3.1.2.1 Governance goals

Based on the significant risks posed by Earth system tipping processes – major self-sustaining reorganisations of natural systems with potentially significant, negative consequences for human wellbeing – there is a strong argument for prevention as the primary objective of governance in this domain. Climate tipping points present a variety of risks, but for many people, communities, ecosystems and even entire countries, they present an existential threat. Importantly, due to their specific causal dynamics (self-amplifying feedback mechanisms), the vast majority of tipping processes cannot be halted once they have started; after passing a critical threshold, systemic reorganisation is inevitable and often irreversible on human timescales.

That means that short-term decisions, actions and inaction (i.e., over the next 5-20 years) can have extremely long-term consequences and ripple effects over millennia. The here and now is causally connected to the deep future. Policymakers have to consider their responsibility for future impacts that only they are able to prevent.

While a focus on prevention is essential while it is still possible, governance actors have to consider additional objectives, especially the anticipation of adverse impacts of tipping processes. Some Earth system tipping processes, including the disintegration of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets (see Chapter 1.2.2), might no longer be preventable, and some tipping points might be passed despite collective prevention efforts, making early impact governance imperative. Actors will need to balance their efforts between these multiple governance domains and objectives, and they will have to adjust their priorities to changes in the state of tipping processes over time – e.g. prioritising impact governance once scientific evidence for the transgression has become sufficient. 

Figure 3.1.2 depicts how different governance objectives and corresponding activities would be distributed across the timespan of a tipping process. For this purpose, we outline three phases of a tipping process: pre-tipping, reorganisation after the transgression of the tipping point and stabilisation in the new system state. Based on current evidence and understanding, all ESTPs are in the pre-tipping phase. Given the existence of multiple potential ESTPs, future tipping-point governance would likely be in different phases regarding different tipping systems at any point in time. For example, there might be ongoing prevention efforts regarding the Amazon rainforest dieback (pre-tipping) while efforts regarding warm-water coral reefs might be focusing on impact governance (reorganisation).

Addressing the expected impacts of ESTPs is strongly linked to the existing governance frameworks for climate change adaptation, vulnerability, resilience-building, and loss and damage. In light of tipping points, the goals, approaches and institutional frameworks in this domain will require adjustments and rethinking. Some tipping processes can unfold over decades, centuries and millennia, presenting decision makers and affected communities with the prospect of continuous change over long time periods until the tipping system in question reaches a new stable state (i.e., the loss of stable climatic conditions for decades/foreseeable future). The type and scale of their impacts will change over the entire period of the state shift. What’s more, tipping processes display changing time-related characteristics while they unfold (e.g. increasing rates of change in certain time periods). Impact governance, especially adaptation planning, needs to take these characteristics into account.

Further, tipping processes in major Earth systems imply that the current, familiar state of these systems will be irrecoverably lost (e.g. coral reef state vs. algae-dominated state), and not merely temporarily altered with the option to re-establish current conditions. Affected communities will experience this disappearance of current Earth system characteristics as losses – the removal of the climatic foundations of current social structures. These losses of current economic, social and cultural conditions can occur on relatively short time horizons after the transgression of tipping points. Therefore, loss and damage institutions will have increased importance in the governance of ESTPs. At the same time, tipping point impacts could undermine institutional governance capacities, either directly or via political disruption or conflict (Howard and Livermore, 2019; Laybourn, Evans, and Dyke, 2023).

In some cases, tipping processes could challenge or render meaningless current governance logics and approaches due to their unexpected impacts. For example, the potential slowing or shutting down of convection in the North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre (see1.4.2.1) could lead to regional cooling in Northern Europe and along the North American East coast, as opposed to currently expected warming trends in these regions. Existing adaptation plans will have to take these insights into account and be prepared for the fundamental changes in logics and approaches that might be needed.

Importantly, the set of ESTPs that have been identified to date are highly diverse in terms of the affected systems, the timing and length of the tipping process, and the kinds of interacting impacts they will have on societies and ecosystems. The design of risk assessments, prevention approaches, adaptation strategies, and loss and damage institutions will have to be specific for and targeted to each affected region and climate tipping point. At the same time, impact governance needs to consider potential interactions between multiple tipping dynamics (see Chapter 1.5) and their impacts (double or multiple exposure).

Prevention efforts serve as important ‘brakes’ on the drivers of climate change and tipping points; impact management is necessary to the extent prevention might be ineffective or fail. A more holistic – and systemic – approach to the governance of ESTPs would seek levers that could simultaneously reduce pressures on tipping systems and contribute to resilience to impacts. Scholarship on transformation and climate justice points out that ingrained societal, economic and geo-political structures drive resource extractivism as well as inequality and vulnerability (Gupta et al., 2023; Whyte, 2020; Ghosh, 2021). Transformations towards sustainable and just societies (Patterson et al., 2017; O’Brien, 2018; Bennett et al., 2019; Scoones et al., 2020) would simultaneously reduce emissions, foster social-ecological resilience, increase justice and equality, and create the conditions of trust (between individuals, communities, countries and generations) that are needed for the effective, cooperative governance of ESTPs (see also Section 4). For example, increasing access to renewable energy in communities without electricity could increase adaptive capacity, reduce vulnerability and contribute to mitigation at the same time. Depending on the way new energy infrastructure is developed and ownership rights are designed, these changes could also increase justice and social cohesion.