The politics of enabling tipping points for sustainable development

Abstract

Achieving most sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the Paris climate targets depends on the fast transformation of complex socio-technical systems. Recent research has highlighted the importance of crossing positive tipping points to accelerate the transformation of complex energy, food, and transport systems. Yet, there is a lack of research on the politics of enabling such tipping points. Here, we argue that policy strategies enabling the creation and crossing of such points are needed. Such strategies should harness political feedbacks from both technological and behavioral changes over time. To inform such strategies, we need a better empirical understanding of how these feedbacks unfold, eventually resulting in tipping points. We propose a novel framework to structure such feedback research by linking it to three core sustainability principles, namely efficiency, sufficiency, and substitution. Our framework advances ongoing debates about the politics of enabling tipping points for sustainable development. Achieving most sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the Paris climate targets depends on the fast transformation of complex socio-technical systems. Recent research has highlighted the importance of crossing positive tipping points to accelerate the transformation of complex energy, food, and transport systems. Yet, there is a lack of research on the politics of enabling such tipping points. Here, we argue that policy strategies enabling the creation and crossing of such points are needed. Such strategies should harness political feedbacks from both technological and behavioral changes over time. To inform such strategies, we need a better empirical understanding of how these feedbacks unfold, eventually resulting in tipping points. We propose a novel framework to structure such feedback research by linking it to three core sustainability principles, namely efficiency, sufficiency, and substitution. Our framework advances ongoing debates about the politics of enabling tipping points for sustainable development. IntroductionThe achievement of most sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the Paris climate targets depends on the fast transformation of complex socio-technical systems. To address the urgency of the manifold sustainability crises, recent research has highlighted the importance of enabling positive tipping points.1Otto I.M. Donges J.F. Cremades R. Bhowmik A. Hewitt R.J. Lucht W. Rockström J. Allerberger F. McCaffrey M. Doe S.S.P. et al.Social tipping dynamics for stabilizing Earth’s climate by 2050.Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 2020; 117: 2354-2365Crossref PubMed Scopus (195) Google Scholar,2Smith S.R. Christie I. Willis R. Social tipping intervention strategies for rapid decarbonization need to consider how change happens.Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 2020; 117: 10629-10630Crossref PubMed Google Scholar,3Sharpe S. Lenton T.M. Upward-scaling tipping cascades to meet climate goals: plausible grounds for hope.Clim. Policy. 2021; 21: 421-433Crossref Scopus (23) Google Scholar,4Farmer J.D. Hepburn C. Ives M.C. Hale T. Wetzer T. Mealy P. Rafaty R. Srivastav S. Way R. Sensitive intervention points in the post-carbon transition.Science. 2019; 364: 132-134Crossref PubMed Scopus (69) Google Scholar,5David Tàbara J. Frantzeskaki N. Hölscher K. Pedde S. Kok K. Lamperti F. Christensen J.H. Jäger J. Berry P. Positive tipping points in a rapidly warming world.Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustain. 2018; 31: 120-129Crossref Scopus (56) Google Scholar,6Tàbara J.D. Mangalagiu D. Frantal B. Mey F. Maier F. Lilliestam J. Sarrica M. Mandel A. Lieu J. Cottone P. et al.Towards Transformative Emergence. 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[…] At a tipping point, reinforcing (positive) feedbacks dominate the dynamics, propelling change” (p. 1).3 Socio-technical systems are nested and interlinked, and changes in one system (e.g., the rise of renewable energies in the energy system), can increase the probability of change in other systems (e.g., the rise of electric cars or agro-photovoltaics in the transport and food system).18Lenton T. Benson S. Smith T. Ewer T. Lanel V. Petykowski E. Powell T.W.R. Abrams J.F. Blomsma F. Sharpe S. Operationalising positive tipping points towards global sustainability.Global Sustain. 2021; 5Google Scholar Accordingly, Sharpe and Lenton highlight that, in interconnected complex systems, crossing a tipping point in one (sub-) system could trigger a tipping point in a related system and thus lead to so-called tipping cascades and large-scale socio-technical transformation.3Sharpe S. Lenton T.M. Upward-scaling tipping cascades to meet climate goals: plausible grounds for hope.Clim. 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Winning coalitions for climate policy.Science. 2015; 349: 1170-1171Crossref PubMed Scopus (151) Google Scholar and the emerging literature on socio-technical tipping1Otto I.M. Donges J.F. Cremades R. Bhowmik A. Hewitt R.J. Lucht W. Rockström J. Allerberger F. McCaffrey M. Doe S.S.P. et al.Social tipping dynamics for stabilizing Earth’s climate by 2050.Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 2020; 117: 2354-2365Crossref PubMed Scopus (195) Google Scholar,2Smith S.R. Christie I. Willis R. Social tipping intervention strategies for rapid decarbonization need to consider how change happens.Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 2020; 117: 10629-10630Crossref PubMed Google Scholar,3Sharpe S. Lenton T.M. Upward-scaling tipping cascades to meet climate goals: plausible grounds for hope.Clim. Policy. 2021; 21: 421-433Crossref Scopus (23) Google Scholar,4Farmer J.D. Hepburn C. Ives M.C. Hale T. Wetzer T. Mealy P. Rafaty R. Srivastav S. Way R. Sensitive intervention points in the post-carbon transition.Science. 2019; 364: 132-134Crossref PubMed Scopus (69) Google Scholar,12Stadelmann-Steffen I. Eder C. Harring N. Spilker G. Katsanidou A. A framework for social tipping in climate change mitigation: what we can learn from the chlorofluorocarbons phase-out.Energy Res. Soc. Sci. Soc. Sci. 2021; 82102307Google Scholar,15Andreoni J. Nikiforakis N. Siegenthaler S. Predicting social tipping and norm change in controlled experiments.Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 2021; 118e2014893118Crossref PubMed Scopus (19) Google Scholar,16Nyborg K. Anderies J.M. Dannenberg A. Lindahl T. Schill C. Schlüter M. Adger W.N. Arrow K.J. Barrett S. Carpenter S. et al.Social norms as solutions.Science. 2016; 354: 42-43Crossref PubMed Scopus (325) Google Scholar,17Fesenfeld L. The Political Feasibility of Transformative Climate Policy–Public Opinion about Transforming Food and Transport Systems. 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Newig J. Schomerus T. Vilsmaier U. Von Wehrden H. Abernethy P. Ives C.D. Jager N.W. Lang D.J. Leverage points for sustainability transformation.Ambio. 2017; 46: 30-39Crossref PubMed Scopus (520) Google Scholar,25Meadows D.H. Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System. Academy for Systems Change, 1999Google Scholar,26Meadows D.H. Thinking in Systems: A Primer. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008Google Scholar argue that systems are rarely close to tipping points but require intentional forcing. In this sense, Lenton et al.18Lenton T. Benson S. Smith T. Ewer T. Lanel V. Petykowski E. Powell T.W.R. Abrams J.F. Blomsma F. Sharpe S. Operationalising positive tipping points towards global sustainability.Global Sustain. 2021; 5Google Scholar,30Food and Land Use CoalitionAccelerating the 10 Critical Transitions: Positive Tipping Points for Food and Land Use Systems Transformation. Food and Land Use Coalition, 2021Google Scholar highlight the importance of studying the enabling conditions (e.g., price reductions in clean technologies, shifts in social norms) for triggering socio-technical tipping points through rather small perturbations. For instance, Sharpe and Lenton3Sharpe S. Lenton T.M. Upward-scaling tipping cascades to meet climate goals: plausible grounds for hope.Clim. Policy. 2021; 21: 421-433Crossref Scopus (23) Google Scholar show that a small increase in the UK carbon price between late 2015 and 2018 led the carbon price to exceed the coal-to-gas switching price and made gas relatively cheaper than coal. This price change reversed the merit order by which different technologies contribute to electricity production and exponentially decreased coal-generated electricity in the United Kingdom.3Sharpe S. Lenton T.M. Upward-scaling tipping cascades to meet climate goals: plausible grounds for hope.Clim. Policy. 2021; 21: 421-433Crossref Scopus (23) Google Scholar Furthermore, several scholars18Lenton T. Benson S. Smith T. Ewer T. Lanel V. Petykowski E. Powell T.W.R. Abrams J.F. Blomsma F. Sharpe S. Operationalising positive tipping points towards global sustainability.Global Sustain. 2021; 5Google Scholar,29Winkelmann R. Donges J.F. Smith E.K. Milkoreit M. Heitzig J. Katsanidou A. Wiedermann M. Wunderling N. Timothy M. Social tipping processes towards climate action: a conceptual framework.Ecol. Econ. 2021; 192107242Google Scholar,31Ingold K. Christopoulos D. Fischer M. Resilience and social tipping points: stability and change in political networks.in: ECPR conference. 2021Google Scholar highlight the importance of social contagion and social-institutional network structures for empirically understanding the acceleration and diffusion of changes in socio-technical systems. As part of the EU Tipping + project, Mey and Lilliestam14Mey F. Lilliestam J. Report with Literature Review Advancing the State of the Art on Tipping Points in Public Policy and Governance Research. Tipping+, 2020Google Scholar reviewed the literature on tipping points in governance and public policy research and highlight its conceptual roots in social science work on, e.g., critical junctures, path dependencies, punctuated equilibria, and external shocks. The review by Mey and Lilliestam14Mey F. Lilliestam J. Report with Literature Review Advancing the State of the Art on Tipping Points in Public Policy and Governance Research. Tipping+, 2020Google Scholar and Tàbara et al.13Tàbara J.D. Lieu J. Zaman R. Ismail C. Takama T. On the discovery and enactment of positive socio-ecological tipping points: insights from energy systems interventions in Bangladesh and Indonesia.Sustain. Sci. 2022; 17: 565-571Crossref Scopus (7) Google Scholar mention the important role of timing and specific sequence of events and the strategic interventions of agents across different political, social, and economic contexts for enabling tipping points.14Mey F. Lilliestam J. Report with Literature Review Advancing the State of the Art on Tipping Points in Public Policy and Governance Research. Tipping+, 2020Google Scholar For example, effective climate change mitigation has been shown to be more strongly actor-driven than previous approaches have suggested.2Smith S.R. Christie I. Willis R. Social tipping intervention strategies for rapid decarbonization need to consider how change happens.Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 2020; 117: 10629-10630Crossref PubMed Google Scholar,3Sharpe S. Lenton T.M. Upward-scaling tipping cascades to meet climate goals: plausible grounds for hope.Clim. Policy. 2021; 21: 421-433Crossref Scopus (23) Google Scholar,12Stadelmann-Steffen I. Eder C. Harring N. 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On the discovery and enactment of positive socio-ecological tipping points: insights from energy systems interventions in Bangladesh and Indonesia.Sustain. Sci. 2022; 17: 565-571Crossref Scopus (7) Google Scholar stress the importance of strategically building agents’ capacities “to implement pathways of solutions to achieve a transformative vision of the world.” Existing research also puts forward that it is necessary to consider synergies and learning feedbacks across systems5David Tàbara J. Frantzeskaki N. Hölscher K. Pedde S. Kok K. Lamperti F. Christensen J.H. Jäger J. Berry P. Positive tipping points in a rapidly warming world.Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustain. 2018; 31: 120-129Crossref Scopus (56) Google Scholar that might lead to interrelated tipping dynamics in the political, behavioral, and technological spheres.12Stadelmann-Steffen I. Eder C. Harring N. Spilker G. Katsanidou A. A framework for social tipping in climate change mitigation: what we can learn from the chlorofluorocarbons phase-out.Energy Res. Soc. Sci. Soc. Sci. 2021; 82102307Google ScholarBuilding on this recent work, we argue that the emerging interdisciplinary tipping literature should consider more explicitly the politics of enabling positive tipping for sustainable development. We define politics as the interaction of elite and mass politics associated with the governance and design of public policies, which distribute material and immaterial resources, and thus also transformative capacities, across actors and time32Schmid N. Beaton C. Kern F. Mcculloch N. Sugathan A. Urpelainen J. Elite vs . mass politics of sustainability transitions.Environ. Innov. Soc. Transit. 2021; 41: 67-70Crossref Scopus (3) Google Scholar,33Jacobs A.M. Policy making for the long term in advanced democracies.Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 2016; 19: 433-454Crossref Scopus (53) Google Scholar,34Jacobs A.M. 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Sci. 2019; 50: 168-178Crossref Scopus (55) Google Scholar to address this research gap.Figure 2Harnessing the political feedbacks from policy-induced technological and behavioral changes to enable tipping pointsShow full captionTo reduce existing political barriers for system transformation and thus enable positive tipping points, in the blue-shaded area we propose that policymakers should develop policy strategies that build transformative capacities and harness the political feedbacks from policy-induced synergies between technological and behavioral changes. Definitions: We define politics as the interaction of elite and mass politics associated with the governance and process of making public policies.32Schmid N. Beaton C. Kern F. Mcculloch N. Sugathan A. Urpelainen J. Elite vs . mass politics of sustainability transitions.Environ. Innov. Soc. Transit. 2021; 41: 67-70Crossref Scopus (3) Google Scholar We conceptualize elite politics as the power relations in the policymaking process of a small set of organized interest groups and influential individuals. Mass politics unfolds through participation of citizens in the policymaking process, e.g., through social movements and changes in public opinion, voting behavior, and social norms. Elite and mass politics frequently interact with each other and political parties often channel such interactions into the policymaking process. Technological and behavioral change (i.e., policy outcomes relevant for the achievement of SDGs) often results from policy change (i.e., policy output). While we understand technologies as the manufacturing processes and their products along supply chains (e.g., in the energy sector the assembly lines of solar photovoltaic cells), behavior includes the actions by users of these products at various points in the supply chain (e.g., in the food sector from farmers to end-consumers).View Large Image Figure ViewerDownload Hi-res image Download (PPT)Policymakers can use interventions (e.g., the removal of fossil-fuel subsidies2Smith S.R. Christie I. Willis R. Social tipping intervention strategies for rapid decarbonization need to consider how change happens.Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 2020; 117: 10629-10630Crossref PubMed Google Scholar) to trigger positive tipping points and thus accelerate a self-reinforcing change of socio-technical systems to a qualitatively new state.1Otto I.M. Donges J.F. Cremades R. Bhowmik A. Hewitt R.J. Lucht W. Rockström J. Allerberger F. McCaffrey M. Doe S.S.P. et al.Social tipping dynamics for stabilizing Earth’s climate by 2050.Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 2020; 117: 2354-2365Crossref PubMed Scopus (195) Google Scholar,2Smith S.R. Christie I. Willis R. Social tipping intervention strategies for rapid decarbonization need to consider how change happens.Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 2020; 117: 10629-10630Crossref PubMed Google Scholar,3Sharpe S. Lenton T.M. Upward-scaling tipping cascades to meet climate goals: plausible grounds for hope.Clim. Policy. 2021; 21: 421-433Crossref Scopus (23) Google Scholar,4Farmer J.D. Hepburn C. Ives M.C. Hale T. Wetzer T. Mealy P. Rafaty R. Srivastav S. Way R. Sensitive intervention points in the post-carbon transition.Science. 2019; 364: 132-134Crossref PubMed Scopus (69) Google Scholar,15Andreoni J. Nikiforakis N. Siegenthaler S. Predicting social tipping and norm change in controlled experiments.Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 2021; 118e2014893118Crossref PubMed Scopus (19) Google Scholar,16Nyborg K. Anderies J.M. Dannenberg A. Lindahl T. Schill C. Schlüter M. Adger W.N. Arrow K.J. Barrett S. Carpenter S. et al.Social norms as solutions.Science. 2016; 354: 42-43Crossref PubMed Scopus (325) Google Scholar,17Fesenfeld L. The Political Feasibility of Transformative Climate Policy–Public Opinion about Transforming Food and Transport Systems. ETH, 2020https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000425564Crossref Google Scholar Yet, current policies are often not comprehensive and strategic enough. Many existing policies primarily focus on exploiting marginal efficiency and innovation gains, rather than co-creating a vision and strategic policy pathway for transforming socio-technical systems.1Otto I.M. Donges J.F. Cremades R. Bhowmik A. Hewitt R.J. Lucht W. Rockström J. Allerberger F. McCaffrey M. Doe S.S.P. et al.Social tipping dynamics for stabilizing Earth’s climate by 2050.Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 2020; 117: 2354-2365Crossref PubMed Scopus (195) Google Scholar,4Farmer J.D. Hepburn C. Ives M.C. Hale T. Wetzer T. Mealy P. Rafaty R. Srivastav S. Way R. Sensitive intervention points in the post-carbon transition.Science. 2019; 364: 132-134Crossref PubMed Scopus (69) Google Scholar,17Fesenfeld L. The Political Feasibility of Transformative Climate Policy–Public Opinion about Transforming Food and Transport Systems. ETH, 2020https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000425564Crossref Google Scholar,18Lenton T. Benson S. Smith T. Ewer T. Lanel V. Petykowski E. Powell T.W.R. Abrams J.F. Blomsma F. Sharpe S. Operationalising positive tipping points towards global sustainability.Global Sustain. 2021; 5Google Scholar,27Rosenbloom D. Markard J. Geels F.W. Fuenfschilling L. Why carbon pricing is not sufficient to mitigate climate change—and how “sustainability transition policy” can help.Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 2020; 117: 8664-8668Crossref PubMed Scopus (83) Google Scholar,44Creutzig F. Roy J. Lamb W.F. Azevedo I.M.L. Bruine de Bruin W. Dalkmann H. Edelenbosc