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Paper short abstract

Climate adaptation falls short due to outdated assumptions and entrenched habits that no longer fit a changed risk landscape. We propose unlearning—the intentional discarding of obsolete ideas, epistemologies, practices—as a critical but overlooked mechanism for equitable transformation.

Paper long abstract

Climate adaptation has yielded mixed results: billion-dollar disasters continue to mount, vulnerability remains entrenched, and piecemeal solutions risk maladaptation. This paper argues that unlearning—the intentional process of discarding misaligned knowledge, entrenched routines, and inherited worldviews—is a critical yet overlooked mechanism for transformative climate adaptation. While adaptation centres learning, innovation, and adaptive capacity, these additive approaches are constrained by what organizations and societies refuse to relinquish. Drawing on interdisciplinary work in organizational theory, psychology, cognitive science, and education, we conceptualize unlearning as a subtractive, retrospective, and discontinuous process that enables a break from maladaptive trajectories.

We propose a four-pillar analytical framework—Reconsidering, Discarding, Realignment, and Merging—to illuminate the diverse ways unlearning operates across epistemic, normative, technical, and integrative dimensions of adaptation. This framework is situated along a Continuum of Change that distinguishes between incremental versus disruptive shifts, and cognitive-philosophical versus technical-operational transformations. Through case vignettes—from wildfire management informed by Indigenous fire knowledge to post-Katrina risk governance reforms and the Netherlands’ Room for the River program—we demonstrate how unlearning has the potential to drive systemic change in practice.

We argue that identifying, enabling, and institutionalizing unlearning is essential for climate governance, especially amid nonstationarity, compounding risks, and escalating inequality. The paper outlines methodological pathways for empirically studying unlearning in adaptation settings and offers practical tools such as sunset provisions, unlearning audits, and deliberative challenge processes. By foregrounding unlearning as a deliberate step—not a by-product—we show how climate governance can move beyond incremental adjustments toward equitable, resilient, and transformative futures.