3.4.3.2. Using early warning signals?

Being able to provide and make use of early warning signals (EWS) of approaching ESTPs would be a strong signal for an effective science-policy interface. The main purpose of early warning systems is to alert decision makers to impending changes to enable a rapid adjustment of governance and decision making, e.g. kicking preparations for mitigation and impact adaptation into high gear with extraordinary modes of decision making, prioritisation and resource allocation. Ideally, an early warning system would relate a set of distinct signals to a set of differentiated decision-making procedures and priorities with clear and pre-determined shifts in authority and responsibility. In the case of ESTPs, EWS would indicate that prevention efforts for a specific tipping point (see Chapter 3.2) are currently insufficient and failing, and that impact management (see Chapter 3.3) needs to be ramped up within a short time window in case further mitigation is insufficient.

Successful examples for early warning systems exist in the domain of disaster preparedness (e.g. storms and floods). The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) is developing practices of early warning for climate-related extreme events. Recent assessments display an increasing orientation towards preemptive action, forestalling rather than only reacting to harms. For example, the UN Office of Disaster Risk Reduction has instituted a more prospective and holistic perspective towards disaster management, seeking to anticipate and forestall vulnerabilities through development and capacity building (UNDRR, 2022). This new emphasis supplements the more traditional mode of pinpointing hazards and managing relief and compensation processes.

Advances have been made in the domain of early warning signals for ESTPs, including different measures for identifying a system’s proximity to a tipping point and proposals to apply these measures to harmful social-ecological tipping points (see Chapters 1.6 and 2.5). However, the usability of this knowledge in the domain of policy and governance remains unclear, as do processes for communicating early warnings to decision makers. Given the challenges regarding the nature of scientific knowledge about Earth system tipping processes, e.g. assessments of when a tipping point is passed potentially not being available until decades after, and early warning signals may not always be present before tipping or be clear evidence of tipping (Chapter 1.6), the benefits of early warning science for decision making might be limited for now (Galaz, 2014, chap. 4).