Addressing Tipping Points for a Precarious Future
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Addressing Tipping Points for a Precarious Future Addressing Tipping Points for a Precarious Future Edited by Tim O’Riordan and Tim Lenton Published for THE BRITISH ACADEMY by OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP © The British Academy 2013 Database right The British Academy (maker) First edition published in 2013 Some rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, for commercial purposes without the prior permission in writing of the British Academy, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. 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International, Padstow, Cornwall ISBN 978-0-726553-6 For our next generation who will live through what we create for them James, Zoë, Joseph, Esther, Edward and Sammy Contents List of figures and tables xi Foreword by Sir Crispin Tickell xiii Preface xv Acknowledgements xix Notes on contributors xxi PART 1 Tipping points and critical thresholds 1 1.1 Metaphors and systemic change 3 TIM O’RIORDAN, TIM LENTON, AND IAN CHRISTIE PART 2 Earth system tipping points 21 2.1 Tipping elements from a global perspective 23 TIM LENTON PART 3 The culture dimensions 47 3.1 Skittles 49 The story of the tipping point metaphor and its relation to new realities GILES FODEN Commentary 3.2 Aligning contrasting perspectives of tipping points 73 MATTHEW TAYLOR vii Contents PART 4 Food security, biodiversity, and ecosystems degradation 77 4.1 Food security twists and turns 81 Why food systems need complex governance TIM LANG AND JOHN INGRAM 4.2 Human resilience in the face of biodiversity tipping points at local and regional scales 104 PATRICIA HOWARD 4.3 The Amazon in transition 127 The challenge of transforming the world’s largest tropical forest biome into a sustainable social-ecological system TOBY GARDNER PART 5 The spiritual dimension 149 5.1 Contemplative consciousness 151 LAURENCE FREEMAN Commentary 5.2 Faith and tipping points 165 DAVID ATKINSON PART 6 Politics, the markets, and business 169 6.1 Sustaining markets, establishing well-being, and promoting social virtue for transformational tipping points 173 TIM O’RIORDAN 6.2 Some socio-economic thoughts 188 PAUL EKINS 6.3 Leadership for sustainability 194 The search for tipping points SARA PARKIN viii Contents Commentaries 6.4 Leadership by business for coping with transformational tipping thresholds 213 AMANDA LONG 6.5 Private sector failure and risk management for tipping points 220 KEITH CLARKE 6.6 Creating a roadmap for sustainable, transformational change 223 JOHN ELKINGTON 6.7 Tipping points and ‘Too Difficult Boxes’ 229 CHARLES CLARKE 6.8 It tips both ways 233 THOMAS LINGARD 6.9 Perspective of a global retailer 237 MIKE BARRY PART 7 Communicating tipping points and resilience 241 7.1 Media coverage of tipping points 243 Searching for a balanced story JOE SMITH 7.2 Exploring adaptive governance for managing tipping points 258 EMILY BOYD Commentaries 7.3 Reflections of a journalist 277 PAUL BROWN 7.4 Making sense of the world 280 CAMILLA TOULMIN ix Contents 7.5 Endgame 285 JONATHAN SINCLAIR-WILSON 7.6 Beyond the linear 289 The role of visual thinking and visualization JOE RAVETZ PART 8 A precarious future 299 8.1 Into a precarious future 301 TIM O’RIORDAN AND TIM LENTON 8.2 Improving our chances of transition to sustainability 320 The role of values and the ethics of solidarity and sympathy ANDREW DOBSON Commentary 8.3 Turning the tides? 327 Parallel infrastructures and the revolt of the corporate elites IAN CHRISTIE Index 333 x Figures and tables Figures 2.1 Map of potential policy-relevant tipping elements 26 2.2 The likelihood of tipping elements occurring 32 2.3 A ‘straw-man’ risk matrix for climate tipping points 33 2.4 A schematic representation of a system being forced past a bifurcation point 37 3.1 Metaphoric and metonymic axes 58 3.2 The relationship between metaphor and metonymy 60 4.1 The food system, its external influences, and outcomes: a flowchart 98 6.1 The approach to well-being in the context of evolving natural and social capital 181 6.2 Conventional capitalism 198 6.3 Sustainable capitalism 200 6.4 Capital stocks and benefit flows 203 6.5 The infrastructure of responsibility: how individuals relate, one to another, to create a strong society 208 6.6 A new model for collaborative engagement 215 6.7 A sample of the Knowledge Wall at the Breakthrough Capitalism Forum 224 7.1 Visual thinking to understand multiple cause–effects 292 7.2 Visual thinking to understand multi-scale complexity 293 7.3 Visualization in communicating tipping point situations 294 7.4 Visualization for synergistic tipping point responses 296 xi Figures and tables Tables 4.1 Strands in the food security discourse 84 4.2 Examples of how food-chain activities affect key environmental variables 97 4.3 Examples of ‘biodiversity’ tipping points in terrestrial ecosystems 110 xii Foreword SIR CRISPIN TICKELL ‘Tipping points’ mean different things to different people. Most of them with their implications are well explored in this book. For me a tipping point is when an accumulation of small or even big changes suddenly causes a critical change. Usually we cannot identify a tipping point until we have passed it. One of the best demonstrations of tipping points is in the behaviour of ecosystems. Within the infinite complexity of living systems in which different organisms depend on each other, one break in the chain or tipping point can bring rapid change to the others linked within it. For some this means disaster; for others it means rapid, perhaps favourable, change within a new chain. This is part of the phenomenon of life. We can see this in the history of the human animal. Tribes, cities, and societies can rapidly crash or flourish. As ever, the tipping point could not have been foreseen. Usually it was a combination of unusual circumstances. Changes in patterns of rainfall came together with social and economic difficulties to bring about the collapse of classic Maya society. The Black Death coincided with the beginnings of the Little Ice Age to transform mediaeval society. A new merchant elite was able to tip over the mon- archies of King Charles I and later King James II, and thereby create the circumstances of the industrial revolution in the following century. We are certainly in turbulent times today. Our current epoch has been labelled ‘the Anthropocene’ by many geologists: it marks the period since the industrial revolution in which the human species has vastly increased its numbers; exploited the natural, often irreplaceable resources of the Earth; upset longstanding ecosystems, thereby destroying countless other species; and changed the chemistry of the land, sea, and air of the Earth in ways we have yet to understand. For example, we can observe the current xiii Foreword destabilization of climate with prospects for global warming, but can only guess at the consequences for future distribution of water and new means for producing the energy which drives our society. Whereas in the past the rise and fall of civilizations was something regional and distinct, we are now more interconnected than ever before, and as the present economic crisis demonstrates, what happens in one place immediately affects what happens in others. So what, if anything, can we do about all this? Can we discern future tipping points? Which ways could they tip us? It is fair to say that the conventional wisdom, which has led us to where we are, is under increasing challenge. Some politicians may still call for more respect for market forces, and argue about the effects of inflation or deflation, the supply of money, and the need for growth, however defined. But others are painfully aware of the wider issues: concern for the environment in all its aspects, our unhealthy dependence on certain technologies, including being locked into old ones, and human prospects in general. Are we measuring the right things in the right way, in particular our wealth, health, and happiness? Are our brains changing so that we see things in pictures rather than think in words? Can we still see the wood for the trees? Does globalization of society imply loss of local identity, or – worse – a return to nationalisms and local rivalries, with lethal struggles over resources? No one knows the answers. But it is clearer than ever that we need to work globally, and above all identify the common interest in tackling the problems of the Anthropocene. This may require an assembly of regional interests, so-called ‘pluralities’, within a global framework, which reflect the current changes in the balance of power. Change usually comes about for three main reasons: leadership from those who effectively run our society; pressure from ordinary people through the means at their disposal; and occasionally from what I call ‘benign catastrophes’, when something goes visibly and attributably wrong and thereby illustrates the need for action.