Welcome to a summary of the last three months of news, views, events, and resources in the field of ‘deep adaptation’, presented by Editor and lead writer Dan Vie, with the support of Associate Editor and writer Jessica Groenendijk.
This quarterly is an independently-produced free publication, which aims to include a broad range of content related to collapse risk, readiness, and response. In it, we take a critical perspective on the culture and systems that have led to our predicament, and celebrate the solidarity amongst people in response. Not only will you read about the interpersonal, but also about activism on related matters.
You are receiving this newsletter because you subscribed to it when joining one of the platforms of Deep Adaptation Forum (DAF). To unsubscribe, please use the link at the end of this email. If you prefer only to receive content from DAF, we recommend subscribing to their blog or events newsletter.
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Over the past months, a few new terms have appeared in the news as pundits seek frameworks to explain what is happening around the world. I have read that we are in a period of polycrisis, or permacrisis, or even World War 3. There are various reasons offered for why more of us are experiencing tougher and increasingly anxious circumstances. Since the pundits work for legacy media organisations, the explanations we hear are anything other than the death throes of global capitalism as it hits natural limits. And since they speak from within the 'Overton window' of respectable conversation, neither do we hear that our situation can be described as the beginning of the breakdown of industrial consumer societies. Instead, a superficial, distracting, and sedating hope of returning to something more ‘normal’ is a compulsion for them. So I am pleased to greet you here in this Quarterly, outside that narrow scope of perception.
I want to tell you of something else that has happened for me in the last few months - perhaps it happened for you too. Many friends who I never talked to before about collapse are now considering changing their lives to become less involved in, or dependent on, global markets. Many explain to me their loss of faith in both authorities and business-as-usual. I had already read in opinion surveys that underneath the veneer of mass-mediated hope, people in the West have been anticipating decline. But now that outlook is becoming a priority for more people. Such a situation is both tremendous and dangerous. Tremendous, because it means people can consciously choose to reduce their participation in a damaging economic system and the sick culture it creates. Dangerous, as people may be open to manipulation about where safety and happiness might be found next.
That is why now is the time for us to talk to everyone you know about societal breakdown, and how we are integrating our awareness of that into our lives. It is time to demonstrate our positive pessimism, where we find passion for doing what is good and true precisely because the future is going to be more difficult. It is time to help our friends and colleagues learn about the wisdom that can be found amongst people who have grappled with this topic for a while - both emotionally and practically. Forwarding people this newsletter - and asking what they think - could help.
In this newsletter they will be exposed to a range of information, ideas, and even initiatives they could join, that place compassion and solidarity at the centre of our responses. In this issue, they’ll read about ways that the mainstream conversations about the environment are quickly evolving - and how the latest UN reports are admitting that much of what has been tried for climate adaptation is making matters worse. They’ll read stories from the front lines of collapse in war-torn and resource-vulnerable countries, and hear from a rich round-up of progressive media voices inspired by Deep Adaptation. And they’ll read about creative opportunities for authors and organizers to join in envisioning new directions for a less harmful future.
If you share this issue with colleagues, they could also read why the key cause of high inflation globally is Central Bank corporate bond buying, which also portends the breakdown of financial systems. They can hear the argument that politicians on the left-of-centre might be losing their way by denying the need for a degrowth agenda. They could also read why the eco-modern promise of renewable-powered lives of consumer bliss is based on a lie about the practicalities involved. They could discover the shocking paradox of cleaner air threatening an immediate jump in global temperatures by ending the shielding effects of dirty air from burning fossil fuels. And after all that depressing information, they will read how a courageous and caring network of people is emerging worldwide that goes by the term ‘deep adaptation’. They will learn how they can meet and even work and study with people from that different world (including with me).
I - for one - am looking forward to meeting many participants in the Deep Adaptation movement in the UK in June. If that is not near you, then I recommend you organise a meeting local to you. It is time people you know heard from you about societal breakdown. So how about forwarding this newsletter to friends and colleagues? I think you will soon see how many more people are now ready for this difficult conversation.
Professor Jem Bendell
Founder of Scholars Warning and Publisher of the Deep Adaptation Quarterly.
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Photo by Willem de Haan
Source: https://www.willemdehaan.be/beach-day.html
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IN THE NEWS
The social ecology of collapse
We can take cues for where society is heading by watching countries a few steps further along the road—and plotting our own course corrections. Each issue, DA Quarterly will make collapse more relatable with stories from the Global South, seeking inspiration from early adapters who have no choice but to organize alternatives to the systems failing us.
Lebanon’s faded dream
Yusra Bitar analyses the brutal economic collapse in Lebanon, where 82 percent now live in poverty in a country stripped of resources by an elite of bankers and politicians protected by private militias. Lebanon’s currency has lost 90% of its value since 2019, its basic services are operated by mafias, and its scarce resources are hoarded for the wealthy. Bitar writes, “The crisis is the economy itself and Lebanon is yet another microcosm of this structurally ‘doomed to fail’ global system.”
How can these beaten-down conditions—described by the World Bank as a dangerously depleted and fragile State—become a crisis of opportunity, one which can open up doors for post-growth alternatives? Bitar points to emerging potentials like collectively-controlled energy systems, urban farming movements, and the rise of cycling culture.
Beirut as we once knew it is gone
Lebanese journalist Lina Mounzer’s litany of conditions on the street is more harrowing, with days “entirely occupied with the scramble for basic necessities. A life reduced to the logistics of survival, and a population that is physically, mentally and emotionally depleted.” Beirut’s food prices are up 500% in the past year, and there is little bread to be found—there are shortages of water, cooking gas, and medications of every stripe, and government-provided power operates for only one hour per day. And with gunfights in the streets, nowhere is safe—people of means migrate if they can. Mounzer describes it in her own voice.
The people of Beirut are making the best of a bad situation in their formerly modern city, and finding ways to adapt to a post-scarcity world. Mounzer rejects accusations of apathy—citizens have been resilient, and did in fact rise up to rebuild civil society: “People paid with their lives and livelihoods for daring to rebel…to believe we are resilient is to take on the burden of finding our own solutions to the basic services the state denies us…to believe we are apathetic is to accept that we are deserving of all this—these fuel lines, these bread lines, these empty pharmacies and stolen bank deposits, this exploded port, and above all these vile and ruthless warlords—as punishment for that apathy.”
For solidarity actions, you can support groups such as URDA, Nation Station, and the many aid efforts that sprang up in the wake of Beirut’s 2020 port explosion. For reportage on current conditions, see the UN’s Crisis Response Plan, and also the indy journalists at the Beirut-based The Public Source.
A cascade of food insecurity
It’s become very evident that countries will need to change their diets, let go of expectations for easy food imports, and seek out rapid innovations to make food systems more secure and localized. If extreme weather patterns (as in the crop simulations from NASA which predict a decade of breadbasket crisis) dovetail with supply chain breakdowns, nations could be pushed over the edge into starvation. Droughts will also wreak havoc on food security—as they did when provoking the Arab Spring and unrest in Syria, which politicized “a lot of very simple farmers and their kids.”
Wheat prices are a common indicator of geopolitical unrest. As the war in Ukraine disrupts the crop planting cycle, its impacts will ripple across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Since Russia and Ukraine together provide up to 30% of the world’s wheat, countries like Egypt, Lebanon, and Tunisia who critically depend on those sources are scrambling to find affordable exports elsewhere—some governments are too cash-strapped to subsidize their imports. And the FAO’s Food Price Index shows global food costs hit a 10-year high in 2021, jumping world-wide an average of 28% over the previous year. For a bird’s eye view, follow the FAO’s crop monitoring reports.
Like peak oil, peak fertilizer is another metric to watch, in an age of 'nutrient stewardship’ for elements once seen as cheap and limitless. The profits of corporate monoculture ride on the unstable supply of fertilizers like urea (another Ukraine export) and phosphorus, a magic bullet for high crop yields—Morocco holds 70% of the world’s phosphorus reserves, with China, Algeria, and Syria the next biggest. Price spikes on all these commodities will have roll-out effects, and agriculture will need to adapt to keep feeding populations at scale, in particular, shifting to regenerative farming methods as referenced further down in this newsletter. In the coming years, let’s make sure to dedicate local land for food production.
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Photo by Rene Lopez Herrera
Source: Facebook
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Surviving the future, and making reparations
Besides food prices, melting poles and looming nuclear conflicts, the most recent media bombshell was February's release of the IPCC's Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This massive document, which at 3,675 pages isn’t an easy read, draws from 34,000 studies by 270 authors in 67 countries. Luckily, there are basic takeaways, with the IPCC's own summaries a decent starting point. Alternately, this video from Dave Borlace, “Can we survive the coming decades?” gives a good 15-minute synopsis.
The Impacts report is a grim, authoritative rundown of today’s science, described by the outspoken Secretary-General Antonio Guterres of the UN as "an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.” With every fraction of a degree, the more apocalyptic the projections become: baked-in conditions over the next decade will drive up to 132 million people into extreme poverty, push 350 million into water scarcity, and force millions more to the margins of cities. Adds Gutteres, “a few countries trample on the rights of the rest of the world and a few companies get richer while ignoring the rights of the most vulnerable."
Getting adaptation right means consulting with communities first, warns Dr. Lisa Schipper, one of the report’s lead authors. Failing to include those with direct experience runs the risk of maladaptation, by spending precious budgets on the wrong things. Well-intended investments can backfire and make people more vulnerable—in the same way that building seawalls creates a false sense of security.
The good news is the leadership is starting to catch up. Previous UN reports may have held back on the full truth, but now the language is radically shifting. For the first time, there is open emphasis on climate justice and equality; even the dreaded phrase ‘degrowth’ made it in with 15 mentions. Since oil industry staffers have had a dominating influence at the IPCC table since the early 1970s, this is a sea change for climate rhetoric. And while the purchase of allegiances is still rampant, this is a turn in the right direction. Next steps, at the COP-27 negotiations in Egypt in November, will be to challenge the developed nations to make good on their reparation pledges.
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Photo by Gideon Mendel, ‘Drowning World’ series, Haiti, Sept. 2008
Source: https://gideonmendel.com/submerged-portraits
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Defending the lungs of the earth
The Amazon is under threat, and requires international attention. Early in March, thousands of Brazilians rallied to protest a ‘destruction package’ of five bills before the country’s Congress as backed by president Bolsonaro, a climate skeptic who calls himself "Captain Chainsaw.” If passed, the ecocidal legislation would allow hydro dams and soybean plantations, expand oil, gas and mining efforts, and probably greenlight land seizures. The Teia das 5 Curas Indigenous Network illustrate in this video what will amount to ‘legalized extermination.’
Accelerated by droughts and wildfires, Brazil’s deforestation is hitting record highs and even the most densely forested areas are struggling to bounce back. New satellite data shows the Amazon is ‘wobbling on the edge’ of irreversible dieback. Once tipping points are reached, the rainforest would turn to savannah over decades, releasing vast amounts of carbon—unless the bulldozers reach it first.
Although Sao Paolo (with 22 million in its region) is in the Cities4Forests coalition of 73 cities that claim to be helping watersheds, the area is still at the mercy of Brazil’s corrupt management. After ten years of severe droughts and with over 70 percent of forest cover lost, Sao Paolo’s reservoirs are so reduced, water is only supplied to 25% of residents, who live in a state of perpetual “eco-apartheid.” How can there be water scarcity in the Amazon, the world’s largest drainage basin? This unequal distribution of water resources is common to mega-cities—basic access to water should be a first priority.
Meanwhile, with extreme hubris, Brazil’s Justice Ministry honoured Bolsanaro with a Medal of Indigenous Merit for his supposed altruism. Indigenous leaders reacted to this farce with disbelief, saying Bolsonaro deserved only “the medal of Indigenous genocide.”
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Harnessing climate grief
Many of us are grieving, even though we might not realise it. And many of us are struggling with our feelings, seeking ways to cope, either by talking about them in a communal space or by throwing ourselves headlong into the fight against climate change. But, says Gwyneth Jones, there are problems with both these approaches. Processing emotions without action wastes precious time and may become a self-soothing indulgence practiced by the privileged, while action without processing may result in simplistic solutions to problems we don’t understand and that may cause more harm than good. “What’s needed is an awakening.” We need to slow down, think clearly, listen to, and harness our emotions, and then work with them.
Wounds want to be healed
Brian Stout muses that in our extractivist era, violence is so embedded in our social structures that no one is innocent of the wounds made by capitalism. To heal, we must reclaim our power from that hostile system, taking action towards a world where everybody belongs. A defining feature of living under globalized capitalism is the knowledge that our well being depends on someone else’s suffering. We experience this knowledge as a form of trauma: the idea of “moral injury” acknowledges the reality that it hurts to hurt people…the system is forcing you to be less than human.”
People need to rise up before the seas do
In Dark Hope and the Climate Crisis, Jonathan Rowson sees our civilizational collapse as a challenge needing a martial spirit. Rowson points out how the hands of plutocrats are often tied to electoral mandates, and how Rupert Read’s concept of a ‘moderate flank’ may yet evolve to overcome our collective immunity to change. “Where is the report with IPCC level rigour and authority that explains the gap between what we know and what we do at scale? People are beginning to realise…that in a way we don’t quite understand yet, it is up to us to set the agenda with greater resolve.”
Deep adaptation? Deep transformation? Or both?
Philosopher Rupert Read, co-editor with Bendell of the DA anthology, believes “our great power rests in telling the uncomfortable truth that we have, all of us, failed…the more we face the climate-reality, the more action there will be.” Read recently initiated the Transformative Adaptation (TrAd) project, stating “while we should aim to get transformation happening through governments, the UN, etc., we should also be realistic enough to recognise…that the time is ripe for activists, intellectuals and citizens at large to move into this terrain.”
Meanwhile, Jeremy Lent, author of the Web of Meaning is offering a 10-week online course on his own variant called Deep Transformation, beginning April 11th. To compare these tributaries, Rupert and Jeremy held a valuable, open-minded conversation which dives deep into the different ways of engaging with crisis.
Pushing the goal posts on collapse
In its role as a myth-busting framework, Deep Adaptation pushes the paradigms in radical directions that can be vulnerable to misinterpretation. Reflecting on criticisms of DA, Jem Bendell threw down the gauntlet on the need for bolder social action, adding that commitments can be made both to healing and social organizing: “an anticipation of societal collapse does not mean less social activism, or less radical critiques of how we arrived in this mess.”
Chris Saltmarsh’s recent backlash in The Ecologist aimed at the two authors of the relocalisation chapter in the DA anthology, Skeena Rathor and Matthew Slater. In response, Rathor called for working together for mutual co-liberation: “I am done with watching us play out our divisions masquerading as intelligent debate on twitter feeds…feeding and deepening our paradigm of scarcity, separation, powerlessness…Let’s become safe together and maybe even find our flourishing together.”
In Matthew Slater’s rebuttal, he called for environmentalists to lead with excellence, dispel false optimism, and support a diversity of actions: “We should spend less time praying for rain and more time digging wells…We in the Deep Adaptation movement are waiting for you.”
Following the water
More potent than oil or gold, Giulio Boccaletti conceives of the geopolitical power of water as a great virtual river, a life force that makes intensive food production possible and nurtures the growth of civilizations and trade routes: “A vast agricultural trade system continues to transform the face of the planet. And water continues to be its blueprint.”
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International Women's Day Fashion Show
by Iranian artist Mostafa Heravi
Source: Twitter - https://mobile.twitter.com/mostafaheravi
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Stories of food sovereignty
A Growing Culture advocates for the sovereignty of indigenous farmers worldwide providing pro-bono lawyers, funding seed-savers, and amplifying unheard stories. Those who can’t afford food are most often the skilled farmers growing it: “Despite the myth that industrial agriculture feeds the world, over a billion people go hungry… while Indigenous and peasant communities feed the majority of the world and sustain 80% of the world’s biodiversity.”
Their Hunger for Justice series has 38 video discussions in its playlist, on such topics as ‘Composting Grief’, ‘Agro-Ecology and Gender Equality’, ‘The Power of Seed in Occupied Land’, and ‘Growing Roots in the Heart of the Empire.’
Hospicing modernity, revisited
In this Green Dreamer podcast (with transcript), Vanessa Andreotti, author of the book Hospicing Modernity discusses her formula of the Five E's: exaltedness, externalization, empowerment, exceptionalism, and entitlements. Andreotti’s online study group just wrapped up—each of the eight videos discusses different chapters.
Highlights from DA Forum’s blog
The DAF blog remains a forum for diverse, creative responses to collapse, from poetry to film reviews to personal disclosures. Recently on the blog: Kimberley Hare exposes her profound and emotional journey with Broken Heart Syndrome. Zen practitioner Roberta Werdinger explores Memoirs of a Survivor, Doris Lessing's lucid 1974 fable of societal breakdown, as seen through the adolescent eyes of Emily, who fashions a makeshift society in the ruins of a crumbling city. And Kaat Vander Straeten examines her family’s migration from Europe to a leafy American suburb in The Long Goodbye.
No sacrifice
When we think of climate change activism—and saving Earth in general—we tend to believe that it would entail sacrifice on our part. We must give up meat, give up flying, give up lovely things, comfort, and security. We would be less happy, wouldn’t we?
Let’s consider for a moment: Are we happy now? Is our current consumption truly bringing us fulfillment?
We are not supposed to live like this. What if, asks Erin Remblance, instead of being unhappy consumers, we became producers, or creators? What if we “use our human energy and ingenuity to create genuine contentment and joy, not fill a void with momentarily pleasurable, but ultimately unsatisfying, “things”?” Not only would this improve the health of the planet, she argues, but it would also make us feel more connected. More alive.
How I’ll die, when and why
Environmental activist Michael Nabert eloquently confesses how long he’s dreamed of the Age of Scarcity, and, as it approaches, how he plans to surrender to a peaceful exit: “I can make myself a t-shirt that reads “Do not shoot! I have useful survival knowledge to share!”, but I don’t plan to live forever, and I’m okay with that. I won’t fight tooth and nail for every additional breath.”
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MEDIA ROUNDUP
Two years of dull, dwindling routines under the pandemic has turned our attentions inward, challenging us to keep calm and practice critical thinking. But isolation has also opened doors for a flurry of independent media. These collapse-themed channels offer a great antidote to the mainstream.
Post-Doom Conversations
Eco-theologian Michael Dowd has recorded 80 Post-Doom Conversations to date with such luminaries as Dougald Hine, Meg Wheatley, Richard Heinberg, and Dahr Jamail. All of Dowd’s media resources can be accessed on his Post-Doom page; he also hosts twice-weekly Zoom sessions to share collective intelligence about living in times of collapse.
Collapse Club: How are We To Live in a Time of Collapse?
Collapse Club is David Baum’s live-streaming series launched in January, featuring convivial interviews in a live 30-minute format. Recent sessions featured Fernando Garcia Ferreiro on “From Fear to Love,” philosopher Ugo Bardi on “Systems, War, and Demons,” and Kate Booth and Tristan Sykes discussing “Just Collapse.”
Living Well Now
Community-resilience leader Kimberley Hare of the HEART Community Group in Hertfordshire, UK, offers the Living Well Now series. Recent interviews: author Shaun Chamberlin (active with Transition, XR, and Dark Optimism); documentary filmmaker Franny Armstrong (her many films include “The Age of Stupid”); and John Doyle of the European Commission, speaking gracefully about our prospects for extinction.
What Could Possibly Go Right?
With over 70 episodes to date, Vicki Robin’s series What Could Possibly Go Right? explores ways all of us can see more clearly, act more courageously, and serve the common good. Recent highlights: social justice educator Toyia Taylor, Diné activist Pat McCabe, environmentalist Paul Hawken, and non-violence trainer Miki Kashtan.
Deep Adaptation Q & A’s
Lastly but not least, Jem Bendell’s interview series has 35 videos to date. Recent talks include former DA Forum coordinator, Zori Tomova on the Wisdom of Play; Scott Williams from the UN Disaster Risk Reduction Agency on shifting perceptions of risk; and Dr. Ye Tao on the MEER Project and geo-engineering. Register to join in upcoming sessions.
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Source: Pixabay
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Catastrophic Thoughts
A resonant new study by Susan Kassouf in the American Journal of Psychoanalysis champions “catastrophic thinking” to help us tolerate despair, and considers what clear-eyed seeing from those who are deeply open to what is now happening might lead us to learn: “A traumatized sensibility has learned from experience that annihilation is thinkable....despair need not mean a loss of agency or a foreclosure on social, political or psychic action. Vulnerability does not mean weakness.”
Exploring climate emotions
Most of us who anticipate societal and environmental collapse are familiar with feelings of grief, anxiety, and frustration. But climate emotions are more numerous, diverse, and complex than one might think (envy, anyone?), and they shape our reactions to the climate crisis in profound ways. Panu Pihkala argues that there is a lack of research into the relationships between various emotions, climate action, and contextual dynamics. He proposes a taxonomy of prominent climate emotions (see also Brit Wray’s commentary on his work), with the aims of understanding people better, and channelling emotional energy towards constructive responses to climate risks, including resilient and pro-environmental behaviour on individual and collective levels.
Preparing the leaders of tomorrow
The Cohort 2040 report, published by UK thinktank The Institute for Public Policy Research, explores the huge challenges which young, emerging leaders will soon inherit, arguing this cohort needs to be better prepared to carry on under worsening conditions.
The brief suggests two futures: one of an unstable world with runaway breakdowns, the other of deep, rapid changes globally coordinated for resilience. To draw out ‘future-fit’ skill sets, Cohort 2040 plans to experiment with immersive role-play simulations.
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Events
World Social Forum in Mexico City, May 1-6
Some signatories to the Scholars Warning will join the 21st annual World Social Forum, a hybrid event to be held in Mexico City (and online) from May 1-6, 2022. Thousands of leaders from civil society will come together to advance new narratives for climate justice, and proposals for ways to overcome imperialism, racism, and predatory capitalism.
Transition International - ‘Together We Can’ Summit, May 11-21
A free ten-day summit celebrates the power of community-building with 25 interactive sessions on subjects from doughnut economics to rewilding, healing trauma, and imaginative resistance. The programme will be followed by a week-long Open Space from 23-28 May, on the Vive platform.
Courses
Doing Hope Together, May 16 - June 6
Inspired by Joanna Macy’s “Active Hope” work, this 4-part online workshop is geared at helping social change activists re-engage with direction and purpose. The course moves through the stages of the ‘active hope spiral’: grounding in gratitude; learning to face what grieves us; finding a new way to see the world; and committing to take action, renewed. Facilitated by Clare Bonetree and Jay Wilkinson, on four Mondays, May 16th - June 6th, with sliding scale fees.
Deep Adaptation Leadership, June 13 - 17, UK
In Lancaster, Jem Bendell and Katie Carr will lead a 5-day course on leadership in the face of societal disruption, using the Deep Adaptation Framework. It is followed by a free conference on Deep Adaptation, also in Lancaster, on 18th June.
Complete our form to submit details of your own online event or course for consideration in our next DA Quarterly.
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Naomi Klein has called agricultural researcher Stan Cox a dangerous iconoclast of the best kind. Cox is a staff member of Kansas’ Land Institute, an agency promoting perennial grain crops and polyculture farming. In The Path to a Livable Future, Cox connects the dots between the ways that climate change, COVID-19, and racism hit impoverished populations the hardest, and calls to build movements inclusive of all sectors of society.
In this video discussion, Cox suggests: “in a livable future, we will need food and shelter, not weapons, fighter planes, and prisons….not just reforming an unjust system, but abolishing marginalization itself.” To achieve sufficiency for all, anything but a world-wide commitment to strict ecological limits is a dead end.
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If your mother was ill, perhaps dying, wouldn’t you look after her, be with her, make time for her? Wouldn’t you do everything in your power to find ways to help and heal her? And wouldn’t you love her harder than ever?
This shared planet, Earth, is our mother, and few people are more compassionate and heartfelt in their love for her as Thich Nhat Hahn, the poet-monk-activist who passed away on 22 January, in his letters and his book Zen and The Art of Saving The Planet. Can Mother Earth count on us? Thich Nhat Hahn believes she can.
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In this inspirational field guide to ecological art practices, 67 members of the international Eco-Art Network share their unique takes on generating projects and provocations in classrooms and communities. This anthology of practical activities, case studies, and models for building culture and creativity should prove useful for anyone wanting to educate for ecological change.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
Events like COP-26 signal the collective failure to imagine the next steps. As such, DA Quarterly is pivoting towards future visioning, with all the creativity we can muster, to inspire us with new ways of seeing, open windows to innovation, and reach through to people’s hearts.
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So Below: A Comic About Land
So Below, a moving and beautifully rendered visual essay by Australian graphic journalist Sam Wallman critiques notions of land ownership, borders and exclusion zones, and highlights the resistance from Indigenous people, refugees, and the homeless.
Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors
The Fix Solutions Lab, a project of Grist Magazine, combines visionary storytelling with network-building and events. In 2021, Fix gathered 28 climate and justice leaders to explore visions of a clean, just future, giving land back, dissolving borders and prisons, and building economies based on ecological care. Fix’s climate-fiction contest, Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors, received 1,100 submissions last year. Read the winning stories from 2021’s event and submit your story (3,000 - 5,000 words) to this year’s contest by May 5th.
Gideon Mendel’s photo series Drowning World
Since 2007, photographer Gideon Mendel has traveled to flooded areas around the globe to create portraits of survivors, submerged in flooded landscapes or in what may still remain of their homes.
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Photo by Gideon Mendel, ‘Drowning World’ series
Source: https://gideonmendel.com/submerged-portraits
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ARK – submissions for Dark Mountain: Issue 22
"When the house is burning, what do you take with you? When the storm comes in, where do you hold fast?” Dark Mountain welcomes fiction and non-fiction, photo essays and artworks, patterns and recipes that celebrate the core elements of human culture. Submissions by May 13th for publication in October, 2022.
Flourish Climate Fiction Collective
Climate-tech professionals Blake Atkerson, Anya Lamb, and Ben Soltoff launched the Flourish Project in February 2022 as a platform for optimistic, solutions-focused fictions which “let us see ahead to a repaired world” (they’re also open to sad, satirical, or downright bizarre stories). For instance, in Gaia's Breath by Denali Nalamalapu, a migrant community in India, having survived drought, monsoon, and heat stroke, dares to care for each other after society has failed them. Submit short stories (5,000 words or less), flash fiction (500 words or less), and poems that imagine ways of healing the planet with both love and creative solutions.
Speculative Nature Writing: Feeling for the Future
The University of East Anglia is calling for explorations of “radical change in our relationships with landscape, animals, place, climate and each other” in an anthology of works which experiment with traditional nature writing in “unnerving, ambiguous, and provocative ways.” Submit a 300-500 word proposal by April 22nd (final 3,000-5,000 words by September). For details: Hetty.Saunders@uea.ac.uk
Welcome to the MeddleVerse!
Muck-raking creative activists The Yes Men are back, launching their new MeddleVerse! After two decades in political pranksterism, they’ve compiled an inspiring resource guide of their techniques. They also offer coaching to activist groups in using humour and trickery to subvert the power structure.
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Costa Rica waterfall, photo by Josiah Gordon
Source: https://www.josiahwg.com/
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Many have the desire for building community but feel disconnected and overwhelmed about where to start. This section links to methods for building a better world, with kudos to the people and organisations with long experience in developing practical tools for leadership.
The Cultural Emergence program works to create “cultures of personal leadership, collective wisdom and Earth care.” Permaculture educator Looby Macnamara’s free taster course for the new Cultural Emergence toolkit explores ways to support our ‘crisis of disconnection’, building a regenerative culture with low-cost solutions, to make gratitude, abundance, and care part of our everyday lives.
The Obligatory Note of Hope website offers a collection of “Tips for Trying Times”, with an emphasis on collective action.
The Thrivespring platform invites groups to propose projects and share resources for disaster risk management. People are hard-wired to help each other in emergencies, and this site seeks to harness their collective goodwill, to create more robust, prepared communities.
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NEWS FROM DEEP ADAPTATION FORUM
The Deep Adaptation Forum is a community which began soon after the publication of Jem Bendell’s ground-breaking paper. They connect all sorts of people, helping them embody and enable loving responses to our predicament, to reduce suffering and save more of society and the natural world.
Dear reader,
Our community continues to grow steadily, with current numbers at:
Facebook 14,503
Professions Network 3,905
DAF Facilitators Network 237
DAF Slack (active volunteers) 212
We continue to enjoy regular Deep Relating, Deep Listening and Death Café events, as well as a plethora of volunteer-led events lovingly offered with the aim of promoting community, understanding, support, and inner and outer adaptation to societal disruption. Details of these are available via our events page. If you are curious, please do come along, you will be guaranteed a warm welcome.
In addition, several special events have been offered in recent weeks:
Practicing helpful responses to crises
Looming large for many of us is the situation in Ukraine and Russia; not least because we have members directly impacted by the situation. We’re hoping that as we learn what can be done to support those most affected - what’s helpful and what’s not - we may gain knowledge that will be of use in other situations.
Ubuntu: Healing racism within ourselves and in our communities
Nontokozo Sabic recently offered an anti-racism training to participants in DAF and elsewhere, with support from Mark Hamlin and the Diversity & Decolonising Circle. About a dozen participants took part in this 3-day deep dive into systemic racism, white supremacy, and internalised oppression, offered in partnership with Permaculture CoLab and Radical Joy for Hard Times. Through a combination of presentations and facilitated experiential reflections, they also examined their privileges in society from an intersectional lens. This is the second time our network has benefitted from their expertise and care, following the first training that took place in November 2020.
Training for DAF Facilitators
Training courses in the facilitation of Deep Listening and Deep Relating practices were offered in the first quarter of 2022. Both courses were very well attended and received. As well as resulting in additional facilitated offerings within DAF, these courses are contributing to a sharing of our modalities beyond DAF and into other local and online communities.
Building community
Members often ask about “community-building” in Deep Adaptation, both online and offline. How to start a community, what are the challenges and strategies that work? To explore these topics, among others, a new series of live interviews and discussions has been initiated, “The Love in Deep Adaptation – Forming Community”, interviewing Balazs Stumpf-Biro and Krisztina Csapo, co-admins of Deep Adaptation Hungary – Készülj & Alkalmazkodj, one of the founding and fastest growing groups of the Deep Adaptation Groups Network. For those who missed the event, the recording is now available.
Kimberley Hare was also interviewed along with some of the members of HEART (Hertfordshire Enabling and Adapting for Resilience Together) community group in the UK, who are helping to co-create a network of local people engaged in adaptation work. One of their central aims is to support people to look our interconnected predicaments in the eye, from a place of resilience, wellbeing, courage, and creativity. They have been working with local authorities and offer regular free workshops and in-person retreats (“The Edge”). The recording of the interview is available online and the group also have their own YouTube channel.
Online Open Space Event – Thriving Crews
At the start of April, two 4-hour sessions were hosted with the invitation for members to explore their ideas and passions with others with a view to forming ‘crews’ committed to working together for the next six months. These new crews will be supported in developing their themes through collaboration and co-working by experienced DAF volunteers. This initiative is intended to build skills in partnering, as well as providing a mechanism for members to pursue their own aspirations in relation to Deep Adaptation with others who share their interests.
Core Team vacancy
We have a vacancy within the Core Team for a fundraising coordinator. If interested, please apply and contact Kat Soares with any questions or for additional information. This is an incredibly important position and the Core Team looks forward to hearing from everyone who is motivated and suitably skilled.
Cat Jenkins
DAF Communications Coordinator
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