3.1.2.2 Governance Principles

Many existing principles of international law and global environmental governance – shared beliefs of a fundamental nature that guide collective decision making and behaviour – are relevant for the governance of ESTPs. Below, we briefly discuss some of the principles we consider most important in the specific context of rapid state shifts in large Earth system components, recognising that others also matter. For instance, accountability and transparency are general governance principles we do not discuss here, as is the no-harm principle. Further, recent debates in international environmental law address the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment and the legal rights of nature, which we only mention in passing. We also observe an emerging debate about shifts from international law and governance to Earth system law and governance (Patterson, 2018; Kotze and Rak, 2019; Kotze et al., 2022). 

More generally, the governance of complex and complex-adaptive systems like the climate, which are characterised by non-linear dynamics, threshold effects, cascades and limited predictability, demands an approach that is distinct from presently dominant patterns of governing that usually assume linearity and simple causality (Duit and Galaz, 2008). Core principles of complex systems governance include multi-scale and multi-network approaches attending to cross-scale interactions (Galaz et al., 2016), anticipatory governance addressing unusual temporalities (Muidermann et al., 2020; Boyd et al., 2015), diversity in response capacity (Galaz et al., 2016), and adaptive governance, i.e., the ability to adjust to the changing conditions of the system that is being governed (Duit and Galaz, 2008). The latter requires managing tensions between “the dual needs of institutional stability and change” (Duit and Galaz, 2008, p. 320) – i.e., the ability to work in stable patterns of cooperative rules and processes and the need to search for, explore, and experiment with novel patterns.

Across all principles, here we emphasise the need for a significantly strengthened anticipatory approach in the context of Earth system tipping. The potential for irreversible yet delayed harms calls for foresight and anticipatory actions despite incomplete knowledge. Delayed action can make managing tipping points in the future much more costly or even impossible due to their self-perpetuating and irreversible nature. At the same time, uncertainties, delayed impacts, distant planning horizons, and the more immediate demands of present challenges, undermine the motivation or perceived need to act now.

Anticipatory governance is a “flexible decision framework that uses a wide range of possible futures to prepare for change and to guide current decisions to ensure a range of future alternatives and to minimise future risks” (Quay, 2010). It differs from conventional policymaking and planning, which tends to rely on expert-driven forecasting and quantitative modelling. Anticipation often involves collaborative and participatory processes; systems for experimenting, exploring, or envisioning future scenarios qualitatively and identifying pathways of change; strategic investments that increase the resilience or robustness of a system; and the capacity to adapt quickly to changing and dynamic conditions. The incorporation of Earth systems tipping dynamics in simulations, scenario development and public communications may help make the impacts of these processes more tangible, and thus easier to respond to. It is important to note that anticipatory processes can open up but also close down possibilities for action, depending on their design (e.g. who participates). Avoiding the mere reproduction and reinforcement of existing and dominant paradigms requires designing processes that can expand possibility thinking (Muiderman et al., 2023) by carefully managing the role of power in anticipatory processes.

Governance actors, including international institutions, can increasingly rely on anticipatory processes and tools to develop shared understandings of possible futures and pathways towards them, including participatory scenario development and serious gaming (Flood et al., 2018; van Beek et al., 2022; Vervoort et al., 2022). Strengthening long-term governance capacities and deliberate approaches to dealing with uncertainty is time consuming, more resource intensive than conventional science-policy interactions, and requires openness to non-conventional ways of collective learning. 

Uncertainty and precaution: Like many other environmental issues, the governance of ESTPs relies on evolving scientific knowledge and must grapple with a range of uncertainties related to scientific evidence at a given point in time. Key uncertainties concern which Earth system elements exhibit tipping dynamics, the specific conditions and timing of the passing of tipping points, and the types, location and timing of various impacts of tipping processes on the natural world (e.g. changes in storm and precipitation patterns) and even more so societies (see Section 2). Given these uncertainties, the precautionary principle is relevant for the governance of ESTPs. It has been defined in different ways, including in the 1992 Rio Declaration (UNCED 1992): “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.” Yet, beyond this definition, the nature and contents of the precautionary principle has been debated (O’Riordan and Jordan, 1995; Stirling, 2007; Brunnée and Streck, 2013; Read and O’Riordan, 2017). Developing practical approaches to implementing the precautionary principle is a key part of the tipping point governance agenda.

Justice and equity: Justice and equity must be key considerations of environmental governance. The concept of environmental justice has national roots in US politics (Bullard, 2021), requiring the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people, regardless of their race, gender, colour, nationality, religion or other characteristics, in the development and implementation of public laws and policies. But the fundamental principles of distributional, recognitional and procedural justice also apply between countries in the international system (Vanderheiden, 2008; Bennett et al., 2019), especially in a North-South context (Najam, 2005). Recently, scholars have attempted to integrate concepts of justice with that of Earth system boundaries (Rockström et al., 2023) to propose Earth system justice as a guiding framework for global governance (Gupta et al., 2023). This framework emphasises just ends, ensuring that we remain within planetary boundaries, and just means, which calls for an equitable distribution of resources, responsibilities and harms, both within and across generations.

A specific expression of the principle of justice in international environmental law and governance is Common-but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC). This principle has been fundamental to the climate change regime. In a general sense, it concerns the fair distribution of a shared responsibility to act on climate change, including emission reductions and the provision of international assistance (e.g. in terms of finance, technology, capacity building), taking into account national circumstances and historical contributions to emissions. Significant differences exist in interpretation of the principle, reflecting deep, unresolved disputes in international climate politics. Given the central role of atmospheric warming as a driver of all Earth system tipping processes, a future discussion about the shared but differentiated responsibility for Earth system tipping will likely mirror existing debates between the Global North and South, more and less-developed nations, fossil fuel producers and consumers, and more and less-vulnerable nations. This will include questions of historical responsibility and corresponding expectations for the provision of financial support for climate action (Colenbrander et al., 2022). At the same time, new questions will arise about specific tipping systems – e.g. whether and to what extent individual governments, industries, companies or other actors have responsibility for so-called ‘co-drivers’ of tipping, such as deforestation in the world’s major forest biomes or ocean pollution near coral reefs.

Future care and intergenerational justice: While we may be nearing certain critical thresholds today and may experience the impacts of tipping points in the coming years and decades, many tipping processes and their largest impacts will unfold over hundreds and even thousands of years. This poses a long-term and intergenerational social dilemma, elevating the importance of intergenerational justice (Barry, 1997; Gardiner, 2011; Meyer, 2017) and long-term – i.e. future care. Intergenerational justice concerns the relationship between generations, more specifically the rights of future people and how they should be recognised and safeguarded in the present. A broader social-ecological perspective of long-term care for planet Earth must also consider ethical obligations towards future non-human life, which also depends on the decisions and actions of present generations. 

There are different perspectives on principles of future care, and to what extent it could and should shape decision-making processes. For example, in asserting the equal importance of inter- and intra-generational equity, the Earth system justice framework (Gupta et al., 2023) promotes equality and inclusion today to minimise harms from inherited inequality in the future. It also asserts the right of all future people to enjoy a standard of living comparable to the one of present generations and argues that current people bear responsibility for future harms and inequalities arising from our actions. This mirrors the Iroquois principle of thinking for the seventh generation, which entails both providing for the interests of descendants and making reparations for past harms inflicted by our ancestors.

Humans have the ability to plan for posterity and to take actions that will resonate hundreds of years into the future, yet this ability is not reflected in mainstream institutions, decision-making logics and governance approaches (Krznaric, 2020). Many of our existing institutions have short time horizons relative to the temporal scale of some of the Earth System tipping elements and do not value the interests of future generations. (Krznaric, 2020; Gardiner, 2006)

Recent efforts to better protect the interests of future generations include fostering representation of present-day children and youth in policymaking (e.g. lowering the voting age, establishing youth and climate councils) and increasing climate litigation on the grounds of intergenerational equity. Creating dedicated institutions with the central aim to safeguard the interests of future generations may be another promising pathway to increasing intergenerational justice (Slobodian, 2019). Examples include the Welsh Well-being of Future Generations Act, which requires public bodies to consider projects’ impacts on future generations and created the position of the Future Generations Commissioner. Further, some countries already recognise the rights of nature with legal – including constitutional – means. For example, Ecuador and Bolivia have adopted constitutional rights of ‘Mother Earth’, while other jurisdictions have recognised the legal personhood of specific ecosystems like rivers (New Zealand, India). These could offer blueprints for the protection of future non-human life. 

Adaptive governance, agility and continuous learning: The Earth system consists of coupled natural and human systems and can be described as a complex-adaptive system. Tipping points are features of complex-adaptive systems. The inherent limits to control and planning in complex (as opposed to mechanistic) systems have consequences for the design of governance institutions. One of these is the need for continuous system monitoring and learning about the system’s responses to decisions, policies and governance efforts. Building ongoing learning, responsiveness to observed changes, and flexibility to adjust policies into the design of institutions is called adaptive governance – actors adapt their approach in response to the feedback they receive from the system (Young, 2012; Armitage, Marschke, and Plummer, 2008; Folke et al., 2005). More broadly, recognising that knowledge about the dynamic processes of Earth and social systems is always evolving and never complete, governance has to take place in a close relationship with science and other ways of knowing, with frequent learning loops, monitoring and early warning mechanisms at the science-policy interface.

Systemic risk governance: ESTPs present significant – possibly irresolvable – challenges for conventional risk management approaches in organisational decision making due to the nonlinearity of the change process, the long time horizons, and the potential severity and irreversibility of impacts. Tensions in integrating tipping points into risk management frameworks may arise around commodification or monetisation of nature, mirroring tensions around natural capital accounting (Smessaert, Missemer, and Levrel, 2020). Tipping processes and the threats they present are better characterised as deep uncertainties, existing in a problem context where neither the probability of an event nor its impacts (i.e., harm) can be adequately expressed in terms of economic costs or other quantitative measures. Hence, the suitability of cost-benefit analysis and the standard practice of discounting – translating the financial value of future assets, resources or costs and damages into ‘present value’ by applying a specific rate smaller than 1 resulting in a reduction or devaluation – is severely limited in this decision context, even raising ethical concerns with regard to intra- and intergenerational justice (Weitzman, 2009; Gollier and Weitzman, 2010; Stoddard et al., 2021; Roemer, 2011).

More generally, this type of risk cannot be managed in the common sense of risk management (e.g. quantitative assessment, mitigation and hedging), but demands novel risk governance approaches (Galaz et al., 2017). Existing discussions about global systemic risk (Homer-Dixon et al., 2015; Centeno et al., 2015; Schweizer, Goble, and Renn, 2022; Juhola et al., 2022), telecoupling (Liu et al., 2015), polycrises (Homer-Dixon et al., 2021), risk-transfer analysis (Graham and Wiener, 1997), and ‘integrated catastrophe assessment’ (Kemp et al., 2022) offer important starting points. These approaches share a set of concerns that should form the foundation of risk assessment and decision making related to ESTPs. First, they consider a broad spectrum of risks (socio-political, material, technological, environmental) that also include risks stemming from human and governance responses to problems, such as abatement measures, maladaptation or authoritarianism. Correspondingly, they stress the need to assess risk trade-offs and balances. They also encourage risk assessment that captures a broader set of possible outcomes, especially catastrophic risks – e.g. related to high-end climate scenarios (Kemp et al., 2022). Second, systemic risk assessments take into account multiple possible interactions between determinants, drivers and types of risk, rather than assessing single risks in isolation (Simpson et al., 2021). This includes the possibility of compound risk at one scale but also scale-crossing dynamics (risk propagation) (Homer-Dixon et al., 2015; Centeno et al., 2015). Third, they consider how these interactions can create cascading dynamics across different systems (e.g. industries, countries, ecosystems), including tipping point cascades. This third dimension highlights the need to consider cascading risks in decision making and the development of governance approaches to cascade dynamics in complex systems.

Systemic risk governance should be informed by an in-depth analysis of feedback mechanisms and cascading effects between systems and subsystems, and it needs to be adaptive toward rapidly shifting societal contexts and demands. Containing systemic risks requires adaptive governance approaches at multiple institutional levels that are able to assess and respond to the underlying complex systems mechanisms. Governance needs time-sensitive monitoring of social-ecological systems and the implementation of early warning systems to manage cascading effects and tipping points. Engaging with stakeholders, the affected public, and establishing regulatory frameworks and networks of institutions and actors is essential. (Juhola et al., 2022)

Response diversity: Diversity in governance responses and capacities is particularly important for governing complex systems (Walker et al., 2023). “Response diversity is a system’s variety of responses to disruptions of all kinds. (…). It suggests keeping options open for unexpected situations (…)”, including through creation of generic capabilities that can be adjusted as new information comes in and that have ideally positive externalities and co-benefits (Frank et al., 2014). Response diversity can be realised spatially, temporally, and between actors and institutions. For example, international trade provides spatial response diversity against disruptions at national or local scale, which can be further strengthened through trading with multiple sources and using various transport routes or modes. Temporal response diversity refers to variation in resource use over time and requires storage infrastructure; examples include storage in granaries and reservoirs, or banks and insurances. It is also important to account for possible cross-scale interactions, as building response diversity at smaller scales can erode response diversity at larger scales if local initiatives copy each other. Cross-scale interactions that erode the overall resilience can also occur between social and ecological systems. This facilitates complementarity and backup responsiveness, i.e., if one response fails, a higher level one can be activated. 

Diversity in response capacity comes at high costs because it requires redundancies. The design of such a governance infrastructure needs to balance response diversity and efficiency. While fostering diversity and functional redundancy runs counter to standard policy making logics that prioritise efficiency, it will be key for building impact management governance of tipping points. Response diversity can also lead to fragmentation, conflict, and overlapping mandates; hence, smart an principled coordination is needed (Galaz et al., 2016).

Deep cooperation: By their nature, ESTPs require cooperative solutions of all kinds – international, multisectoral, regional, even intergenerational – in addition to existing cooperative efforts related to climate change. But while more cooperation is needed, it will also become more challenging to develop cooperative solutions because of tipping points. They could easily trigger short-sighted responses such as resource grabbing, elevating nationalism and fronting security concerns with competitive logics that could undermine effective governance or even worsen the problem. The changes created by tipping dynamics could add their own, quickly growing, pressures on governance actors, threatening to overwhelm longer-term governance agendas with increasingly frequent crisis management and new international tensions related to migration and geopolitical changes (Howard and Livermore, 2019). The more effort needed to deal with the immediate, the less that will be available for the longer-term global governance required (Homer-Dixon et al., 2015; Laybourn, Evans, and Dyke, 2023). Despite the significant challenges of devising cooperative and effective global governance solutions, the logic of deep cooperation – across scales, borders and sectors – must supersede other more competitive, nationalistic or profit-seeking ones when dealing with Earth system tipping processes.