4.2.3.1 Enabling Conditions

Although the primary focus of attention might fall on the final, relatively insignificant input that triggers a tipping point, the reality is that many ‘tippable’ human systems first need concerted effort over a long period of time to generate the enabling conditions for transformative change to emerge (Lenton et al., 2022; Otto et al., 2020). For example, the cost of generating electricity using solar energy is now so low that capacity is expanding by more than 20 per cent per year (IEA, 2022). But this is the product of four decades of public investments, subsidies and other incentives. A new/niche technology, practice or behaviour needs to become more affordable, attractive, convenient, accessible, or morally acceptable than the established one before it becomes capable of displacing it. Generating these enabling conditions requires strategically timed and targeted interventions appropriate to the system and focused on those elements that are most sensitive to change (Mealy et al., 2023). For example, the widespread adoption of plant-based and planetary health diets likely requires a series of strategic interventions – labelling and other information schemes, changes in decision infrastructures, political advocacy, policy coalitions, financial and reskilling supports for the food industry, technological innovations, supply-chain restructuring, changes in dietary norms and habits, and so on – before such a major societal shift could emerge (Aschemann-Witzel and Schulze, 2023; Fesenfeld et al., 2022). 

Most research, innovation and policy has until now focused on intervening in technological and economic domains – for example to enable a new renewable technology to achieve cost parity. However, PTPs in the socio-behavioural and political domains offer equally powerful opportunities for transformative change. For example, changing social norms could play a crucial role in enabling PTPs (Constantino et al., 2022; Schneider and van der Linden, 2023). Social norms define acceptable behaviour and can change rapidly through a population. Two emerging examples that could prove pivotal to driving positive tipping points across multiple systems are anti-fossil fuel norms (Green, 2018), whereby fossil fuel use becomes socially unacceptable; and norms that prioritise the avoidance of harm and sustainable sufficiency over material consumption (Akenji et al., 2021; Newell et al., 2021; Haberl et al., 2020; Trebeck and Williams, 2019). In the political realm, policy can help create and spread new behavioural norms, for example by investing in infrastructural changes such as bike lanes (Yoeli et al., 2013; Nyborg et al., 2016; Lenton et al., 2022); or by strengthening climate education, arts and engagement that helps people imagine what a sustainable world would look like (Galafassi et al., 2018), and mobilises public support for greater action (Milkoreit, 2017; Stoddard et al., 2021; Plutzer et al., 2016; Otto et al., 2020; Bhowmik et al., 2020; Lenton et al., 2022). 

Some PTP interventions are relatively straightforward and do not involve significant cost, innovation, social norm change, advocacy or diplomacy – for example, redirecting public procurement towards alternative proteins to help transform the food system (Meldrum et al., 2023). However, other potential interventions – for example, creating a global environmental court; removal of fossil fuel and animal product subsidies; a national or global network of deliberative mini-publics (DMPs) whose recommendations are fed into the policy system; or radical urban planning concepts such as 15-minute cities (4.3.2) (Otto et al., 2020, Moreno et al., 2021) – do involve significant cost, innovation, norm change, advocacy or diplomacy. For these more complex and radical interventions, a political process would first be needed to generate the coalitions and public support which, if successful, could then initiate a policy process. If this in turn is successful, the implemented policy may then transform the system and generate reinforcing feedbacks for further change (Figure 4.4.4). Positive tipping dynamics may therefore incorporate a sequence of intermediary tipping points on the way to the final goal or system state (Fesenfeld et al., 2022; Smith, 2023). Cross-cutting enablers in all domains may also be subject to their own tipping points.