| Project Detail |
Studying social tipping points to stabilise climate change
Climate change is a complex problem that requires a combination of solutions – from reducing consumption to rolling out new technologies that can realise the green transition. However, this means crossing a social tipping point (STP) in which collective actions lead to wide-ranging systemic change. STPs can be triggered by bottom-up approaches like consumer boycotts or top-down interventions like policies, taxes and trade agreements. With the support of the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions, the DARETOTIP project will use system dynamics to model how these bottom-up and top-down approaches can lead to STPs and thus provide a deeper understanding of which types of change allow society to move towards a more sustainable status.
Society is currently struggling to manage a complex set of socio-ecological challenges related to climate change. Solutions
range from reducing our consumption to novel technology used to decouple the economy from its impacts. Regardless of the
strategy, 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 be
triggered by bottom-up approaches like consumer boycotts, or top-down interventions like policies, tax disincentives, and
trade agreements. The problem is that, so far, STP have only been described qualitatively and the mechanisms beyond their
emergence remain poorly understood.
The overall project goal is to provide a deeper understanding of which types of change allow society to move towards a more
sustainable 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 simulate
feedback loops between variables in a system. SD is a perfect fit to the quantitative study of STPs for two reasons. First, it is
a flexible tool to model coupled human and natural systems (CHANS), whereby ecological processes exhibit changes over
time under the influence of human drivers. Second, it allows one to determine when changes in elements of the system lead
to 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 us
an ideal team to conduct this research. Not only that, this fellowship will improve my research profile providing a steppingstone
towards my career goals. |
