Tipping towards positive social change

12 May 2022 10:30-12:00 CEST

Tipping towards positive social change

Join AIMES, Earth Commission, Future Earth and the WCRP Safe Landing Climates Lighthouse Activity for the social change-focused webinar in a series that aims to advance the knowledge about tipping elements, irreversibility, and abrupt changes in the Earth system. The event includes two presentations on socioeconomic tipping for achieving positive change.

Presentations

Social tipping dynamics – Ilona Otto (University of Graz)
What are the sensitive intervention points needed to make the green energy transition happen as quickly as possible? – Doyne Farmer (University of Oxford)
Q&A/ Discussion

Moderated by Jonathan Donges (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research).

Input collected can be found on the MIRO board. The event recording is provided below:

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Speakers

Prof. Ilona Otto
Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change, University of Graz

Ilona M. Otto holds the Professorship in Societal Impacts of Climate Change at the Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change, University of Graz. She leads a research group focusing on Social Complexity and System Transformation. The group’s ambition is to use complex science theory and novel research methods to analyse social dynamic processes and interventions that are likely to spark rapid social changes necessary to radically transform the interactions of human societies with nature and ecosystem services in the next 30 years. The last ten years she spent at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Prof. Otto is a social scientist by training. She uses various research methods including social surveys, case studies, behavioural experiments, and simulations in analysing problems related to global environment changes, development, adaptation and sustainability. Prof. Otto is a principal investigator in an EU Horizon 2020 Project CASCADES: Cascading climate risks: Towards adaptive and resilient European Societies. She also coordinates a newly founded Climate KIC Project REBOOST: A Boost for Rural Lignite Regions. She led a chapter on human health in the World Bank Report Turn Down the Heat: Confronting the New Climate Normal as well she led a Report on Modelling the Impact of Climate Change on Poverty at a Subnational Scale that was contracted by the World Bank. She is a dedicated university teacher as well as she occasionally she gives talks about climate change impacts and sustainability transformation to businesses and other stakeholder groups as well as to school children and young people.

Prof. Doyne Farmer
Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford

J. Doyne Farmer is Director of the Complexity Economics programme at
the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School,
Baillie Gifford Professor in the Mathematical Institute at the
University of Oxford, and an External Professor at the Santa Fe
Institute. His current research is in economics, including
agent-based modeling, financial instability and technological progress.
He was a founder of Prediction Company, a quantitative automated trading
firm that was sold to the United Bank of Switzerland in 2006. His past
research includes complex systems, dynamical systems theory, time series
analysis and theoretical biology. During the 1980s he was an
Oppenheimer Fellow and the founder of the Complex Systems Group at Los
Alamos National Laboratory. While a graduate student in the 1970s he
built the first wearable digital computer, which was successfully used
to predict the game of roulette.

All you need to know

This event is part of a series of online discussions aims to advance the knowledge about tipping elements, irreversibility, and abrupt changes in the Earth system. It supports efforts to increase consistency in treatment of tipping elements in the scientific community, develop a research agenda, and design joint experiments and ideas for a Tipping Element Model Intercomparison Project (TipMip).

This discussion series is a joint activity of the Analysis, Integration, and Modeling of the Earth System (AIMES) global research project of Future Earth, the Earth Commission Working Group 1 Earth and Human Systems Intercomparison Modelling Project (EHSMIP) under the Global Commons Alliance and the Safe Landing Climates Lighthouse Activity of World Climate Research Program (WCRP).

Organized by

Analysis, Integration, and Modeling of the Earth System (AIMES)

The Analysis, Integration, and Modeling of the Earth System (AIMES) project is an international network of Earth system scientists and scholars that seek to develop innovative, interdisciplinary ways to understand the complexity of the natural world and its interactions with human activities. AIMES is a global research project of Future Earth.

WCRP Safe Landing Climates Lighthouse Activity.

The Safe Landing Climates Lighthouse Activity is an exploration of the routes to “safe landing” spaces for human and natural systems. It will explore future pathways that avoid dangerous climate change while at the same time contributing to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including those of climate action, zero hunger, clean water and sanitation, good health and well-being, affordable and clean energy, and healthy ecosystems above and below water. The relevant time scale is multi-decadal to millennial.

Earth Commission

The Earth Commission is a major scientific assessment, hosted by Future Earth, to define a safe and just corridor for people and planet. The Commission will inform the creation of science-based targets, the “1.5-degree equivalents”, to help maintain and protect critical global commons – our shared climate, land, biodiversity, freshwater, atmosphere and oceans. The Earth Commission is an international team of leading natural and social scientists and five working groups of additional experts. It forms the scientific cornerstone of the Global Commons Alliance.

World Climate Research Programme

The World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) leads the way in addressing frontier scientific questions related to the coupled climate system — questions that are too large and too complex to be tackled by a single nation, agency or scientific discipline. Through international science coordination and partnerships, WCRP contributes to advancing our understanding of the multi-scale dynamic interactions between natural and social systems that affect climate.

Future Earth

Future Earth is a global network of scientists, researchers, and innovators collaborating for a more sustainable planet. Future Earth initiates and supports international collaboration between researchers and stakeholders to identify and generate the integrated knowledge needed for successful transformations towards societies that provide good and fair lives for all within a stable and resilient Earth system. Future Earth is the host of the Earth Commission.