3.3 Tipping point impact governance

Sara M. Constantino,  Manjana Milkoreit, Jürgen Scheffran, Viktoria Spaiser
Ashleigh M. Basel, John T. Bruun, Ricardo Safra de Campos, Alessandro C.W. Craparo, James G. Dyke, Catherine Gamper, Weisi Guo, Florian Krampe, David I. Armstrong McKay, Duncan P. McLaren, Melanie Pill, Frans Schapendonk

Key Messages

  • The impacts of Earth system tipping processes differ from climate change impacts in ways that matter for impact governance. Key differences include greater magnitude and acceleration of change, novel types of impacts and distributions of vulnerability, and irreversibility of change.
  • Existing governance frameworks and institutions (for climate change adaptation, migration and sustainable development, for example) do not account for the specific threats of ESTPs.
  • Given the nature of Earth system tipping processes, provisions for addressing Loss and Damage would play a much bigger role than today if ESTPs were transgressed.
  • The objectives of ESTP impact governance, especially minimising harm, reducing vulnerability, building resilience and preventing impact cascades, are best achieved with just transformations towards sustainability.

Recommendations

  • Existing impact governance frameworks and mechanisms need to be adjusted and significantly expanded to address the risks posed by crossing ESTPs. More resources and funding should be made available, especially if and when an Earth system tipping point has been crossed.
  • Adaptation governance needs to significantly strengthen anticipatory work and adopt a multitemporal perspective tied to the scale and dynamics of specific tipping systems.
  • Governments should advance the institutionalisation of global migration governance, building on the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration.
  • Science and governance actors should co-develop early warning systems to monitor both the biophysical changes (especially indicators for tipping-point transgression) and potential societal impacts of ESTPs. For that purpose, investments in the quality and availability of data should be made, including data from low-income countries.
  • Governments should increase the use of participatory approaches to impact governance, involving local/Indigenous communities and knowledge.

Summary

Given the now substantial risk of passing several Earth system tipping points (ESTPs) in the foreseeable future, it is imperative that governance actors begin to anticipate and prepare for their impacts. ESTPs present threats that are distinct from climate change as it is currently understood in important ways. We identify five such differences and discuss how these challenge current frameworks, plans, practices and resource allocation for impact governance. Multiple policy domains, including adaptation, loss and damage, international development, disaster preparedness and migration, should account for ESTPs to ensure effective decision making in pursuit of peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future.

While the literature on ESTP impact governance is nascent, we identify important considerations. The objective of impact governance is the prevention and minimisation of harm caused by ESTPs in the context of just and sustainable development. Efforts should be distributed across multiple scales and differentiate between governance tasks before and after a tipping point is crossed (i.e. match strategies to different phases of tipping processes). Early warning systems that can support timely responses to changes in Earth and social systems would be desirable, but there are significant concerns about the availability of reliable early warning signals. Attending to equity and justice requires that impact governance for ESTPs takes into account the needs and perspectives of the most vulnerable and marginalised communities.

A broad set of governance actors and institutions involved in addressing the impacts of global environmental change today will play a role in this domain. This includes global-scale and international institutions, national governments and local communities, but also the private sector and civic actors. We briefly illustrate the potential and need for changes to current governance structures in two domains. One is the UNFCCC, a treaty-based international institution with global scope. Here we focus on adaptation and loss and damage. The second is the less-formalised institutional context for governing migration, where we consider local, national and international processes of planned relocation.

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