4.6.1 Introduction

Humanity faces unprecedented challenges, including climate change, biodiversity loss, inequality and poverty. The Earth system in which human history has played out is fast changing to ‘a new climatic regime’ (Latour, 2017). In response, diverse groups have called for transformative change, but this is not a simple, inevitable or apolitical process. Orienting complex systems onto more sustainable and socially just trajectories is messy and complicated. As history shows, there are ‘dark sides’ to transformations, including unintended consequences, losers as well as winners, and the potential for capture by vested interests (Blythe et al., 2018). These risks can be exacerbated in the context of positive tipping points (PTPs) because interventions designed for exponential and irreversible positive change also carry the risk of exponential and irreversible negative change. A precautious, considered, systemic approach is therefore necessary to understand the potential consequences and to whom they might apply. Governance approaches that prioritise climate and ecological stability, equity and justice must anticipate and take steps to avoid perverse outcomes and negative distributional impacts using compensatory and redistributive mechanisms. Trade-offs must be considered, and tough questions asked: What sacrifice zones are being created? Who is likely to occupy them? What forms of vulnerability are being experienced from change? Who is left behind? Here, we understand ‘sacrifice zones’ as places that include ‘extractive zones’ – territories, resources and communities that are viewed as extractable and commodifiable by coordinated forms of capitalism (Gómez-Barris, 2017). 

Recent United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) climate summits have seen an increasing number of calls from climate justice campaigners and representatives of the Global South, including Small Island Developing States, for an acknowledgement of historical damage in the international response to climate change. These are articulated in calls for loss and damage compensation and for reparations (Huq et al., 2013). These calls are supported by the work of climate historians, decolonial critics and others. Together they assert that we cannot hope to agree on climate action if we do not address past injustices and the unequal access to decision making and resources that created the climate and ecological crisis and which continue to shape intergovernmental responses to it (Parenti and Moore,2016: Yusoff, 2018: Ghosh, 2021: Bhambra and Newell, 2022). Discussions on tipping points, therefore, must emphasise the plight of the poorest and historically marginalised people, who also face the greatest risks, and must acknowledge the central role of the economy and politics in driving precarity. These past and present injustices create a need for the rebuilding of damaged trust and relationships. For many Indigenous peoples and local communities at the forefront of the climate and ecological crisis, these challenges have become a matter of survival (Gilio-Whitaker, 2019;  Whyte, 2021). Other important considerations include the rights of future generations and the potential for future harms (Rammelt et al., 2023) as well as a need to consider not just humans, but the rights of all species to exist on a healthy planet (Chapron et al., 2019).