Section 3: Governance of Earth system tipping points

C.1. Governance of Earth system tipping points is lacking. (Chapter 3.1)

C.1.1. Governance efforts need to cover multiple domains, including prevention and impact management, and carefully consider the diversity of tipping processes – each tipping system requires a distinct governance approach. (Chapter 3.1)

C.1.2. Governance of Earth system tipping points should be polycentric and networked, crossing multiple scales and institutions, including the scale of the tipping system. (Chapter 3.1)

C.1.3. Existing sustainability governance institutions across multiple scales, especially those related to the international climate change regime complex, should consider including Earth system tipping points in their mandates and action agendas. (Chapters 3.1, 3.2, 3.2)

C.1.4. Governance of Earth system tipping points should include redundancies to avoid governance failure, and be flexible/ adaptive to enable rapid shifts in attention and resources towards emerging problems. (Chapter 3.1)

C.1.5. Short-term decisions have consequences on multiple time horizons (years to millennia) that require anticipatory governance and new risk assessment approaches for Earth system tipping points. (Chapter 3.1)

C.1.6. Actors and institutions across multiple scales and domains (state, industry, civil society) require long-term governance capacities, especially future thinking (anticipation/imagination), complex-systems thinking and long-term agency. (Chapter 3.1)

Recommendation:

C.1.7. Now is the time for governance actors, including UN bodies, international organisations, national governments and non-state actors, to engage in setting the agenda for the governance of Earth system tipping points. (Chapter 3.1)

C.2. Preventing the passing of Earth system tipping points should become the core goal and logic of a new and urgently needed governance framework to address the risks they pose. (Chapters 3.1, 3.2)

C.2.1. Given that Earth system tipping point risks are already moderate at current levels of warming and increase substantially above 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, a short window for preventive action is open now and will close at different points in time for each tipping system – for some, potentially as early as the 2030s. (Chapter 3.2)

C.2.2. Preventing Earth system tipping requires addressing multiple drivers of tipping at different scales, especially rapidly strengthening current climate mitigation efforts to minimise temperature overshoot (both peak temperature and duration). (Chapter 3.2)

C.2.3. Speculative solar geoengineering approaches to preventing Earth system tipping points face deep ethical, technical and political uncertainties, and should not be considered technically available to use safely and swiftly at present.

Recommendations:

C.2.4. Countries need to rapidly and dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, phasing out fossil fuels and bringing forward their decarbonisation timelines, to minimise the risk of crossing Earth system tipping points. (Chapter 3.2)

C.2.5. This must include reducing both long-lived – especially carbon dioxide (CO2) – and short-lived – especially methane (CH4) – greenhouse gas emissions to limit the magnitude and rate of warming, and to minimise peak temperature and the duration of overshooting 1.5°C. (Chapter 3.2)

C.2.6. Governments should ban commercial deployment of solar geoengineering, declare a moratorium on any other deployment, and develop a multilateral regime to regulate research and experimentation. (Chapter 3.2)

C.3. Managing the impacts of tipping points has diverse and immediate governance implications.

C.3.1. Governance of climate change adaptation needs to significantly expand anticipatory work and adopt a multi- temporal perspective tied to the dynamics of specific tipping systems. (Chapter 3.3)

C.3.2. The loss and damage framework needs rapid development, including consideration of the loss of entire biomes. (Chapter 3.3)

C.3.3. Vulnerability to tipping point impacts can be reduced by building resilience, fostering sustainable development and just transformations to sustainability. (Chapter 3.3)

C.3.4. In some locations, existing response mechanisms, including adaptation, could be overwhelmed by the impacts of Earth system tipping processes. Planned relocation in close collaboration with affected communities will become increasingly necessary. (Chapter 3.3)

C.4. There are relevant institutions and expertise that can contribute to governance of Earth system tipping points, but these need significant adjustments to be effective.

C.4.1. Mitigating climate tipping points should be addressed within the Paris Agreement framework, including considering tipping points in the interpretation of global goals and narrowing acceptable mitigation pathways to prevent tipping (i.e. minimising peak temperature and overshoot duration). (Chapter 3.2)

C.4.2. Carbon removal strategies need to be aligned with building resilience to tipping points and nature-based solutions need to be resilient to the passing of tipping points if that cannot be avoided. (Chapter 3.2)

C.4.3. Innovation is needed to address a lack of meaningful governance capacities at the scale of the tipping system – for example, the tropical coral reefs or major ocean currents. (Chapters 3.1, 3.2)

Recommendations:

C.4.4. Parties to the Paris Agreement should include Earth system tipping points in future Global Stocktake processes, assessing collective progress towards their prevention and impact governance. (Chapter 3.2)

C.4.5. Parties to the Paris Agreement should include a discussion of Earth system tipping points in future revisions of their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and mid-century decarbonisation strategies, including an assessment of how the country contributes to tipping point risks, how it will be affected by their impacts, and national measures and plans to prevent their transgression and to prepare for their impacts. (Chapter 3.2)

C.4.6. Parties to the Paris Agreement should initiate an evaluation of the adequacy of current mechanisms for addressing climate change impacts (e.g. adaptation, loss and damage, finance) in light of the specific risks posed by Earth system tipping points. (Chapter 3.3)

C.4.7. Countries within the geographic scope of a specific Earth system tipping element (e.g. all countries with tropical coral reefs, Amazon rainforest, or around the North Atlantic) should consider launching new initiatives for collective impact governance, including the development of knowledge and early warning systems specific to the tipping system, fostering adaptation, addressing potential losses and damages, and mutual learning/sharing of experience. (Chapters 3.1, 3.3)

C.5. Improved knowledge production and science-policy engagement processes are needed to support governance of Earth system tipping processes.

C.5.1. Scientific knowledge, especially regarding the temporal and spatial scales, of Earth system tipping processes must be translated into actionable, actor-relevant understanding, across scales and actor types, to support governance of Earth system tipping processes. (Chapter 3.4)

C.5.2. Existing international knowledge institutions need to be reformed to better support this kind of knowledge production. (Chapter 3.4)

C.5.3. Learning challenges specific to tipping points are significant and could slow down or impede effective governance and public engagement. (Chapter 3.4)

C.5.4. Currently, knowledge gaps are biggest in the social sciences and humanities. (Chapter 3.4)

C.5.5. Novel knowledge co-production processes that can engage scientists, policymakers and stakeholders in systems and future thinking are needed to foster anticipatory capacities. (Chapter 3.4)

Recommendations:

C.5.6. International organisations, national governments and science funders should foster urgent international research collaboration, especially in the social sciences and humanities, by promoting open, transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary, solutions-oriented, networked knowledge systems focusing on Earth system tipping points.

C.5.7. Regional and national science and knowledge institutions (e.g. national academies of science, EU foresight initiatives) and boundary organisations should foster anticipatory capacity building with participatory co-production processes involving policy-makers, scientists, other knowledge holders, artists, and designers.