so it's important to stay present to what's happening and to look at what we can do this becomes a humanitarian crisis and what can we actually do to help and of course the world has turned away from many of these issues perhaps as a result of pandemic but it's been important to notice people who've been making the connections so the UN environment program has made it clear that outbreaks of zoonotic diseases like coronavirus are more likely are made more likely because of habitat removal and habitat degradation and disruption to ecosystems this is not a controversial view this has been known for decades and there's lots of science to show that lesser discussed is how climate change by increasing habitat destruction and degradation and increasing pressures on species such as bats leading to changes in migration patterns and leading to more ill health in those wild populations can therefore lead to more likelihood of viral shedding and therefore the possibility of more transmission to other species and ultimately to humans the implication of this is not to say hey guys think about climate but it's to realize that because of climate change and environmental degradation pandemics like the current COVID-19 pandemic are now becoming more likely so some people would see that our current societal restrictions and in some cases breakdowns are in some way related to climate and environmental degradation now in the university sector we're seeing impacts directly already whether it's flooding libraries or servers or classrooms or overheating of servers or examination halls and such like so it's not it's not just again it's not somehow outside of the university's realm of work now faced with this information if you're an academic you'll be busy working hard focused on your students and like me you'll see this news and feel anxiety and I think perhaps like I was feeling in the past some cognitive dissonance the sense that I know this is happening it fundamentally could challenge everything that I do and that we do but how do I work on it and I think the cognitive dissonance can mean that the passion for your work curiosity about your work can be can be dulled and we risk feeling somewhat lost in terms of what to do about it how to show up with passion and commitment with our students how to respond with creativity when our university faces difficult challenges such as now with the income issues around arising from the pandemic and I think it's reasonable for any of us academics to want to feel motivated that we are going to help young people to get ready for whatever's ahead we're producing knowledge and communicating knowledge that matters for them but moving into a place where we can have that motivation it's not just going to be come overnight and it's not going to come from avoiding this sense of anxiety and the despair I think it's important to have some time for introspection I think I'm finding in my own work and in my own life that despair has is part of the pathway it leads to some humility some introspection and therefore prepares the way for transformation and in the university sector we need to take a good long look at ourselves because universities have had a key role as knowledge producers and promoters yet humanities arrived at this horrific, ridiculous situation we face now so we could learn how humanity has understood the world and ourselves so badly to drive a mass extinction event and threaten societal collapse we could consider what influence universities and academia may have had in this situation or in not averting it and we could connect back as we do that with the original purpose of a university and what a university could be we could look at how universities could in future avoid making matters worse and even try to help reduce harm and increase the chances for future life now of course this kind of message feels even more difficult within my sector right now because of what's happened with the pandemic after tourism and restaurants and hotels the university sector around the world is facing great difficulties because of the pandemic and the support for universities has been paltry that announced so far in many countries compared to the amount of money being offered to large polluting industries either directly from government or through central banks or through corporate bonds it's almost like we've universities have by allowing the story the neoliberal corporate story of the university is somehow like any other corporation providing a service to consumers to allow that story to grow means that at this moment people are looking at universities necessarily as a public good and a public utility which is awful because that's what universities could and should be so there's going to be it's tough times and I think at least at this moment now while it's an important time to reflect on the future of the university I mentioned that where have we got to with universities well we've become bureaucratic businesses arguably there's a lot of people who've talked about this I I've listed a few things that are linked to it but the implications for many people in this sector is is a problem with well-being I mean academics, teaching students researching, needing to publish, needing to write grants, doing a lot of work suddenly having a lot more work to do a lot more pressures and a lot more admin to do and so a very recent study just out shows that 17 UK universities study the rise in staff access to counselling is 155% up in recent years and the universities with data 2009 to 2018 occupational health referrals was up 170% so the university sector for academics there's evidence here that there's increasing stress levels and also if you look at what's happening for students we're seeing similar issues around now that we've sort of reframed the student as a consumer of education is that really helping? Studies are showing that the original idea of why that would be good is actually backfiring it's promoting passive learning where people want to just learn in order to get the credential in order to progress in their career so it's really shifting us away from just learning in a sort of a more chaotic and generative way where there's debate and challenge and this isn't me saying this there's a lot of research just to to show this and a big part of this has been the growth of tuition fees being paid by students so the first of all the abolishing of the grant and then the abolishing of funding for tuition fees and this what's happened in the UK and how that's changed the well basically indebted students so that that's now influencing their choice of course and choice of career in ways that favor for profit enterprise rather than necessarily favor society this was known about studies from years ago about how higher education was working in the states was showing that actually around half of graduates were saying their career choices were being influenced by anticipation of loan payments so the universities are not in a great shape in terms of the culture of the institutional the sector so I think it's a good moment this moment of pandemic and as we face climate crisis to begin to think everything because we are going to see debates in different countries around the world about why should the university even survive and which I think it will be good to have those debates and the reason I think it is good is because I have been wondering about what is the role of the university as we face climate chaos you know if the dominant story towards expansion profit ranking status and such like continues in the face of possible societal collapse then why are we bothering to try and adapt the university to keep all that going you know our sector has a lot of rethinking and reimagining to do I wonder could universities become venues for generating and exchanging ideas and experiences that help us all learn to live more kindly wisely and creatively in the face of greater turbulence that would have implications for university strategy the nature of research nature of teaching and outreach so this is what I want to talk about today in the second half of the lecture but first of all I just want to mention what adaptation is about in the mainstream before then looking at deep adaptation how it matches to universities and what universities could do for it so I think one of the best definitions I've seen of mainstream climate change adaptation comes from the EU I'll read this out here adaptation means anticipating the adverse effects of climate change and taking appropriate action to prevent or minimize the damage they can cause or taking advantage of opportunities that may arise it's been shown that well planned early adaptation action saves money and lives later examples of adaptation measures include using scarce water resources more efficiently adapting building codes to future climate conditions and extreme weather events building flood defences and raising the level of dykes developing drought tolerant crops choosing tree species and forestry practices less vulnerable to storms and fires and setting assigned land corridors to help species migrate so even within just the mainstream climate change adaptation field there is huge work to be done and universities could play a role in that so I want to say a little bit now about deep adaptation and and then how it applies to universities the premise of the deep adaptation approach is that it's time to accept that societal collapse is likely inevitable or unfolding in most perhaps all societies around the world in order for us to attempt to reduce harm and save what we can while finding meaning and joy in that process therefore unlike mainstream climate change adaptation efforts it doesn't focus on preserving our current way of life industrial consumer society now it's becoming a worldwide movement which is promoting peaceful and creative responses to this situation rather than the sort of the defensive prepping and bunker building that you may have heard about when people talked about doom coming when I say worldwide movement I mean there's 15,000 people participating actively in over 100 volunteers in the deep adaptation forum which we set up about a year ago now rather than focusing on direct related impacts this agenda invites consideration of all aspects of societal disruption and therefore the psychological and indeed spiritual implications of anticipating or experiencing collapses in societies now this is huge and scary and so deep adaptation is not providing simple answers but providing a framework for people to explore everything previously assumed about personal and collective progress so that we might find new agendas for personal and collective action it's certainly not about stopping attention to mitigation and carbon cuts and drawdown but it's about opening up to a wider agenda and what we're seeing over the last year is that it is providing a space for people to reconsider some of the deepest concepts and habits such as othering of nature and people or the primacy of individualism consumption growth or status seeking the sense that somehow humans have dominion and control over nature indeed it's also inviting people to look at the suppression of our awareness of death and our fixation on technological progress that results or our common mutual suppression of difficult emotions in our relating especially in the public sphere as we seem to think that we need to show up somehow positive and confident rather than revealing what's really going on for us as we face life as it seems now so for a university to embrace deep adaptation means a fundamental reconsideration of some of the deepest assumptions of what is knowledge and what is progress so big and which is I think why I felt kind of a little bit of nervousness about actually approaching this lecture to try to join deep adaptations and university what I want to do now though is say a few things just about how universities are responding to climate and research is being done to see how universities are responding to climate and it appears that those universities engaged on climate around the world where there is research on this are not working on climate change adaptation in terms of they're not looking to adapt their own activities now in the UK in the last year or so we've had 24 universities declare a climate emergency and I went and looked at the websites that actually list that so that some the climate emergency website and EAUC which is an organization promoting sustainability in higher education in the UK and it seems that only one university actually includes adaptation in its climate emergency agenda and that's Plymouth University in the west of England the EAUC itself recognises this gap and in 2019 began offering introductory courses, webinars and such like for universities and if you're interested in this I do recommend you go to the website to help which is sustainabilityexchange.ac.uk forward slash adaptation and from there you can download a few guides and also you can find webinars and such like and that's the that's for how universities can start on a mainstream adaptation agenda and put an adaptation team together and things that are being done by those few universities around the world that have looked at this is like burying power lines to avoid the threat of storm damage or purchasing emergency generators or starting new projects for energy and water conservation or preparing for flooding like landscape management, updating flood maps but also developing emergency preparedness plans you know how to manage volunteers, how to get basic needs met, how to protect key facilities how to provide refuge for local community in a storm or intense heat and such like I'll link to some of that in the notes when I put this video up online but there's there's a limit here limits of mainstream and and that's because we need to really think beyond what we can manage at a local level a limitation of mainstream climate adaptation work in organizations is that the focus is on whether changes such as flooding or intense heat are not on the broader societal disruptions that are coming from indirect impacts of climate chaos that can include impacts on food prices and availability with implications for well-being, attitudes, crime or impacts on the outbreak of disease or the psychological problems associated with climate anxiety so people already working on climate change adaptation as an organizational level not just in universities do report they're often siloed so they're only able to work on minor changes like adjustments to buildings for example rather than bigger strategic questions and they're also learning that many of the risks and hazards to normal operations whether from climate or the pandemic civil unrest and so on can't be managed at the organizational level yeah and we when we consider potentially catastrophic risks then foregrounding the organization rather than people us and our families and the wider community doesn't seem to really sit right practically or morally and so they're also realizing that perhaps the typical team for adaptation which will be people from risk management, business continuity estates management and such like isn't the right composition or sufficient composition to address this much broader agenda now I've worried when I was thinking about presenting this I'm now about to go into deep adaptation but I worried that this all feels stressful it is for me so I wanted to give you a little interlude just before we move to the next bit and so despite all this horrible stuff happening there's lots of things to love in the world this is a Otis we've just fostered some kittens and it's a reminder to just live in the present and have fun so this is Otis say hello to Otis I thought I'd make a cat video I've never made a cat video before kidnapped video even so there's more to come so I'm going to go back to the screen share and tell you a little bit about deep adaptation the deep adaptation framework is four questions the first and it's intentionally not about what do we invent to go forward but actually will sort of a post-progress paradigm of creativity and dialogue the first question is what is it that we've most value and want to keep kittens obviously but apart from that love, truth learning and such like relinquishment what can we let go of not to make matters worse what can we bring back to help so in the modern societies there's so much that we've lost and actually many of us are reconnecting with some of those things during lockdown and the fourth question with what and whom can I make peace with in the face of our mutual mortality and that's basically the idea that when you're looking at this really squarely unflinchingly realise that we can try we can do lots of amazing things amazing things will happen but it doesn't seem like humanity's in control if we ever were probably we never were and therefore when you part of this agenda is that felt sense of mortality and impermanence so with that in mind how do we make peace with that what does that invite us to think about do you want a let me just check I want to just check whether screen sharing is happening it's not is it let me just do this now with screen sharing let me just show you those this is here we go I'll just show you those there resilience will encushment restoration and reconciliation so these are the four R's as we call them and they prove to be quite useful as a structure for dialogue so do you want another kitten do we have another kitten realise this why not so the deep adaptation strategy team this is what I'm suggesting I thought how on earth do you actually start to work on this in an organisation and it's very very early to this is Amy by the way Otis and Amy you might be I was wondering did I hold Otis up high enough this is Amy hello Amy yes it's very early days for me in looking at how to work on deep adaptation in an organisation I was thinking so what could a DA team in a university look like and work on because there isn't one yet this is all very new I thought well they'd have to look at everything about the university and therefore needs to involve people additional to the normal adaptation specialisms of risk management continuity management or estates management so a DA project team at university would help include a psychologist a well-being officer from human resources community engagement or public affairs officer represented from the trade union with none of their staff council and of course the student union and I think someone from long-term strategic planning would be important to be there and I think you also need really good facilitation to help people engage outside of their silos so a trained facilitator would also be important and I think that means you need that not to be chaired by a senior manager or project manager because this is a massive and emotionally challenging agenda and challenges a lot of how we've come to understand our roles at work and of course the risks here are so great that it's really important to look at how to influence societal processes more generally so it implies a reassessment of research education and outreach as much as operations so I'm going to make some suggestions now for each just stop the screen share so what I'm suggesting is universities need to do all the mainstream adaptation stuff that universities are not doing yet to limit a climate emergency to mitigation alone when you know that your staff and students are going to be in a climate disturbed future is just not coherent so all the normal stuff making buildings resilient and capable of providing community refuge from dangerous heat cold or precipitation that's all important to do but this agenda goes deeper than that I would say stop growing it's time to drop the idea of more students being the goal so don't build any more buildings improve what you have and secondly start growing invite communities to work with you to cultivate land if suitable and support local autonomous trading networks and local currencies to try and promote resilience locally for if and when national and international supply chains and systems begin to break down so I'm going to mention a few things about implications for research and then I'm going to mention a few things implications for education and then I'll summarize with eight steps for academia on deep adaptation and then it's over to yourselves for Q&A so thanks for bearing with me and I have one more kitten which I'll grab there in a moment first thing to say about research is climate will increasingly impact our ability to do research indirect effects will destabilize funding for it as well so just at that level you can't get away from this climate chaos is going to affect everything including even just the ordinary conduct of research but I think each academic discipline could engage in new research projects related to adaptation and deep adaptation the potential collapse of society affects everything from psychology to engineering to economics to sociology and so on the topics within each discipline are endless some disciplines could team up with others for problem based applied research on issues like adapting to the local town but that isn't enough as I was saying earlier there's looking at possibilities or likelihood or inevitability of societal collapse raises serious questions about how humanity operates and what we think we know so introspection on the role of mainstream approaches to knowledge and the subject disciplines is really invited once you anticipate societal collapse for instance why has climate science been so limited in its ability to garner attention why have economics and management studies been hastening the damage of our societies on the environment now there's already scholarship on how disciplines become communities that serve themselves and not the public how they restrict wider understanding and do not support their experts to be adept at synthesizing insights from across disciplines anthropologists have published on this for decades now but it means that expert advice tends to be very partial reliant on one epistemology or theory of knowing and therefore prioritizes one set of information over another because it appeals to their existing preferences their existing epistemological worldview for instance in some countries right now the medical advisers privileged computer modeling over other information and approaches thereby downplaying how any model is a simplification based on the designer's choices on what variables and relationships to include and how to weight them in ways that are subjective, socially influenced model suiting and ultimately fallible now the same problem applies to climate models so there's an unhelpful sense of confidence in academia which reflects an unhelpful sense of confidence in humanity's cleverness itself and it's expressed by overreliance of modeling amongst many other approaches now the implication may be that humanity could benefit from more academics embracing approaches that are described by researchers as transdisciplinary or post-disciplinary or also this field called the field of research interdisciplinary or also this field called post-normal science all of these approaches arise from the truth that any subject division any disciplinary division is an arbitrary and limited tool for our understanding and our ability to make sense of the world can be helped by understanding those limits and seeking to transcend them through more plural approaches now one approach that's relevant for all of this is what's called critical subjectivity so ditching this idea is such a thing as objectivity which can be reached and is somehow a way of saying that we have validity for our knowledge claims but actually to develop one greater awareness of our own subjectivities and how that's influenced by society and by the financial interests that work in a particular field of knowledge now to avoid the limitations of our disciplines on our utility as scholars at this moment in time I think we could be supported by universities to move across disciplines and subjects as society changes and our interests evolve that can't be supported in a system that requires publications and academic journals that are difficult to be published in unless you give you all your research time fully to one discipline and prioritize its theoretical preoccupations over your engagement with life as you're finding it now so I think universities to support their staff to become relevant at this moment will need to rebel against the mainstream ideas of what is quality research I'd like to move on to possible implications for education but probably after that little bit of polemic you might want another kitten so this kitten is just being named Nina Nina is the smallest of the bunch hello Nina needs to eat a bit more so hello to the world beating heart ow and spiky ow so if you want to see one of them again say Otis and Nina I don't have any more for today although we like them so maybe we might foster more there are lots of kittens that need fostering at the moment first for education I think it's important as academics that we realize where young people are at in 2019 in the UK a third of 18 to 34 year olds reported that they were very or extremely worried about climate change so this situation is only going to increase over the coming years and will affect choices about whether to even go to university and then which courses to take and it will also affect their emotional well being at university and if they're showing up in courses where this can't be looked at and having to cram for exams and work so hard and it just seems so separate from the news that they're hearing and the impacts they're seeing around them then that cognitive distance isn't good for them isn't good for us the other issue for education is we can consider how universities have been influencing society and stop this climate tragedy and perhaps have made it worse there are incredible thinkers over the years like Krishnamurti or Paulo Freire they've really been ignored by the mainstream of university education Paulo Freire for example said that education is an exercise in either liberation or domestication increasingly we see that students our students need a credential for their career to pay down their student debt and while tutors we fear a bad evaluation so the learner and the tutor are increasing relating together within this framework of subconscious fear so routinised that we hardly perceive it or sense that it might be a problem in fact we even esteem it somehow now that context is not about the love of inquiry or the gentle holding of our mutual confusion and despair which is actually where unlearning can happen and transformation can happen we think we can take steps to shift this situation in more of our courses now tutors are expected to know aren't we, what we're talking about and yet we're in an unprecedented situation where we can drop everything we thought we knew and we talked about to try and work out how do we face this terrifying future how do we try to adapt I mean in my case I know that much of what I have learned over the last decades what I've become an expert in isn't much use going forward so why do I try and pretend that it is in order to make my life easy and continue to sort of publish and teach or do I admit that and say actually I need to learn too I think I'm not unusual in that situation and so I think it would be good to begin to reimagine the role of tutors like me as not the sage on stage not know it all not the person who can tell you whether you've got the answer right or wrong but basically as a companion in a journey of learning and unlearning where we'll learn as much from talking to people who show up in our classes as we can tell them or learn or help them learn other implications for education we could work on adjusting learning outcomes content and activities for any level of student in any course to include more attention to their personal development in the face of societal disruption including non-intellectual non-thinky forms of learning and unlearning where grading just it doesn't matter shouldn't be in there we could enable the creation of such modules on personal development that can be shared between all programs at universities no matter what you're studying from medicine to sociology to history to economics to nursing whatever and we could enable the launching or promoting of courses that address climate adaptation and societal resilience and we could promote existing courses or create new ones that are relevant to deep adaptation such as agroecology, permaculture, psychology critical social theory personal development dialogue and facilitation processes so I'm going to sum up now I know you've been listening for quite a long time I had quite a lot to say on this topic once I decided to actually work on it so I'm going to share my screen again if I'm not doing it already here we go, share screen and this is the summary there we go so I've come up with eight steps for academia on deep adaptation and if you're interested wondering how long we go on to I do want to have Q&A prepared to hang around for half an hour after I finish I'm about to finish and have questions and answers and of course there's no lecture theatre room here so you can just leave at any point without looking awkward so eight steps for academia on deep adaptation here they are I'm going to go through them one by one each one also has a question, a conversation starter for academics or managers in academia or funders or regulators or people who have an interest in it so the first one here, facing reality it's time to recognise that there's credible analysis that it's too late to prevent a catastrophe affecting all of us and so it's time to ask what if and consider how that scenario renders previous assumptions about progress, professions and success and priorities all highly questionable so basically you could start that with the question what if near term disruption is certain and we creatively explore implications reframe strategy step two it's time to consider that the growth of activity and income is now a redundant frame for organisational strategy in this sector and so that anyone using that as their strategic framework would now be in error it's time to invite colleagues to explore authentically restoring a deeper purpose as the real mission of a university rather than mere motto and actually people know that it's just about the bottom line so the question conversation starter what do we want to be enabling if more societies are going to break down so again none of this agenda works unless you allow yourself that first step of really what if this is our situation this is our future third step because if you're really seeing our situation that way what do we do and as many thousands of people do now and perhaps millions of people who are interacting around this idea of societal collapse then the third step is what prioritise people focus on the overall strategy of safety and wellbeing of staff, families and communities above the success of the organisation many or even all organisations are going to collapse if society collapses and so how to help each other, you and me to prepare and cope for future disruption is the most important thing so one approach is to encourage enable staff to reduce their hours below full time or take study leaves without any negative effects on their position, influence or progression so they can spend more time engaged in the community and involving their focus and skills so the conversation starter for this is if this organisation might not exist in 10 years how could we help each other now and I mean that just mean my university I mean if you are Cambridge University and you're looking at what really is happening in the world you should be asking yourself this question just because you're around for 800 years doesn't mean you'll be around for eight more so fourth, get practical invest in adapting the university more to the direct indirect impacts of climate change as well as its local community recognise the importance of workplace climate safety climate is beginning to be understood by the global trade union movement as part of occupational health and safety and therefore there will be legal liabilities coming away as employers if you don't work on it create and empower a deep adaptation team which includes members from business continuity risk management, sustainability and estates the typical organisation adaptation team but also people as I've mentioned before from strategy, wellbeing community engagement, public affairs trade unions and student unions team with good facilitation and also psychotherapeutic support now issues should not only include the direct impacts of climate change such as floods or wind damage and such like but also ways of enabling economic resilience such as diversifying local food and energy supplies so a conversation starter here could be how can we make climate adaptation and deep adaptation organising principles for our whole organisation step five level with students you've got to meet young people and you've got to understand that by recognising that the future is so uncertain that insight into oneself and developing life skills and enjoying life is as important as intellectual achievements towards a career incorporates such aims into core modules of all academic programs and be clear that this new era involves educators like us learning alongside students we are in a new world here and the more that we stick to what we thought we knew and the ways we thought we knew it might be encourage general mental health support for everyone that's us and students and not only those who are seeking it out so actually normalise the idea that we can be supporting each other and looking for support around our general mental well-being so a conversation starter for this what are the most important conversations young people could be having with us and each other from now on six so this is step six of eight migrate teaching and research because there's little point in becoming more resilient to near-term climate stresses if the university activities do not help address this predicament or even make it worse firstly incentivise academics to drop those activities whether teaching or research which do not explicitly contribute to social and environmental aims and adopt activities which could contribute to those aims secondly consider what it means that the predominant system of subject disciplines academic institutions all of this has coincided with a tragic unsanity in humanity that has led to mass extinction of life on earth and even threatened now the collapse of civilisation so reject the mainstream rankings and established norms in academia across the board all subjects and instead trans disciplinarity post disciplinarity post normal scientific approaches to research research analysis and education conversation starter for this you could ask as we face self-inflicted breakdown of societies how should we let go of mainstream concepts of best practice and create something quite different step seven last but one club together this agenda this is the problem when I was working on this speech I thought is any of this going to really work well it can't if it's just one or two universities or organisations and when I say work I mean reducing harm at scale and giving us a better chance so yeah ask relevant unions trade associations professional bodies subject associations and regulators to move to a real not rhetorical climate emergency footing and explore what that means for everyone in the higher education sector including issues that maybe a union or a professional association hasn't thought about so far so the question is how could groups in our sector support us to engage with this troubling agenda so the final step for academia and deep adaptation is get political encourage your staff and students to find ways to engage locally nationally and internationally to influence powerful decision-making that affects large numbers of organisations and people with the aim of reducing harm in the face of direct and indirect disruption from climate change so the question would be to get started on that as a university what influence could we have on any local national or international leavers of change so thank you before we go to Q&A I do want to say something about you as individuals and thank you very much everyone for staying with me and I'm very pleased to see lots of chats in the comments and people are connecting and that's wonderful as you can see this is quite an important topic for me so I had quite a good to say and actually cut half of it all out as well so let me just go back to this Q&A so the ideas I've outlined here are not likely to happen anywhere in academia either quickly or at scale and even if they might then the disruptions to society may overwhelm our good efforts and the COVID-19 rescue packages offered to universities are so poultry compared to what's being given to some sectors you've got better PR and lobbying who know how to get the Bank of England or the European Central Bank to buy their corporate bonds for example so I believe that many faculties and even some universities could be downsized taken over or simply closed so perhaps you like many academics who now report feeling overwhelmed with workload with less employment security given the pandemic and an anxiety about not integrating awareness of climate chaos into your work yeah it's a difficult moment for academics so it's no wonder that our mental health is worsening in many countries I couldn't wait for change so I decided to go part-time now many people can't do that as quickly or easily as me but I think if you do choose to downshift your lifestyle to plan for that to allow yourself to have the chance to go part-time in the future then you could create time to change your focus and effectively join what's becoming a movement for change deep adaptation and perhaps you could return to full-time work in academia if you manage to integrate what you discover into your academic work sorry I just had a kitten under my toe you may discover an emotionally challenging but fascinating and enlivening journey of sense-making without the stress of needing to get things right immediately or quickly produce packets of knowledge for consumption either in class or in an academic journal I do recommend it it was essential for me to have taken a year out which I was able to do on paid leave and then also to return part-time as I've done to give myself some time and space for sort of thinking and rethinking so I do recommend that actually okay so Q&A thanks for hanging in there everybody so Matthew it's over to you to say who's going to and unmute them so the first question is from Rosalie about communication thank you and Rosalie could you say where in the world you're from Hi Jim Professor Jim thank you very much I follow your work quite a lot of issues who followed you on LinkedIn I'm from South Africa in Cape Town I'm currently studying with the RKC through the University just about to complete my Masters in Leadership and Sustainability my question is and also part of Dr. Sarah's class it's about sense making where is our gap where are you finding the gap being in research for more than 30 years now is it where are we failing where are we falling short I mean the evidence is tangible it's all over the writings on the wall where are you finding the stumbling block why can't we get it right I know I'm asking you a lot of questions in a short space of time does it seem like we are indifferent to ecological imperatives at the moment what is actually how more can we communicate this message to finally get people to start thinking like we're all one person with one thought thinking one thing to get this right thank you so much thank you Rosalie, thanks for joining so I'm interested in the we the problems of our sense making and also then problems of how knowledge of our predicament environmental predicament has not seemed to cut through sufficiently into say the business power sector or the government my sense is that we have had over the last decades an economic system which people call it globalization some people call it neoliberal economics which really has set the agenda for governments but also it's pervaded into every corner of our lives including academic pursuits and so we've become as a species perhaps we always were less interested in understanding reality and more interested in how can we feel okay how can we have a sense that we belong how can we feel that we're respected how can we feel that we're secure given that we've got to succeed in the marketplace we've created a culture in so many countries it seems particularly in professional cultures where it's in business and government and in scholarship where there's almost like this fear there's this defensiveness we couldn't show up therefore with our confusion and our worries so yeah my view is that it's the economic system that has been a fundamental barrier and therefore the climate movement and climate profession in not wanting to sound radical in not wanting to sound perhaps anti-capitalist and therefore sort of avoiding these deep critiques has not helped wake up humanity so that's my perspective and I'm going to be producing a paper on sort of the economic and monetary adaptation to climate change in about one to two months time where I'll explore that a bit more thank you, next question please I'm going to stay on this call for another 20 minutes so we should be able to take a few questions the next question is from Amanda hold on a second my video there hi thank you so much for this talk I think that the first question I put in there was regarding the interdisciplinary issue so I mean interdisciplinary narrative has been around for many years now and I've published across many journals but I'm not quite sure I understand how specifically this ties into deep adaptation so I was wondering if you could go a little bit more into detail and what makes that different than what we've had for decades now yeah thank you Amanda where are you joining us from I'm actually at University of Freiberg in Germany but my PhD work was all at UC Santa Cruz so I'm across various countries sure so when I interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work is great if it's like being applied to try and solve a problem but what I'm talking about is that the very existence of disciplines are counterproductive and that's coming from a perspective which is that the reality is undivided and so in order to navigate that complexity humanity comes up with categories the simplest ones are words but then the big categories are geography or economics or physics and such like and so the problem is when we begin to identify those categories we associate those categories with reality when they're actually just fallible provisional tools for looking at reality and what we've seen and anthropologists looking at disciplines show is that every discipline becomes self-referential and wants to maintain its power and actually restrict access to that and develops its own languages and such like so transdisciplinarity postdisciplinarity these two ideas are about that is like the fundamental flaw of disciplines and therefore we need to help each other learn how to look at a discipline that we maybe don't know too much about or look at our own discipline and see what are the limits and what are the benefits of the way that they're seeing the world and the claims that they're making so climate models for example are very helpful but of course they are reducing complexity so much they're excluding so many things in deciding what the variables are and what the relationships are in ways which are their choices being made within a paradigm so that's not reality and yet what we've seen in climate policy is people informing politicians based on these models and so in a sense that's taken people away from the precautionary principle where there's potentially so much catastrophic existential damage if we get this wrong and instead you had people arguing over models and 1.5, 2 degrees or whatever so another answer to your question is for me and you it's great to hear you've published in different disciplines but generally it's difficult to leave one discipline and go into another to learn what their preoccupations are and you need to publish in a way which meets those preoccupations and contributes to that conversation and so it's very rare for an academic to move from one discipline to another and yet the world changes our interest change and so that should be celebrated it should be enabled and at the moment the systems do not do that so yeah I am building, creating capabilities for academics to talk across disciplines but also connect with forms of knowledge which are non-intellectual as well so other forms of knowing rather than thinking stuff so embodied knowing and even more mystical stuff and insights from being in nature and connecting with alternative non-modern cultures and the way they understand the world I think is also important which is I think in post-disciplinarity they quite like that I've certainly learnt so much for my life not from any academic discipline but from talking with people when I'm in emotional pain or for taking time out in nature or meditating so recognising that this is for a form of knowing and shouldn't be excluded is important. Anyway, thank you Matthew for the question So the next question is in three parts about the future of university. I'm going to ask Steph to ask her question as the first part Steph Hi Jim, this is Steph in Gila, New Mexico Trumpistan and so our son is home from first year of university because of COVID I've been amazed that absolutely nothing has changed with his classes or curricula other than going online not one word even though the world that they are ostensibly training him to go out and be a part of has changed so much what would you say to faculty or administrators of his university on this What would you say I want to know what you would say And the next questioner is Ruben Matthew, we're still in the middle of a question Yes but this is a three part question and I'm inviting Ruben to ask the second part Okay there's some fancy process Steph, I'll have to come back to you to find out what you're Matthew, could you mute yourself because when you type it's quite loud and thanks Ruben I think over to you My question is do you know of any university in the world that as an institution is taking the line of thought that you've expressed seriously come to a conclusion that as an institution they don't need a new strategic plan they actually need a new imagination of what a university would be in the 21st century Is there any such place in the world? I love that, thank you for summarising my speech in one sentence And the third part is a question from Amanda having difficulty and Just go to the next question I'm dealing with a kid, thank you Okay So that's the third part So the simple question is So Yeah, I have only really started to look at my sector for how it's officially talking about climate change So it's only the last month I really started looking at this and I haven't found a university that's actually real I guess Ruben what you're asking for is someone at the top of a university saying whoa, okay, I made it to the top of university I'm Vice Chancellor now and I realise there's a level of introspection that people like me should have and our sector should have because we have accompanied humanity on this journey towards self-destruction we are the universities we're meant to know shit, aren't we and yet what's happened I look forward to that I haven't heard anyone If anyone's heard of Vice Chancellor or someone senior saying that Steph, I want to hear your answer to your own question. Is that okay? Sure I'm not sure I have a good answer for you I guess I would at least hope that some of the professors would take time to be in some dialogue with the students about I know the university's offered some kind of counselling but aside from that to be in dialogue with the students, our son and many of his best friends at the university are from India and so they can't go home they're still stranded at this university that's shut down and only has a tiny number of people there he talks with them constantly every day which I'm glad he does but they should be addressing this these kids can't even go home even though the fall may not happen because the US won't let them back in if they ever leave so they're sort of stranded and the future they're all training for in computer science who knows if the economy will ever get back to needing that yeah so the problem is is in one of my slides I showed how the administrative function so the number of people working in uni admin has I rolled while the people, the academics who do the teaching they they're actually in many cases the number of staff have been cut and the number of students you have to teach has increased and so I feel for the typical academic if you're not in one of the elite institutions I feel for them with the, yeah how difficult it is to provide pastoral support for so many students so I think it's I'm sorry to hear it and in context like this I mean leadership on such a situation can come from anywhere so you know maybe get a group of parents together like yourself Steph and you know a lot yourself and you're great on zoom and so hold space together for students to talk online together I think in the end what we have to do is have high expectations think what will be good but don't stay in a mode of blame because there's so many people who could just be blamed for all manner of things going wrong and at some point just give it a go, step up, offer yourself alright thank you and next question Matthew next question is from Robert Morris Hi Jim Hi everybody I'm not officially in higher education but I'm a secondary school teacher and also a member of the Ning Education group on deep adaptation I think you may have already implied an answer to this question so if you have, if you feel you have started to side I would just really like to know if you've had a response or if you're even familiar with the Alastair Jardine letter that was sent to the government and whether or not as he outlines pretty much a business as usual kind of plan in that post pandemic and I wonder what your response might be to that if you're not familiar with that that's fine the other part of my question was that you mentioned critical subjectivity and in schools this has been massively marginalised my sense is that upstream it's been marginalised as well and a lot of that is cascading down to schools my specific interest is obviously trying to reinvigorate that and I wondered how you thought we might reinvigorate critical subjectivity in order to address our adaptation yeah thank you you're right it has been marginalised I can't believe that people are working in universities as if postmodernism never happened let alone deeper thinking around the sort of the the production of our subjectivities through systems of power including capital and patriarchy and such like it's amazing I just and I I think it's because a lot of people in the university sector have joined just sort of to get a job so there's some of that desire to learn and to be involved in social change which just isn't there so I think what's happened is as well that that view of why we're in education has become okay because and I think possibly it's something to do with the bureaucratisation of the university so what to actually honestly what to actually do to promote critical subjectivity model it model it I think talk about where you're coming from be open to be open and vulnerable about how you feel when you hear something that doesn't seem to fit with your existing well view or what you thought you knew because one of the barriers to curiosity and inquiry and to change is that we want to push away stuff which makes us feel awkward we want to get it right we want to be admired or respected and also we don't want awkward or troubling news so I think model openness and be clear of where your own subjectivity is quite important next question next question is Neil Wendt also this is the last question that I've got okay oh hello Neil where are you in the world it's Neil I'm from University Cumbria in the Lake District the question I've got is that many universities our departments such as engineering meeting like this you tend to get people from mainly the social sciences how do we get through to engineering departments and the like the hard sciences which do have the potential I would say to have a very positive impact on addressing climate change and the like but often they're academically socially and politically conservative how do we actually make a change there we've not necessarily got people who think the same way as yourselves yeah so there's there's a lot in a sense there's for the mainstream climate adaptation agenda not the deep adaptation agenda the mainstream normal climate agenda that I adaptation agenda that I mention that I summarized using the EU quote for that there's a big opportunity for engineering departments you know the there's in terms of how we respond how industrial society responds that is something that I think all engineering departments could look at and I think there are increasing numbers of universities that are launching climate change degrees whether including engineering or climate adaptation degrees I think the University of Strathclyde might have done that so first of all just point them towards how engineering does have a place in a world that's adapting to climate change but there's a bigger question which is yeah to encourage criticality reflectiveness and reflexivity curiosity deeper questioning about the systems we live in the political systems and such like yeah I would repeat what I've said which is that if a university is for something more than training then what is it for well you know education is I mean I think Krista Murty said it decades ago if we're all going to if all we're going to be is trained to be scientists scholars engineers without any attention to heart without any attention to the what is reality and purpose like why are we here then we will just create destruction and misery is a destruction and misery so many other wise thinkers and elders from all kinds of intellectual traditions and spiritual traditions wisdom traditions as well as secular wise folk have said the same thing and so how if someone's going to do a university course rather than just training then it's also about evolution of character isn't it and it's about self-discovery it's about personal development so I don't know I don't know how many engineering courses have those sorts of modules or not but I think they should have definitely Matthew is there one more question or is that it yeah there's one more really quick simple question that cropped up in the chat from David Haley Hi thanks for the lecture my basic question is if we're going to overturn the neoliberal power structures that currently threaten the university's life we need to create a viable alternative philosophy that needs to be developed and implemented so how does your deep adaptation address that issue thank you David can you just say where you are oh sorry I'm on Walney Island south of the the lakes district so yeah so what I think I've heard is that to overthrow neoliberalism we need to have a viable alternative framework and ideology so there are existing alternative perspectives than neoliberalism so I don't know if we need to go looking for one there's a way of understanding education as something other than training people up to be able to succeed in a global market economy so I think first of all just to recognize what a ditch universities and university managers have dug themselves into at this moment by buying into the story of universities as somewhat like corporations and students as consumers so the first thing is I think it's sufficient to just critique this ideology to name it to begin with but secondly so my perspective from deep adaptation is based on an anticipation of societal collapse so I don't my response to because that's my outlook on life because I think it's probably going to come in most countries in the world within less than 10 years through direct or indirect impacts of climate change I don't know how we go forward in that context and therefore I'm more focused on a framework for inquiry for letting go of all the things we thought we knew so I'm quite pluralist at the moment about what does that mean and I think that if we decide to try and if we start arguing over what is the best ideology and who's right wrong then I think we're not staying open fully open and curious about where we're at so I'm not offering any simple frameworks or solutions I'm inviting people to inquire together about and to know and so actually the main framework we have methodologies in the deep adaptation forum about how to show up in groups vulnerably how to witness within ourselves how our emotional responses to different ideas and how we're attached to being right and we're trying to encourage more vulnerable fluid interaction and dialogue and so then just see what emerges because we don't know whether any of it's going to work you know the big thing for me from the latest climate sciences it looks like we're not in control it looks like the earth is heating itself and no matter what we do to cut or draw down carbon the future is not ours to control and so we can try and do everything but we just have to reconcile ourselves with we may not have any agency anymore so in that context it's about how we show up curiously, caringly, compassionately it's there we go we've gone over time I'm very grateful to the 30 odd who have stayed to right to this end and I'm going to read all the group chats at the end and this is going to go up online in a few days and if you want to engage more then either see it on the YouTube channel and share it with people so Gemvandal YouTube channel or go to the research group on the deep adaptation forum so you click through to the name Matthew can you unmute everyone and let's all just say goodbye or do I have to unmute everyone we don't have an unmute all I have unmuted, thank you everyone for coming, go away thank you bye bye thank you bye