Understanding the Power of Interconnected Systems to Accelerate Sustainability
Positive tipping points have gained significant attention as promising leverage points to drive rapid progress towards climate and sustainability goals. Beyond their impact within specific systems like energy, food, or social norms, these tipping dynamics can sometimes spread across different interconnected systems, amplifying the overall impact of interventions. However, the complex web of cross-system interactions that can create such “tipping cascades” remains an underexplored area.
In this comprehensive article, we dive deep into the cross-system interactions across sociotechnical, socioecological, socioeconomic, and sociopolitical domains that can trigger positive tipping cascades. We unpack the diverse feedback mechanisms where strategic inputs can spark disproportionately large positive responses, as well as the various agents capable of setting these cascades in motion.
By examining real-world examples and empirical evidence, we illustrate how interconnected systems can create self-reinforcing cycles of progress on climate action and sustainable development. From the synergies between electric vehicles and renewable energy to the cascading impacts of shifts in social norms and public policy, this article equips you with a deep understanding of the power of cross-system interactions to drive transformative change.
Harnessing the Potential of Positive Tipping Cascades
A tipping point refers to a critical threshold in complex systems beyond which self-propelling feedback leads to a fundamentally different system state (Lenton, 2020). The concept of positive (or “social”) tipping has gained wide attention recently as a means to accelerate climate change mitigation and adaptation. These tipping dynamics are characterized by alternative stable states, nonlinearity, underlying positive feedback loops, and limited reversibility. Crucially, “positive” tipping is marked by desirability and intentionality in advancing decarbonization and sustainability (Milkoreit, 2022).
Due to the promise of rapid change once positive feedback mechanisms are triggered, such tipping points are considered high-leverage opportunities to efficiently use limited policy resources for rapid decarbonization (Otto et al., 2020; Tàbara et al., 2018) and to counter the risk of nonlinear climate change due to climate tipping points (Armstrong McKay et al., 2022) that may occur by the end of the century unless ambitious climate targets are reached.
Positive tipping dynamics have been observed, or have the potential to emerge, across various sociotechnical and environmental systems. For instance, subsidy programs and decentralized production can trigger rapid decarbonization in energy production and storage, while divestment movements from fossil fuels can rapidly increase investors’ perceived risk of carbon-intensive assets in the financial system (Otto et al., 2020).
Crucially, if there are strong interconnections between these systems, a positive tipping intervention can lead to a sequence of secondary impacts across different domains (e.g., energy, finance, policy) and scales (e.g., individual, national, international). These secondary impacts, called “cascades,” can result in a much larger eventual impact. As positive tipping in a specific system, positive tipping cascades are characterized by desirability and intentionality towards decarbonization and sustainability. Hence, the existing cross-system interconnections that enable, facilitate, or strengthen climate change mitigation, adaptation, and sustainability efforts are considered positive tipping cascades.
Such cross-system interactions also create cascading feedback mechanisms that can further reinforce the positive feedbacks within those systems and accelerate the tipping dynamics, or potentially counteract them. Therefore, identifying and managing these cascades is crucial to boost the effectiveness of positive tipping interventions towards rapid decarbonization.
In this article, we describe key examples of cascading effects and feedback loops across various sociotechnical (e.g., energy, transport), socioecological (e.g., agriculture), and sociopolitical systems. We delineate the feedback mechanisms between these systems that can amplify positive tipping dynamics. We also discuss how such tipping dynamics can be triggered by civil society and the private sector, creating the constituency for government-led interventions, and how they can be managed by limiting negative cascades and inducing positive ones.
Sociotechnical Systems: Synergies and Reinforcing Loops
Across sociotechnical systems, cascading effects can occur when one sector drives the cost of a shared technology down, or when the output of one sector provides a low-cost input to others. Electricity is a prime example of a general-purpose technology, and as renewable energy becomes the cheapest source of electricity generation (Way et al., 2022), there is immense potential for economy-wide cascading consequences.
Low-cost renewable electricity combined with cheaper and longer-duration battery storage is making direct electrification highly attractive in some sectors (e.g., light-road transport) and more feasible in others (e.g., heavy-duty transport, short-haul shipping, aviation). Specifically, passenger electric vehicles (EVs) represent the majority of projected demand for batteries, with estimates suggesting they will account for ~70% of total installed battery capacity by 2030 (IEA, 2023).
At the same time, wider deployment of EVs reduces battery costs, further decreasing the storage costs for renewable energy in the power sector. Given current learning rates, this could drive a 60% reduction in battery costs by 2030 (Meldrum et al., 2023). As battery costs account for ~30% of the total cost of renewable power, this would bring forward cost parity points of new solar and wind energy, including storage, with new or existing gas (or coal) power generation.
Figure 1 illustrates this reinforcing feedback mechanism between EV deployment, renewable energy, and storage costs.
Cheaper batteries also provide cost-effective electricity storage to balance intermittent renewable energy supply and demand, encouraging homeowners to install batteries that charge at low rates during the night and provide power at times of peak demand during the day. Furthermore, declining costs of renewables boost the use of heat pumps in residential heating, further reducing the renewables’ cost due to learning and economies of scale.
In the mobility sector, cheaper and better-performing batteries, as well as advancing electric drivetrain technology, are increasing the competitiveness of electric trucks, bringing forward the point where they outcompete petrol or diesel trucks, forming another positive feedback mechanism between the transport and energy sectors.
Linked with advances in digitalization, this spurs decentralization of electricity generation. The impact of cheaper electrolyzers and renewable energy goes beyond the electricity sector, mobility, and home energy, creating new avenues for industries to decarbonize using green hydrogen and its derivatives.
For instance, green ammonia (produced from hydrogen with renewable energy) can be used for agricultural fertilizers, shipping fuel, and synthetic jet fuel in aviation, which are hard-to-abate industries. It can also be a storage option to facilitate load balancing in renewable electricity systems (Edmonds et al., 2022; Bouaboula et al., 2023). Green ammonia is already cost-competitive in fertilizer production, thanks also to its low transport costs either through pipelines or shipping (IEA, 2019). With economies of scale and learning, progress in green ammonia use for fertilizers could bring down the cost of green hydrogen for use in several other sectors.
Socioecological Systems: Food, Land Use, and Behavior Change
Food and land use is one of the key systems that can create tipping dynamics for accelerated decarbonization. Self-reinforcing feedback loops such as increasing returns and technological reinforcement can progressively transform an inadequate food system into a more sustainable one (Lenton et al., 2022; Fesenfeld et al., 2022; FOLU, 2021).
Social change in the form of widespread behavior changes towards lower waste, sustainable diets, and diversified protein sources can not only reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the agriculture sector but also create synergies for achieving multiple sustainable development goals, such as alleviating hunger, improving public health, averting biodiversity loss, and reducing the intensity of trade-offs between them (van Vuuren et al., 2018; Obersteiner et al., 2016; Leclère et al., 2020).
As illustrated in Figure 2, dietary behavior changes towards sustainable food consumption reduce agricultural land needs and hence the land pressure (Springmann et al., 2018). As the land pressure declines, fertilizer consumption is expected to decline, because the increasing need for crop- and grassland to supply the required food to a growing population has been the main driver of increasing fertilizer use in agriculture in the last five decades (Lu and Tian, 2017). Similarly, a declining land pressure is expected to increase the adoption of diversified and regenerative farming practices (Gosnell et al., 2019), as well as ecological restoration and associated carbon sequestration, leading to more rapid decarbonization in agriculture.
In climate-vulnerable, low-income economies, these feedbacks can also drive diversification of livelihoods, new economic opportunities, and other social benefits.
Social norms have been repeatedly shown to be a key driver of widespread dietary changes in model-based (Elliot, 2022; Eker et al., 2019) and experimental studies (Mollen et al., 2013; Sparkman and Walton, 2017). As more people adopt sustainable diets, the visibility of it will lead to a stronger perception of the sustainability norms, leading to more people adopting the norm, as illustrated by the positive feedback loop in Figure 2.
Since increased availability of plant-based meals at cafes was shown to affect the sales of them strongly (Garnett et al., 2019), public procurement of sustainable food is considered a strategic intervention to accelerate the adoption of new norms (IGS, 2023), and food labeling and certification in alternative food networks (Lenton et al., 2022) is key for facilitating market penetration of alternative proteins. Therefore, such triggers in society and policy can have cascading impacts on the transformation of food and land use systems.
Sociopolitical Systems: The Dynamics of Policy and Society
Political systems are often considered the context of positive tipping dynamics in the existing literature, as highlighted by Eder and Stadelmann-Steffen (2023), even though they can change and tip in a positive direction for decarbonization and sustainability, too. Here, we consider the policies and political system not as a static context but as part of dynamic co-evolutionary tipping mechanisms.
For instance, the interaction between society and policy can be key to tipping global carbon emissions by creating cascading effects through individual action, social conformity, public discourse, climate policy, and technological learning. Simulation results suggest that individual action is ineffectual unless the social credibility of costly behavioral change is high (Moore et al., 2022). Similarly, Mey and Lilliestam (2020) identify key variables that help in monitoring tipping dynamics in the interaction of society and politics, such as social acceptance of climate science, public support for and trust in government, civil engagement, participation in public consultations, and the number and share of citizens active in environmental NGOs.
Society affects policy and pushes for stronger climate policies in multiple ways. First, the adoption of niche technologies signals readiness for, and higher social acceptability of, wider policy change. Early cost reductions reinforce the policy ambition towards stimulating such technologies further, and coalitions of early adopters influence politics toward a more aggressive policy response (Schmidt and Sewerin, 2017).
Second, social movements affect policy, either in legislation or in agenda setting. Civic action preceding and during annual climate change conferences (COPs) and resistance to local fossil fuel projects have been able to cancel or suspend projects (Piggot, 2018; Temper et al., 2020) or created non-fossil-fuel energy policies (Hielscher et al., 2022). In a third and fundamental way, society influences policy through the election of politicians and policymakers. For instance, public risk perception has resulted in green voting after extreme climate events (Hazlett and Mildenberger, 2020; Hoffmann et al., 2022).
Policies, in turn, have a direct impact on society by creating an enabling environment for the adoption of low-carbon technologies and behaviors through financial support, infrastructure design, regulations, standards, and bans. Policies also have a secondary impact on society by signaling what is socially approved or disapproved and setting social norms (Hoff and Walsh, 2019).
The tipping of sociopolitical systems can also be triggered by public discourses that have cascading effects on public opinion, political priorities, policy-making, legitimacy, credibility, social norms, values, and mobilization (Bradford, 2016). For instance, the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the IPCC and Al Gore in 2007 marked a tipping point in climate change discourse, contributing to increased global awareness, strengthened political commitment, enhanced credibility for the IPCC, and catalyzed climate activism.
Policies can also create tipping cascades by affecting society through the political-economic system. The historical societal paradigm shift towards a global neoliberal capitalist economic system in the late 1970s is an intriguing example of a whole-society cascade of change, with the crisis of Keynesianism, the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, oil price shocks, and trade union disputes causing a shift in public opinion and providing the political opportunity for neoliberalism.
Managing Positive Tipping Cascades: Governance and Future Research
Intervention design for positive tipping should balance reinforcing and dampening feedback mechanisms to ensure that the positive feedback mechanisms are activated in a desired direction. Responding to what unfolds will surely need adaptive governance to avoid negative outcomes, especially for the most vulnerable and impacted groups. Before seeking to trigger tipping, care is needed to consider who can lose from it, involve all stakeholders, and put social safety nets in place.
To overcome the collective action problem and ensure a cooperative, polycentric governance that supports positive tipping cascades, various mechanisms offer promising signs: implementing co-benefits and co-evolution, neighborhood collaboration, transnational initiatives like city networks, coordination of goals, efforts and actions for mitigation and adaptation, bottom-up participation complementary to top-down global negotiations, and regulations and norms.
This manuscript presents examples of potential positive tipping cascades, which are distilled from the emerging literature on positive tipping dynamics. Future research can identify a more complete range of positive tipping cascades more systematically. Expert elicitation, systems mapping, and systematic literature reviews can facilitate delineation of cross-system interactions that can possibly enable and impede positive tipping cascades, as exemplified in Eker and Wilson (2022). Case studies of historical tipping dynamics, local decarbonization, or statistical analyses on time-series data cross-system connections can support the identification and understanding of these connections, whereas future-oriented modeling studies help analyze their potential to trigger positive tipping cascades.
Furthermore, a typology of cross-system interactions underlying positive tipping cascades would enhance the communication and prioritization of research efforts. Such a typology can categorize the identified interactions in terms of their scale (local, national, global), speed of change (days, years, decades), and the agents who can manage or participate in directing those interacting systems towards the tipping point.
Conclusion: Embracing the Power of Cross-System Interactions
Cross-system interactions within sociotechnical, socioecological, and sociopolitical domains hold immense potential to create positive tipping cascades that can amplify the impact of tipping interventions in each system. By harnessing the synergies between interconnected systems, we can unlock transformative pathways towards climate and sustainability goals.
This article has provided a comprehensive overview of the diverse feedback mechanisms and agents capable of setting these cascades in motion. From the reinforcing loops between electric vehicles and renewable energy to the cascading impacts of shifts in social norms and public policy, we have explored how cross-system dynamics can drive rapid, widespread change.
Importantly, we have also emphasized the need for polycentric governance and participatory approaches to ensure a just and equitable transition. By involving diverse stakeholders and considering potential negative impacts, we can harness the power of positive tipping cascades while mitigating unintended consequences.
Looking ahead, future research must continue to systematically identify and evaluate cross-system interactions, developing typologies to guide strategic interventions. Only by deepening our understanding of these complex, interconnected systems can we unleash the full transformative potential of positive tipping dynamics.
