Section lead coordinating author: Manjana Milkoreit
Reviewers: Magnus Bengtsson, Victor Galaz, Rachel Kyte, Harro Van Asselt
Governance efforts to address the specific and severe threats of Earth system tipping points (ESTPs) are currently lacking and urgently needed. A future governance framework for ESTPs should prioritise efforts to prevent tipping events, while also minimising impact-related harms, fostering adaptation and resilience, and facilitating knowledge co-production. Failure to prevent tipping would likely impede the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These objectives can only be reached together, through systemic changes that address the root causes of Earth system change with transformations to sustainable and just societies.
In all domains of governance (prevention, impact governance, knowledge production), the diversity of tipping processes (their timing, drivers and impacts) need to be carefully considered and used to inform approaches tailored to distinct ESTPs.
Governance of Earth system tipping points should be based on existing principles of global governance and international law, such as precaution, equity and justice, as well as care for future generations. The nature of threats presented by tipping dynamics in the Earth system challenges the common reactive and linear logics of decision making in global governance. Short-term decisions can have severe, even catastrophic, consequences over extremely long time horizons, potentially affecting life on Earth for several millennia, and future generations’ chances for survival and wellbeing. These extremely high stakes place a major burden of responsibility on the present generations and – unlike other global challenges – dramatically elevate the logic of precaution. Scientific uncertainty (for example, about how close we might be to a tipping point) should be reason for action, not delay, with anticipatory approaches and systemic risk governance of particular importance in guiding decision making.
Effective prevention strategies need to address the multiple, interacting drivers of ESTPs, which often operate at different scales. We distinguish primary (often global-scale) and secondary (often regional-scale) drivers to aid decision makers in devising multi-scale approaches and selecting appropriate governance venues. The primary driver in many cases is global temperature change, which makes accelerated mitigation of greenhouse gases the most important and effective prevention strategy. Rapid, near-term mitigation efforts should be combined with enhanced management of short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) and scaling efforts for sustainable carbon dioxide removal (CDR) to minimise the rapidly increasing risk of transgressing ESTPs. Solar geo-engineering approaches remain speculative and subject to concerns over side-effects and governance. For the time being, they are not available to support prevention efforts, although additional research is merited. Overall, effective prevention strategies need to address all drivers of diverse tipping processes with coordinated cross-scale approaches.
Global institutions across multiple domains, including climate change, development and international migration, need to consider the implications of tipping processes for their effective operation, adjusting existing frameworks, approaches and practices for governing the impacts of global environmental change.
A ‘polycentric’ architecture that would distribute responsibilities for prevention and impact governance across multiple sites and scales of action, and attend to linkages, coordination and effective information flows between different actors and institutions, is the appropriate model for governance. Important decisions concern the differentiation between global-scale tasks, especially mitigation of GHG to limit global temperature increase, and those at regional and national scales, such as addressing secondary drivers of specific tipping systems (for example, deforestation for Amazon dieback). Regional and national institutions with a direct geographic relationship to a tipping system could also have responsibility for impact management, such as resilience building, adaptation or managed retreat.
There are well-developed global and national sustainability governance institutions that can and should adopt responsibilities for the governance of ESTPs. At the global scale, this includes the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Existing governance expertise across scales is strongest regarding mitigation, and weaker regarding impact management. Existing institutions and measures need significant adjustments and strengthening in light of ESTPs, and we illustrate this need for reform specifically for the Paris Agreement (e.g. NDCs and the Global Stocktake, loss and damage). But many other institutions will need to reassess their efforts with regard to the risks of ESTPs. Governance capacity at the scale of specific tipping systems is currently limited (as in the Arctic and Amazon) or lacking (as in the tropical coral reefs, major ocean currents and monsoons). This is where most innovation and work is needed, including the consideration of new institutions or initiatives.