3.3.2.2 Speed of change

Two time-related characteristics of tipping points create distinct challenges for impact governance. One is the acceleration of change during a tipping process (non-linearity). The other concerns the duration of the tipping process, which varies widely between different tipping systems (see Figure 3.1.1 and Table 3.3.1), from years (e.g. SPG) to decades (e.g. Amazon rainforest) and even millennia (e.g. ice sheets).

A tipping process involves abrupt – surprisingly fast – changes relative to the system’s general patterns of development over time. Abruptness is created by self-amplifying feedback processes, which set in after the tipping point has been passed. These feedback processes increase the rate of change in the tipping system, i.e., they speed up the change process. This acceleration can have effects like higher annual rates of sea level rise and has important implications for the ability of affected communities and societies to cope with and adapt to changes (e.g. adjusting agricultural practices), and the capacity of institutions to prevent and mitigate harm (e.g. creating infrastructure resilient to quickly intensifying rain and storm patterns).

There are risks that the rate of change overwhelms existing adaptive capacities, i.e., pushes communities towards adaptation limits, or that policy measures come too late or are maladaptive (Kwadijk et al., 2010; Bentley et al., 2014; Mechler et al., 2020; van Ginkel et al., 2020; Mechler and Deubelli, 2021; Juhola et al., 2022; Schlumberger et al., 2022). For example, beyond a certain amount of sea level rise linked to ice-sheet melt, raising sea walls as a defence becomes an ineffective/unviable strategy and planned relocation must be considered (Kovalevsky et al., 2021; Sengupta et al., 2023). It is possible that social adaptation limits will be reached before biophysical ones, meaning an affected ecosystem might be capable of dealing with impacts of the tipping process, but the affected community would not (Ahmed et al., 2018).

Speed of change could also be understood in terms of the length of the change process. The amount of time it takes for a tipping system to transition to its new stable state is important for the ability of policymakers and communities to respond and adapt to the unavoidable changes. The timescale at which ESTPs can unfold is estimated to vary vastly across different tipping elements, ranging from 10 to 10,000 years. This poses immense challenges for political decision making and governance. If the tipping process occurs over a number of years or decades, the corresponding disruption of social, political and economic systems around the world could be tremendously costly and challenging to manage. This timescale could be too short for any meaningful adaptation efforts. If the changes occur over longer time periods (e.g. a century or more), adaptation processes have more time, but would struggle with identifying appropriate adaptation goals and measures because the system’s new stable state would remain unknown for a long time, raising the question of what to adapt to. This time horizon would be too long for a consistent adaptation pathway. However, even where the timescale is very long, some effects could be felt rather soon and there would be different types of impact over time. Further, tipping processes that are perceived as slow would likely suffer from the same decision-making challenges as climate change in general: lacking a sense of urgency or motivation to act in the short term.

Combined, increases in the scope and speed of change present formidable challenges for impact governance, threatening to overwhelm adaptive and response capacities. The social-ecological impacts across various geographical and timescales might lead to ‘institutional mismatches’, resulting in policy measures that are poorly timed or the wrong organisational level (Walker et al., 2009).