Unlearning Development: Education in the Era of Planetary Emergency

Abstract

<p>Despite seven decades of international development, we are still not on track to end poverty, support well-being, and protect the environment. There has been no shortage of critical reflections on “lessons learned” from development efforts, yet these lessons have not produced any fundamental shifts in international development practice, logic, or predetermined trajectory. We propose to shift attention from the “lessons learned” to what should be <em>unlearned </em>from development practices. This entails fundamentally questioning the established assumptions underlying the development project: modern/colonial cartography, infinite growth, best practices, expertise, (neo)liberal individualism, human exceptionalism, and nonrelational “freedom.” In this context, unlearning opens the space for recognizing the limits of the status quo while exploring and articulating alternatives. Furthermore, it is a prerequisite to <em>re</em>learning—a process of thinking more broadly and radically about possible futures—while reconfiguring our ways of knowing and being on a finite planet.<br></p>