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3.1 Introduction

Manjana Milkoreit, Sara M. Constantino, Duncan McLaren, Yulia Yamineva

Key Messages

Governance of ESTPs is lacking. Existing governance institutions, e.g. for climate change, do not address the specific risks posed by ESTPs.
Unavoidable tensions between the governance needs for ESTPs and other objectives – especially social and economic development and justice – need careful consideration. However, failing to prevent ESTPs would undermine and likely impede the achievement of the SDGs.
Governance of ESTPs should be polycentric, distributing responsibility and authority across multiple scales and institutions. This includes the regional scale of specific tipping systems, where existing institutions are weakest or lacking.
The diversity of Earth system tipping processes, e.g. in terms of their geography, timing and impacts, demands governance approaches that are to some extent tailored to a specific tipping point or class of tipping points.
Tipping dynamics imply that short-term decisions (years) have consequences on short and very long time horizons (years to millennia). Once tipping points are transgressed, the unfolding of change processes can become unstoppable. These connections between the short and long-term dramatically elevate the imperative of near-term preventive action, requiring anticipatory governance and new risk-governance approaches.
Public understanding of tipping processes is likely limited and hard to change with common forms of science communication. Public risk perceptions are unlikely to generate public pressure for climate action in the short term.

Recommendations

Now is the time for governance actors, including UN bodies, international organisations, national governments and non-state actors, to engage in the process of learning, interest formation/positioning, coalition building and agenda setting for the governance of ESTPs.
Existing sustainability governance institutions across multiple scales, especially those related to the international climate change regime complex, should consider including ESTPs in their mandates and action agendas. At the same time, coordination, transparency, and network development efforts between various governance sites need to ensure an effective division of labour, alignment and synergies between initiatives.
Parties to the Paris Agreement should include a discussion of climate tipping points in future Global Stocktake processes, assessing collective progress towards their prevention and impact governance.
Countries within the geographic scope of a specific tipping system (e.g. all countries with tropical coral reefs) should consider the need for launching new initiatives with the specific mandate to address this tipping process (prevention, impact governance, knowledge development).
Governance actors and institutions in the public, private and civil society domains should strengthen their capacities for anticipatory governance and systemic risk governance, expanding and adjusting existing approaches to decision making with novel methods.

Summary

Existing institutions of global sustainability governance do not address the specific risks and challenges posed by Earth system tipping points (ESTPs). State and non-state actors need to engage in agenda-setting for the development of a governance framework that can close this gap. This chapter seeks to inform emerging discussions, decisions and actions as tipping points move onto global and national policy agendas.

This chapter explores possible goals for the governance of ESTPs and relevant governance principles, actors and institutions, sites, and scales. Future governance efforts will have to simultaneously pursue and balance multiple objectives, prioritising the prevention of ESTPs. Several principles of international law and global environmental governance apply to this domain, including justice, precaution and adaptability. Focusing on the time-specific features of tipping processes and their implications for governance, we heavily emphasise the need for anticipatory governance with multiple time horizons, including some that exceed the scope and capacities of current global governance approaches.

A ‘polycentric’ governance approach is best suited for Earth system tipping processes, which play out at multiple scales. Principles for sharing responsibility, devising efficient information flows and learning at and across scales will be vitally important tasks for effective governance. Many existing institutions can adopt responsibilities related to tipping-point governance. At the global scale, the UNFCCC is key among these. A number of features of the Paris Agreement would need to be adjusted and revised to account for the specific challenges presented by ESTPs. Strong institutions at the regional (multilateral) scale of Earth system tipping elements are often missing, inviting consideration as to whether new initiatives are needed, for example, with a specific governance mandate for the tropical coral reefs or Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).

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3.1 Introduction

Key Messages

Recommendations

Summary

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