Dynamic system strategies for climate social tipping points

Society is currently struggling to manage a complex set of socio-ecological challenges related to climate change. Solutionsrange from reducing our consumption to novel technology used to decouple the economy from its impacts.

Regardless of thestrategy, materialising the green transition into a low carbon society means crossing a social tipping point (STP).An STP occurs when the collective action of a population reaches leads to wide-ranging systemic change.

STPs can betriggered by bottom-up approaches like consumer boycotts, or top-down interventions like policies, tax disincentives, andtrade agreements.

The problem is that, so far, STP have only been described qualitatively and the mechanisms beyond theiremergence remain poorly understood.The overall project goal is to provide a deeper understanding of which types of change allow society to move towards a moresustainable status, specifically by unveiling the role of social tipping points in reaching sustainability.I intend to use system dynamics (SD) to study social tipping points quantitatively.

SD is a modelling approach to simulatefeedback loops between variables in a system. SD is a perfect fit to the quantitative study of STPs for two reasons.

First, it isa flexible tool to model coupled human and natural systems (CHANS), whereby ecological processes exhibit changes overtime under the influence of human drivers.

Second, it allows one to determine when changes in elements of the system leadto the crossing of a tipping point and to a different system configuration.My combined expertise in CHANS and SD, supported by my supervisor’s background in sustainability assessment make usan ideal team to conduct this research.

Not only that, this fellowship will improve my research profile providing a steppingstonetowards my career goals.