Strengthening climate education and engagement is another enabling intervention (Otto et al., 2020 see Figure 4.4.3). Since climate issues are complex and deeply intertwined with unsustainable development and cultural change, an education system that facilitates transformative learning processes and fosters collective engagement to enable agency for transformation, is fundamental for triggering PTPs (Macintyre et al., 2018). In the long term, climate action-oriented education can foster empowerment and agency (Stoknes, 2015; Tannenbaum, 2015; Colvin et al., 2019), increasing competence by providing facts and strategies for behavioural change (Hertwig and Grüne-Yanoff, 2017) and instigating sustainable lifestyles and career pathways, widespread engagement and action.
Education can also create rapid changes by connecting school classes with local transformation actors, such as farmers, entrepreneurs and non governmental organisations (NGOs). For example, school farms in the UK are fostering students’ engagement with learning while facilitating sustainability practices among local farmers (Jenkin, 2014). Such processes create learning feedbacks across students and local transformation actors creating networks of positive tipping agents. Education can thus also enhance self-efficacy or agency for rapid social change by actively engaging students in real-world climate action projects and providing soft skills which translate into collective efficacy for society (Lenton, 2020; 2022; Centola and Macy, 2007; Centola 2018; Törnberg 2018).A population size of around 10,000 people has been shown to be a ‘sweet spot’ scale for accelerating social learning between students, parents and peers (Bhowmik et al., 2020). Intervening via education at this scale can trigger social learning through multiple loops and can thus trigger multi-level interactions across formal and informal institutions and state and non-state actors (Pahl-Wostl et al., 2009). And finally, education can promote ‘active hope’ for young people suffering eco-anxiety and climate trauma by involving them in activities that shape the future they hope for (Macy and Johnstone, 2012). This empowers them to become potential seeders of positive social tipping processes, for example through climate activism.
Box
4.4.1
In information and knowledge systems (Cash et al., 2003), a positive tipping point happens when information previously considered ‘noise’ or irrelevant (Ollinaho, 2016) becomes a meaningful signal (O’Brien and Klein 2017; O’Brien, 2020) that can trigger fundamental changes in social norms, behaviours and lifestyles consistent with Earth system boundaries (Rockström et al., 2023). The tipping occurs when a sufficiently large number of people recognise and act upon the information.
Broadly speaking, human information and knowledge systems (HIKS) (Tàbara and Chabay, 2013) comprise both the agents and the mediating mechanisms that generate, store, select and interpret information and turn it into actionable knowledge. Examples of HIKS include economic instruments such as market prices that indicate the current value of things, from commodities to countries; written, oral and computer languages, technologies and libraries; education and research institutions; and other information providers, including social media, that frame and render information salient. HIKS may be understood as foundational systems influencing how humans interact with each other and the natural world. As such, they are a core part of the enabling or constraining conditions that can accelerate or restrain cultural and structural transformations towards sustainability.
The capacity to reinterpret information previously dismissed as irrelevant ‘noise’ into meaningful information worthy of action requires higher-order individual and social learning abilities. New knowledge and beliefs replace those that are no longer fit for purpose. At the societal level, the consequences of a tipping point in HIKS can reorient all forms of human endeavour, from scientific research to technology innovation to governance (Ollinago, 2016).The regenerative sustainability paradigm (Tàbara, 2023; Fazey et al., 2020) describes how positive tipping points could emerge in multiple HIKS. This paradigm calls for the dissolution of the dominant worldview that disregards existential ESTP risks, in favour of a new restorative one that prioritises a thriving human future (Tàbara, 2023; Fazey et al., 2020). Such a paradigm would establish new HIKs to help guide sectors towards sustainable pathways, for example HIKS on regenerative food and agriculture.