[2] In 2019 he founded the Deep Adaptation Forum to support peer-to-peer communications in developing positive responses at the individual and community levels to societal disruptions induced by climate change.

[3] Bendell graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1995 with a degree in Geography,[4] beginning his career at the World Wide Fund for Nature UK.

[4] In 2006, Bendell worked with the World Wide Fund for Nature UK, analysing and ranking the social and environmental performance of luxury brands.

[7] After his time consulting for the United Nations, in 2012 Bendell joined Cumbria University and founded the Institute for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS).

On account of this work, the World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader,[5][10] a network he has subsequently criticized as elitist and neoliberal.

[17][18] Jem Bendell's career took a turn in 2018, following his publication of an essay in July 2018 titled, "Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy.

Controversy diminished somewhat when Bendell published a revised version of the paper in 2020[21] in which the first sentence of his abstract clarified that the inevitability of societal collapse was his personal conclusion, not an established scientific fact:[20] "The purpose of this conceptual paper is to provide readers with an opportunity to reassess their work and life in the face of what I believe to be an inevitable near-term societal collapse due to climate change.

[22] In a 2020 interview reported in The New York Times,[20] Bendell clarified that his sense of societal collapse as an inevitability came not only from his sabbatical study of academic papers published on the science of climate change.

[23][24][2] Others contended that Bendell's advocacy for actions favoring "resilience, relinquishment, restoration, and reconciliation" (the "4 Rs") provides a useful framework for individual and community approaches aimed at adapting to the impacts of climate change already underway and likely to continue.

[30] The Deep Adaptation Forum was launched in 2019, "to connect and support people who, in the face of 'inevitable' societal collapse, want to explore how they can 'reduce suffering, while saving more of society and the natural world'.

[30][31][27][32][33] It carries forward and elaborates his personal vision of deep adaptation, utilizing new and traditional scholarship in the field of collapsology, as distinguished from the prevailing worldview of progressivism.