Development Education in the Age of COVID-19 and Climate Change: How Can the Sector Contribute to a Sustainable Future?

Introduction

Development education (DE) is rooted in Paulo Freire’s seminal text, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1996), which was published over fifty years ago but remains as vital as ever as a handbook for social and economic transformation. Freire’s pedagogy elevated education beyond the classroom to analyse the underlying causes of poverty and injustice, locally and internationally. This chapter discusses the importance and continued relevance of development education, which is premised on Freire’s theory and practice, to the question of sustainability and climate change. It argues that Freire’s ground-breaking methodology is essential to the sustainable engagement of learners in action to mitigate the causes and effects of climate change. It suggests that the neoliberal model of economic ‘development’ that has been dominant across the world since the 1970s has resulted in grotesque levels of inequality and a more precarious existence for the millions of people on low incomes, working in the informal labour market and lacking job security (Oxfam, 2020).

The chapter argues that the twin global crises of COVID-19 and the climate emergency have similar origins which have exacerbated global poverty and increased the vulnerability of the poor to hunger, disease and displacement (Kolinjivadi, 2020). The World Health Organisation has described the climate emergency as the ‘greatest threat to global health in the 21st century’ arguing that climate change causes infectious diseases and malnutrition, endangering human health and causing cancer, respiratory and cardiovascular diseases from air pollution (WHO, 2015). At the time of writing (30 June 2020), the COVID-19 pandemic, first reported in Wuhan, China on 31 December 2019, has caused more than 10 million infections globally and claimed over 500,000 lives (John Hopkins University, 2020). Kolinjivadi argues that:

Underpinning both crises is neoliberalism and the mass production of commodities which is placing an unsustainable strain on the natural resources of the environment (Ibid). The Swedish climate activist, Greta Thunberg, has argued that ‘We need to tackle two crises at once’ suggesting that ‘we need a new way forward’ (O’Sullivan, 2020).

This chapter will outline the key aspects of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which underpin development education practice and have a continued relevance in today’s era of neoliberalism. It will argue that the twin crises of climate change and COVID-19 require us to reconceptualise what we mean by ‘development’ to encompass a de-growth model if we are to avoid future pandemics and limit global warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels as recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2018). It suggests that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in which DE is heavily invested, don’t offer the critical methodology and capacity necessary to address these twin crises and questions a DE programme premised on the Goals. It proposes instead that the sector learn lessons from the effective communications and mass mobilisations of the climate strike movement.

Before launching into an analysis of development education, a note about terminology. Several terms are used to describe this area of work and they include; global citizenship education, global learning, global education, development studies, development awareness, education for sustainable development, and education for sustainability. These terms are often used interchangeably and associated with specific sectors of education. This can undoubtedly cause confusion for learners in getting to grips with education about global issues. The position taken by the author is that all of these terms are equally valid and for the sake of clarity and consistency the concept of development education is used throughout.