Social ‘tipping points’ under climate/environmental change

There is growing recognition that climate change has the potential to trigger social ‘tipping points’, potentially involving abrupt (i.e. non-linear) increases in climate damages, even under smooth (i.e. linear) climate change. Whilst the notion of a ‘tipping point’ originated in the social sciences, in the last decade or so it has been widely used by climate scientists, referring in particular to strongly self-amplifying (positive feedback) dynamics in parts of the climate system [sensu Lenton et al. 2008]. We argue that reinvigorating the concept of social tipping points has considerable potential to help researchers understand the social impacts of climate change and consider their human consequences. Whilst feedback dynamics can also be important in social systems, here we review a broader phenomenology of social ‘tipping points’ that could give rise to abrupt changes e.g. in climate damages. We focus in particular on migration dynamics as the original example of ‘social tipping’ which can also be affected by climate change. We include the potential for the perception of climate change (as well as the actual experience of it) to trigger ‘social tipping’. We note how a lack of system resilience can increase the likelihood and magnitude of ‘social tipping’ driven by climate change, and scope out the potential for early warning signals of particular types of social tipping. We argue that in the developing world at least there is potential for social tipping points to be triggered by climate change long before potential climate tipping points unfold. Looking ahead, the application of network theory methods to social data provides a rapidly expanding opportunity to monitor and in some cases forewarn of social tipping.