Socio-environmental tipping points are situations where a minor pressure or change results in significant societal impacts due to systems-level processes such as feedback loops or network spreading. This growing interest is often related to concerns about nonlinear impacts from climate change, but is also prompted by a perception that broad, systems-level changes are needed to respond effectively to the scale and speed of the climate crisis.
One challenge in understanding socio-environmental tipping points is that they are inherently very complex, involving interactions between physical and social processes that can be difficult to monitor and anticipate. A comprehensive understanding of them requires integrating knowledge from different fields of expertise in ways that can confound traditional research approaches.
I was part of an interdisciplinary team of researchers in the U.S. who were interested in the potential for sea level rise to create socio-environmental tipping points in coastal communities. As we began to discuss the concept, we quickly found ourselves “stranded in complexity*:” we struggled to clearly define what the system boundaries were, which scales and processes were most relevant, and what characteristics were of greatest concern.
We decided that the first step needed to be developing a common conceptual framework so that we could organize our thoughts and identify how our different areas of expertise could contribute. We developed a framework that can be used to characterize a socio-environmental system and identify the system characteristics that could lead to tipping points. After applying this framework in the coastal U.S., we were searching for other interesting systems on which we could test our approach.
The Kiiminkijoki river catchment provides an interesting case study for this purpose. The river is a free-flowing river in a near-natural state, but peatland drainage and intensive forestry in the catchment has resulted in deteriorating water quality and the loss of the river’s salmon population. There is significant local interest in restoring water quality in the river, but no easy solutions in doing this.
Experiencing changing land management, conservation, and restoration of peatlands can all help to reduce loads of pollutants into the river, making it a better habitat for migratory fish. However, these changes must balance the economic needs of rural communities as well as private landowner rights, as a large portion of the catchment is privately owned. On top of these challenges, the catchment is rapidly warming and experience changing precipitation patterns, which impacts environmental conditions and the ways in which farmers and foresters manage land. Finally, national and EU regulations regarding carbon sequestration and biodiversity protection are likely to impact the catchment in ways that are not yet clear.
In January, we convened a working session that brought together researchers from a range of disciplines to develop a socio-environmental systems inventory for the Kiiminkijoki catchment. We used this inventory to identify several prospective socio-environmental tipping points. Some of these tipping points were positive changes. For example, a basin coordinator position for the Kiiminkijoki was recently established. This person can serve as a bridge, enhancing communication and coordination across different stakeholders and geographic regions of the basin. While this position on its own does not necessarily constitute a tipping point, it creates a “hub” that connects different actors in the system and creates a potential for knowledge, perceptions, and action taken in the basin to spread more easily.
Similarly, participants outlined how land management and restoration activities could be coupled with public awareness campaigns to promote broader interest in these measures, creating a feedback loop that drives wider adoption and greater water quality benefits. However, other tipping points presented risks to be managed. For example, the relationship between species health and water quality values, such as nutrient concentrations and temperature, often exhibit thresholds. These thresholds create a situation where a small change (for example, in river temperature) leads to a large decline in species survival. However, there is significant uncertainty about the specific value of these thresholds and how they interact with each other.
Looking forward, we plan to use the tipping points we identified in the working session to structure research proposals that investigate socio-environmental dynamics in the catchment in more detail. While the working session identified the general mechanisms by which tipping points could occur, there are still many questions about their likelihood, impacts, and what actions could be taken to encourage or discourage them.
We aim to use the conceptual framework to target data collection activities and develop computational models to explore different scenarios of change within the catchment. Ultimately, this work can not only support land use management within the Kiiminkijoki. It can also provide insights into socio-environmental tipping points in other systems facing the combined pressures of climatic, regulatory, economic and cultural change.
*This term was coined by Marjolijn Haasnoot of Deltares
Writer of this blog post is Associate Professor Julie Shortridge from Virginia Tech.
The Exploring resilience blog discusses the current themes of research, teaching and development of resilience, i.e., crisis resistance and deepens knowledge about the management of global change, and possible solutions to the wicked problems of sustainability. The authors are researchers and experts in the field, and members of the cooperation networks of the University of Oulu’s FRONT PROFI7 research programme.