World nears climate tipping point

The consequences of climate tipping points are almost too big to imagine. The thought that, over the course of a few decades, the Amazon rainforest could become a savannah, or coral reefs could become extinct, seems like science fiction. Given how many people have been lulled into a false sense of control over the environment, it is perhaps even harder to grasp that incremental changes in temperature and rainfall irreversibly reorganise planetary-scale systems.

- JESSICA SEDDON MANJANA MILKOREIT

But data from evermore advanced Earth system models indicate that these tipping points are fast approaching or may, in the case of coral reefs and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, already be in the rear-view mirror. And it is not at all clear that climate interventions could make the problem go away.

Institutions at all levels are not prepared to manage such possibilities. The current processes for synthesising climate science into policy recommendations are stronger for global-scale changes than they are for the local insights that a city planner in Jakarta, a finance minister in Brazil, or a farmer in the Sahel needs. That is because these processes are better equipped to highlight the areas of agreement than they are to map the terrain of uncertainty.

Most infrastructure plans, policy frameworks, financial markets, and risk-management strategies do not recognise the possibility of crossing climate tipping points, which are foreseeable but not predictable. This makes it difficult to weigh investments in immediate needs against the future effects of such spending.

The lack of capacity to respond to climate tipping points must be addressed now. Reducing the risk of crossing them poses a global collective-action problem, especially because they cover different domains. For example, many factors contribute to coral reef collapse, including global warming, ocean acidification, ecosystem loss, pollution runoff, and overfishing. And yet climate science, biodiversity research, pollution monitoring, and resource management are consigned to separate silos, leaving nobody responsible for monitoring and mitigating tipping dynamics.