Harmful tipping points in the natural world pose some of the gravest threats faced by humanity. Their triggering will severely damage our planet’s life-support systems and threaten the stability of our societies.
In the Summary Report:
• Narrative summary
• Global tipping points infographic
• Key messages
• Key Recommendations
Executive summary
• Section 1
• Section 2
• Section 3
• Section 4
This report is for all those concerned with tackling escalating Earth system change and mobilising transformative social change to alter that trajectory, achieve sustainability and promote social justice.
In this section:
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Key Concepts
• Approach
• References
Considers Earth system tipping points. These are reviewed and assessed across the three major domains of the cryosphere, biosphere and circulation of the oceans and atmosphere. We then consider the interactions and potential cascades of Earth system tipping points, followed by an assessment of early warning signals for Earth system tipping points.
Considers tipping point impacts. First we look at the human impacts of Earth system tipping points, then the potential couplings to negative tipping points in human systems. Next we assess the potential for cascading and compounding systemic risk, before considering the potential for early warning of impact tipping points.
Considers how to govern Earth system tipping points and their associated risks. We look at governance of mitigation, prevention and stabilisation then we focus on governance of impacts, including adaptation, vulnerability and loss and damage. Finally, we assess the need for knowledge generation at the science-policy interface.
Focuses on positive tipping points in technology, the economy and society. It provides a framework for understanding and acting on positive tipping points. We highlight illustrative case studies across energy, food and transport and mobility systems, with a focus on demand-side solutions (which have previously received limited attention).
In many ways, ESTPs would exacerbate well-established climate change impacts, such as increasing global temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, creating sea level rise, and more frequent and intense extreme weather events. They would worsen the disruption already experienced by ecosystems and societies in all regions of the world today (IPPC, 2022a). However, the threats related to ESTPs are in important ways distinct from climate change impacts as we have come to understand them or alter these expected changes in surprising ways. These differences matter for how we think about dealing with impacts. In other words, the current logics, frameworks, plans, practices and resource allocation to policy domains like adaptation, international migration, disaster risk reduction, and loss and damage will have to change to account for ESTPs.
More specifically, important differences between general climate change impacts and the impacts of Earth system tipping processes concern (1) the magnitude (extent) of change, (2) the speed of change due to nonlinearity, (3) the permanence (irreversibility) of change, (4) novel types of impacts (e.g. loss of ecosystems), and (5) the global distribution of impacts, creating new vulnerabilities. There is also uncertainty about the timing of ESTPs and substantial variation in the temporal and spatial scales on which impacts are likely to unfold, ranging from 10 to 10,000 years and from local to global; see Table 3.3.1). These features stand in stark contrast with the short-term nature of political cycles and decision making, and the lack of political will and public support for precautionary action in contexts with substantial uncertainty and deferred impacts (see Chapter 3.1). The following section (3.3.2) explores these tipping point-specific issues in more detail, outlining how they challenge current approaches and institutions for governing the impacts of climate change and global environmental change more broadly.