Operationalising positive tipping points towards global sustainability

Timothy M Lenton,Scarlett Benson,Theodora Ewer,Fenna Blomsma,Thomas W R Powell,Simon Sharpe,Elizabeth Petykowski,Victor Lanel,Talia Smith,Jesse F Abrams

doi:10.1017/sus.2021.30

Timothy M Lenton, Scarlett Benson + Show 8 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2021.30

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Abstract

Non-technical summaryTransforming towards global sustainability requires a dramatic acceleration of social change. Hence, there is growing interest in finding ‘positive tipping points’ at which small interventions can trigger self-reinforcing feedbacks that accelerate systemic change. Examples have recently been seen in power generation and personal transport, but how can we identify positive tipping points that have yet to occur? We synthesise theory and examples to provide initial guidelines for creating enabling conditions, sensing when a system can be positively tipped, who can trigger it, and how they can trigger it. All of us can play a part in triggering positive tipping points.Technical summaryRecent work on positive tipping points towards sustainability has focused on social-technological systems and the agency of policymakers to tip change, whilst earlier work identified social-ecological positive feedbacks triggered by diverse actors. We bring these together to consider positive tipping points across social-technological-ecological systems and the potential for multiple actors and interventions to trigger them. Established theory and examples provide several generic mechanisms for triggering tipping points. From these we identify specific enabling conditions, reinforcing feedbacks, actors and interventions that can contribute to triggering positive tipping points in the adoption of sustainable behaviours and technologies. Actions that can create enabling conditions for positive tipping include targeting smaller populations, altering social network structure, providing relevant information, reducing price, improving performance, desirability and accessibility, and coordinating complementary technologies. Actions that can trigger positive tipping include social, technological and ecological innovations, policy interventions, public investment, private investment, broadcasting public information, and behavioural nudges. Positive tipping points can help counter widespread feelings of disempowerment in the face of global challenges and help unlock ‘paralysis by complexity’. A key research agenda is to consider how different agents and interventions can most effectively work together to create system-wide positive tipping points whilst ensuring a just transformation.Social media summaryWe identify key actors and actions that can enable and trigger positive tipping points towards global sustainability.

Highlights

A tipping point is where a small intervention leads to large and long-term consequences for the evolution of a complex system, profoundly altering its mode of operation (Gladwell, 2000; Lenton et al, 2008)
We focus on strengthening reinforcing positive feedbacks as a key leverage point, but recognise that weakening negative feedbacks exerts comparable leverage, and the most powerful leverage points are those that change the intent of a system (Meadows, 1999, 2008)
The coupled dynamics of social-technological-ecological systems including their potential positive tipping points is a key target for research

Summary

Introduction

A tipping point is where a small intervention leads to large and long-term consequences for the evolution of a complex system, profoundly altering its mode of operation (Gladwell, 2000; Lenton et al, 2008). Such highly non-linear response is usually self-propelling and hard to reverse. Evidence that such tipping points may be approaching has underpinned declarations of a climate and ecological emergency (Lenton et al, 2019) This in turn has led to increasingly ambitious targets to tackle climate change and reverse biodiversity decline – notably the target of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C. There is a growing consensus that some social actors need to identify and trigger ‘positive tipping points’ (or ‘sensitive intervention points’) to accelerate progress to achieve the required, transformative rates of change for everyone

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