3.3.4 Final remarks

ESTP impact governance is currently underdeveloped, both in research and practice. Research and knowledge co-production on this topic are urgently needed as well as corresponding capacity-building among relevant stakeholders across scales – for example, global, regional and national governance institutions for climate change adaptation. Several distinct characteristics of ESTPs pose formidable challenges for impact governance, including the speed and time horizons of tipping processes, the emergence of new vulnerabilities, and the irreversibility of many impacts. Combined, these characteristics imply that ESTPs could quickly exceed adaptation limits, capacities for dealing with different kinds of migration, and current disaster risk management capabilities. This chapter begins to develop a framework for multi-scale, multi-phase impact governance that takes these characteristics into account. ESTP impact governance should seek to minimise harms related to tipping processes, including by preventing cascading dynamics in coupled Earth and human systems. Impact governance for ESTPs is relevant across a broad set of issue domains and the corresponding institutions and actor communities, including climate change adaptation, international development, migration, human rights and disaster risk preparedness. Effective governance will require aligning existing institutions at various levels and extending their mandate, but also creating potentially new initiatives and processes.