Programme

Monday 30 June 2025 15:00 – 17:00

Governance Implications of Earth System Tipping Points

Convenors: Manjana Milkoreit (University of Oslo, Norway),
Viktoria Spaiser (University of Leeds, UK),
Sebastian Villasante (University Santiago de Compostela, Spain)

While public attention to Earth system tipping points (ESTP) has grown, policies, institutions or norms that address this distinct set of challenges do not exist yet. Arguing that a governance agenda for tipping processes is needed, and that agenda setting efforts might be underway, this session addresses fundamental questions regarding governance for a novel issue: What should be the objectives and goals of ESTP governance? Which principles and logics should guide governance efforts related to ESTPs? Who should be engaged in ESTP governance and are new actors/institutions needed at the scale of tipping elements? Who should fund ESTP governance initiatives? Contributions can explore these questions either with all or specific tipping systems in mind. Papers could focus on a specific governance actor (e.g., the EU, the financial sector, a national or sub-national government, an NGO) or ask how an existing institution like the UNFCCC could address tipping risks.

Monday 30 June 2025 15:00 – 17:00

Tipping Points and National Security – Closing the Blind Spot

Facilitator: Laurie Laybourn (Chatham House, UK)

Tipping points pose profound security risks. Yet they are not routinely included in the risk assessment and management of major threats by national and international security institutions. These threats go far beyond traditional defence to encompass risks to human and ecological security. Building on the report released by Exeter and Chatham House in October 2024, this session will bring together policymakers from the security community with Earth system scientists and governance experts to discuss an agenda for planetary-scale security.

Tuesday 1 July 2025 11:00 – 13:00

Tipping Points and Finance: Risks, Drivers and Intervention Points

Convenors: Lydia Marsden (University College London, UK), Nicola Ranger (University of Oxford, UK)

Our economic and financial systems are embedded within the Earth system. The collapse of parts of the natural world could lead to systemically relevant risks with profound implications for macroeconomic and financial stability. At the same time, the role of financial activities, norms and incentives in driving tipping dynamics warrants critical examination. Can the financial actors and policies be leverage points for reducing the threat of tipping points? This session will explore how economic and financial systems are exposed to cascading risks from climate and ecological tipping points. Simultaneously, it will address how parts of the international financial system may contribute to environmental tipping points by investing in high-risk sectors, imposing structural incentives for ecologically damaging activities, and other amplification channels. The session invites conceptual, empirical, and policy contributions that respond to the above, particularly on the following topics: 1) Mechanisms through which financial practices accelerate tipping point risks. 2) The risks that climate and ecological tipping points pose to economies and financial systems. 3) Strategies and considerations for aligning financial flows within planetary boundaries. This session aims to bridge interdisciplinary perspectives, fostering dialogue between economists, natural scientists, and policymakers.

Tuesday 1 July 2025 11:00 – 13:00

Planetary Solvency

Facilitator: Sandy Trust (Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, UK)

Planetary Solvency is a civilizational risk management framework that leverages well established risk management principles, systemic risk assessment techniques and cutting edge science to provide clear concise risk led communication to policyholders. This session will take attendees through the Planetary Solvency framework and the RESILIENCE principles before asking them to complete a Planetary Solvency assessment.

Tuesday 1 July 2025 11:00 – 13:00

Routes to managing tipping risks beyond 1.5°C

Facilitators: James Dyke (University of Exeter, UK), Laurie Laybourn (Chatham House, UK)

Efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C now depend on the concept of overshoot, which is increasingly relying on carbon removal to lower temperatures by 2100. What if this does not work? What if increasing climate impacts beyond 1.5°C of warming splinters the international consensus on how best to respond to human-caused climate change? The potential for negative social tipping points loom beyond 1,5°C. This workshop will address the risks associated with overshoot. We will explore how tipping point risk assessments can engage key stakeholders and collaboratively develop new narratives and communication strategies about climate change risks, as well as identify opportunities for reinforcing positive social tipping to produce rapid climate action in overshoot scenarios.

Tuesday 1 July 2025 16:00 – 18:00

Earth System Tipping Points, Human Mobility and Governance

Convenors: Ben Hudson (University of Exeter, UK), Ricardo Safra De Campos (University of Exeter, UK)

The escalating impacts of climate change, marked by increasingly extreme weather events and the approach of critical tipping points, have the potential to reshape global patterns of human mobility. Emerging evidence underscores the urgency of addressing these challenges, emphasising the interconnectedness of climate systems and the risk of irreversible changes, in locations around the world. This session will explore the cascading effects of climate- and socially-induced tipping points on human mobility, focusing on the dynamics of forced and voluntary migration, immobility, displacement, and planned relocation. It will distinguish between short-term, reactive displacements caused by fast-onset events like floods and cyclones, and longer-term, anticipatory migration driven by slow-onset changes such as sea-level rise or prolonged rainfall declines. Crucially, the session will address critical questions about autonomous mobility responses to tipping points, the appropriateness of viewing mobility as a form of adaptive response, and the responsibilities of local and national governments in assisting individuals to relocate to safer areas and establish more secure livelihoods, as well as supporting those who may remain in place. By examining the intersection of climate tipping points, human mobility, and governance, this session aims to not only shine a light on this crucial topic but to also identify effective strategies for reducing vulnerabilities and fostering resilience in at-risk communities.

Tuesday 1 July 2025 16:00 – 18:00

Human Rights and Climate Tipping Points

Facilitators: Dave-Inder Comar (Leiden University, Netherlands/ Just Atonement), Elisa Morgera (University of Strathclyde, UK & UN Special Rapporteur on Climate Change and Human Rights)

This session will address the intersection of international human rights law and climate change tipping points. Multiple UN human rights bodies have now affirmed that a variety of human rights are threatened by climate change impacts this century, including civil, political, economic, cultural, and social rights. At this time, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the International Court of Justice are also examining the obligations of states to address climate change under international law with reference to human rights principles. Because of the scale of associated impacts, tipping points present severe and possibly existential challenges to the international human rights framework. In this session, we will consider and reflect on the challenges presented to human rights from tipping points, and how human rights law can be utilized to manage and address impacts caused by tipping points. Points of discussion could include: 1) Possible tools of the international human rights framework to galvanize efforts to limit warming and avoid tipping points where possible; 2) ensuring access to accurate and actionable information with respect to climate change tipping points; 3) the impacts of tipping points on political, civil, economic, social, and cultural rights, including rights protected by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Cultural and Social Rights.

Wednesday 2 July 2025 11:00 – 13:00

Earth System Tipping Risks: Testing the Limits of International Environmental Law

Convenors: Yulia Yamineva (University of Eastern Finland), Haomiao Du (Utrecht University, Netherlands), Edward Brans (Utrecht University, Netherlands), Louis Kotzé (Wageningen University, Netherlands)

The risks associated with crossing climate tipping points potentially present unprecedented challenges for international environmental law due to their scale, complex temporal dynamics, and non-linear characteristics. Climate tipping processes often occur over vast geographic scales, frequently spanning continents or even the entire planet. They challenge the legal field’s capacity to envision plausible, long-term scenarios and solutions to the governance challenges resulting from earth system transformations. These processes are also marked by intricate causalities, where minor interventions can lead to significant impacts and cascading effects. This session explores both the potential and the limitations of international environmental law in governing complex phenomena such as climate tipping points. We ask: how must international environmental law transform to maintain critical planetary functions? How does the non-linear nature of tipping points complicate the legal assessment of causality, and what are the implications for climate litigation? What would such a transformation imply for the structure and core concepts of international law, including its established principles, practices, institutions and treaties? How can international law be refocused on planetary concerns amidst geopolitical shifts and increasing emphasis on national sovereignty? What do the risks posed by tipping points mean for discussions about the rights of future generations and non-human life on Earth, and how could these discussions be located in international environmental law?

Wednesday 2 July 2025 11:00 – 13:00

More Games, Fewer PDFs? Effective Methods for Engaging Policymakers on Tipping Points

Facilitators: Laurie Laybourn (Chatham House, UK), Manjana Milkoreit (University of Oslo, Norway)

This workshop pursues three objectives: (1) exploring the possibilities and benefits of different science-policy engagement approaches on Earth system tipping points, including scenario-based exercises and serious games; (2) identifying principles/guidelines for the design of effective and impactful engagement processes; (3) building a network of researchers, communicators and policymakers to foster future science-policy interactions on tipping points, e.g., linking them to live and proposed projects. The co-conveners and other participants will provide inputs based their experience creating, conducting, or participating in policymaker engagement on Earth system tipping points at the national and international scale. A structured discussion invites participants (including researchers, policymakers, and science communicators) to reflect on their experience and challenges related to communication, learning/meaning making and risk perceptions regarding tipping processes.

Wednesday 2 July 2025 16:00 – 18:00

The Thin Red Line: Tipping Points, Climate and Conflict

Convenors: James R. Watson (Oregon State University, USA), Ethan Addicott (University of Exeter, UK)

The 21st century has witnessed abrupt and irreversible changes in the Earth system, with cascading climate impacts that threaten interconnected environmental and human systems. Similarly, behavioural shifts and new equilibria in international relations have spawned in response to changes in current and anticipated distributions of Earth’s resources. This session will explore the interconnected dynamics of two related tipping points on policy-relevant outcomes in complex socio-ecological systems: climate and conflict tipping points. The former will highlight how regime shifts in environmental systems can result in different incentives for conflict or cooperation over access to Earth’s resources. The latter will focus on the consequences of irreversible changes to conflict incentives and payoffs on resource abundance and use. We will also examine “Constructive Conflict” arising from climate change: how conflict can lead to positive tipping points within social-ecological systems, ultimately fostering more sustainable and just outcomes. Topics to be covered include: 1) Conflict as a social-ecological tipping point; 2) Constructive conflict as a positive tipping point; 3) Tipping points in natural capital. This session aims to foster a transdisciplinary dialogue that bridges new perspectives in economics, ecology, international relations and complex (Earth) systems science to better understand sustainable management of the environment and conflict/ cooperation in social-ecological systems.

Wednesday 2 July 2025 16:00 – 18:00

What if… Geopolitical Knock-On Effects

Facilitator: Matthias Honegger (Center for Future Generations, Belgium)

The prospects of tipping points and their serious implications for social, political, and environmental security raise many questions intersecting natural science, ethics, and political science. In this session, we convene an interdisciplinary panel of experts and policy practitioners to discuss whether knock-on effects could become disruptive to social and political stability and security. We will start by exploring scenarios of disruptive change, such as, arctic sea ice, sub-arctic permafrost, Greenland ice sheets, the Amazon dieback, the collapse of the west Antarctica ice, or an acceleration in AMOC slowdown. We will explore key questions. What information would decision-makers, civil protection forces, and private individuals want to have if or when such a disruption was diagnosed? What resilience and preparedness pathways and measures would appear desirable? How would we go from diagnosis to response? Would we face demands for interventions via solar geoengineering? What is known about the effects of Stratospheric Aerosol Injection if used in such circumstances? Could political decisions under duress and the climate response make things better or worse?

Wednesday 2 July 2025 16:00 – 18:00

Short-Lived Climate Forcers and Tipping Points

Facilitator: Tom Grylls (Clean Air Fund, UK)

This session will highlight the importance of tackling short-lived climate forcers (associated with short-lived climate pollutants and super pollutants) to prevent negative tipping points. We will spotlight the impacts of short-lived climate forcers (e.g. black carbon and methane) that drive tipping points. This includes exploring their impacts on regional warming over tipping point areas, forcing of black carbon on snow and ice such as in the Arctic, and the impacts of black carbon and other aerosols on monsoon shift in India and West Africa. We will also spotlight the emissions of short-lived climate forcers caused by tipping point effects, such as black carbon and tropospheric ozone precursor emissions from wildfires, and methane release due to permafrost loss. By highlighting short-lived climate forcers such as black carbon, which contributes to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths each year, we will draw the link between climate tipping points and human health in most-affected communities. We aim to galvanise a discussion on how short-lived climate forcers are accounted for within climate mitigation and global climate processes, including by covering climate metrics (CO2e, GTP, GWP, GWP* and others) and the status of different pollutants within UNFCCC, UNECE, UNESCAP and other processes.

Monday 30 June 2025 15:00 – 17:00

Earth Systems Tipping Points and Risks – An Overview

Convenors: Joshua Buxton (Global Systems Institute, University of Exeter, UK), Sina Loriani (The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany), David Armstrong McKay (University of Sussex, UK)

We invite contributors to share the latest in research on global to regional-scale Earth system tipping points across a range of Earth system domains, including the cryosphere, ocean, and biosphere. Contributions may focus on advances in either empirical evidence for or modelling of past and present tipping point dynamics and their biophysical impacts, as well as tipping point interactions that could lead to ‘tipping cascades’ and the effect of warming overshoot on tipping points. This session will align with the proposed ‘Status of Earth System Tipping Points’ chapter in The Global Tipping Points Report 2025, which will provide an update on what’s new in biophysical tipping point science and any changes to the assessments made in Section 1 in the Global Tipping Points Report 2023.

Monday 30 June 2025 15:00 – 17:00

Exploring Risk Assessment for Climate Tipping Points in Europe

Facilitators: Rosa M. Roman-Cuesta (Joint Research Centre, Belgium), Frank Dentener (Joint Research Centre, Belgium), Manjana Milkoreit (University of Oslo,Norway)

This workshop explores methodological approaches for conducting tailored risk assessment for Earth System tipping points affecting Europe. In Europe, preparatory governance of the impacts of tipping points are relevant for policies focusing on disaster risk management, as well as climate change impacts and adaptation, each of which count on their own risk assessment methodologies. The workshop will discuss the relevance of spatial and temporal scales and uncertainties of Earth system tipping point for risk assessments, and the implications for European and national governance frameworks. The workshop will bring together academics, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the European Environment Agency (EEA), the University of Oslo, as well as other relevant actors, to discuss methodological guidance in support of future Tipping Point Risk Assessments in Europe.

Tuesday 1 July 2025 11:00 – 13:00

Tipping Points in the Biosphere

Convenors: Milena Holmgren (Wageningen University, Netherlands); Ronny Rotbarth (University of Freiburg, Germany), Isobel Parry (Global Systems Institute, University of Exeter, UK), Joe Clarke (Global Systems Institute, University of Exeter, UK)

Boreal forests and tropical forests are the two largest biomes on Earth. Extreme weather and disturbance events (such as, record heatwaves, wildfires, and permafrost collapse) erode ecosystem resilience increasing the risk of boreal-tundra and tropical forest-savanna shifts. The objective of this session is to synthesize the current understanding on the resilience of boreal and tropical forests as possible tipping elements of the Earth system to climate extremes and their interactions with local perturbations. We aim to analyse if these biomes are shifting gradually or may change abruptly to new climate conditions and disturbance regimes. Such synthesis can support the identification of tipping points and measures to increase system adaptability and resilience. We aim to combine current and historical perspectives on these interactions. We thus welcome a diverse group of speakers from the natural and social sciences to analyse the stewardship and measures needed to keep in these biomes within safe operating spaces. Global changes in such biomes can considerably alter their ability to store and sequester carbon, regulate climate, provide habitat for wild species, and maintain traditional people’s livelihoods and provisioning services to society.

Tuesday 1 July 2025 11:00 – 13:00

Assessing Systemic and Cascading Risks of Earth System Tipping Points for People

Convenors: Viktoria Spaiser (University of Leeds, UK); Steven Lade (The Australian National University)

There are still many gaps in understanding the potential impacts on humans of breaching Earth system tipping points, even for direct impacts. But complexity science has taught us that large-scale disruptive events such as breached tipping points are likely to have not only direct and some indirect impacts, but impacts that compound, interact and cascade resulting in complex, systemic risks. In this session we want to explore various approaches to studying and understanding such systemic and cascading risks, whether through advanced modelling techniques or through alternative approaches such as storylines and other forms of systemic risks assessment. We also want to focus not only on economic impacts that can be quantified through monetization, but also on wider societal and political impacts, such as social unrests, political instability, state failure, conflict, mental health crisis due to trauma from ecological disaster or displacement etc. Could these economic, societal and political dynamics develop a negative social tipping dynamic and what would that mean for our efforts to prevent Earth system tipping points and govern their impacts? Furthermore we want to better understand the complex interaction patterns between these direct and indirect impacts. With the session we want then to try to draw conclusions of how national or regional (climate) risk assessments need to be updated to take into account Earth system tipping points and the systemic and cascading risks that they entail.

Tuesday 1 July 2025 11:00 – 13:00

TIPMIP Action Workshop

Tbc

Tuesday 1 July 2025 16:00 – 18:00

Tipping Points in the Cryosphere: Risks, Governance & Finance

Convenors: Joshua Buxton (Global Systems Institute, University of Exeter, UK), Donovan Dennis (The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany)

We invite contributions investigating cryosphere tipping points at a variety of scales (from local to global/ice sheet-wide), as well as the potential impacts of crossing these tipping points. We particularly welcome submissions which advance the broader understanding of the state-of-the-art in cryospheric tipping science and risks through the use of models and observational data of ice sheets, glaciers, and permafrost. Finally we encourage speakers to consider the impacts and risks of transgressing these tipping points, as well as potential governance implications, while recognising the diverse time-scales of the incumbent processes.

Tuesday 1 July 2025 16:00 – 18:00

Developing Metrologically Robust Observational Systems for Earth System Tipping Points

Convenors: Emma Woolliams (National Physical Laboratory, UK); Sarah Bohndiek (Advanced Research and Invention Agency, UK); Valerie Livina (National Physical Laboratory, UK)

This session will explore the design, development and use of observational networks, sensors and instruments to monitor Earth systems approaching a tipping point. A key focus will be on ensuring metrological robustness of the observations, i.e., assessing uncertainties, performing calibration and validation activities, and comparing observational systems with each other and with models. We also welcome submissions relating to the use of models to determine which/when/where observations are needed to provide early warning signals of upcoming tipping.

Tuesday 1 July 2025 16:00 – 18:00

Report Case Study: AMOC / SPG

Facilitators: Jesse Abrams (Global Systems Institute, University of Exeter), Henk Dijkstra (Utrecht University, Netherlands)

The second Global Tipping Points report will be published in 2025 to coincide with COP 30, taking place in November in Belém, Brazil. As part of the report, a team of international scientists are writing case studies on three key elements of the Earth system. These case studies will bring to life how tipping point risks impact these spheres, and how positive tipping points can be triggered to bring about a transition to a just and regenerative future. We invite you to join us to share progress on these case studies to-date and to help shape them as we move forwards. We value your input and hope you can join us.

Wednesday 2 July 2025 11:00 – 13:00

Climate Model Simulations of Tipping Processes in TIPMIP and CMIP7

Convenors: Gabi Hegerl (University of Edinburgh, UK), Bette Otto-Bliesner (National Centre for Atmospheric Research, USA), Colin Jones (National Centre for Atmospheric Science, University of Leeds, UK)

This session will revisit and refine a range of planned tipping point simulations and analysis. With several interested researchers present at the conference, we aim to get feedback on different modelling protocols. Several strategies are being proposed, which address tipping point risks and consequences with both full Earth system models (ESM), as well as with ESMs of intermediate complexity. Experiment protocols broadly cover the topics; ‘see if it happens’ simulations that investigate if, and at what global warming level, tipping points are triggered in models; ‘make it happen’ simulations, where external forcing or perturbations are applied to models with the aim of inducing specific tipping points, enabling evaluation of the model processes triggering the tip, the forcing level required, and the consequences of the triggered event, and ‘it has happened’ simulations, where regional tipping event consequences are prescribed in model (e.g. major ice sheet loss; poleward migration of the boreal forest, Amazon forest loss). The global and regional consequences of these prescribed events can then be assessed in the ESMs. We seek presentations and discussion on experimental design, analysis of ongoing simulations, observational and paleo data to evaluate simulations, and the use of such simulations for early warning.

Wednesday 2 July 2025 11:00 – 13:00

Agroecological Tipping Points

Convenors: Simon Willcock (Rothamsted Research, UK); Tarje Nissen-Meyer (University of Exeter, UK / Earth Rover Program); Kirsty Tooke (Rothamsted Research, UK)

Agroecosystems typify degraded ecological systems. Agricultural soils and the crop systems they support are simplified, homogenised structures, with reduced capacities for biodiversity support. Thus, they have fewer internal feedback loops when compared to more pristine ecosystems. The reduced number of internal balancing feedbacks results in a reduced ability to reconfigure in the face of stress, resulting in lower resilience and greater vulnerability to local failures. Understanding the rates and scales of tipping points in agroecosystems is a vital missing piece of knowledge, hindering the extent to which management practices exacerbate or relieve these stresses and the achievement of local and global sustainability goals. For example, the UK’s 25-year Environment Plan highlights the need to “improve our understanding of soil condition and resilience”, as well as to enhance “natural resilience to pests and diseases” and build “resilience against the extreme weather associated with climate change”. This session aims to fill this gap – collating knowledge of declining resilience in agroecosystems, fold bifurcations across scales and the spatial reorganisations anticipated under Turing bifurcations. Bringing this research together in this session will help influence policy (particularly in the UK). Based on this session, we aim to write a policy brief to be presented to Defra by Professor Willcock (who sits on Defra’s Social Science Expert Group).

Wednesday 2 July 2025 11:00 – 13:00

Developing Bioabilities

Convenors: Andrea Mubi Brighenti (University of Trento, Italy)

We propose the notion of bioability as the subjective correlate to biodiversity. Bioability entails the capacity to maximize the forms and patterns of life within given ecosystems. Cutting across the natural and social sciences, the bioability approach opens up a field for research and intervention, which focuses on the imaginational and aspirational dimensions of terrestrial politics. In the context of increased awareness of climate tipping points, developing bioabilities help advancing experimental practices in ecological conversion. The session is understood as a panel discussion that interrelates earth system science with social theory and environmental ethics. It includes case studies, cross-cultural comparative analysis, and critical reflexivity. Examples and visions for developing everyday and systemic bioabilities are welcome.

Wednesday July 2025 11:00 – 13:00

Report Case Study: Amazon

Facilitators: Chris Boulton (University of Exeter), Patricia Pinho (The Amazon Environmental Research Institute)

The second Global Tipping Points report will be published in 2025 to coincide with COP 30, taking place in November in Belém, Brazil. As part of the report, a team of international scientists are writing case studies on three key elements of the Earth system. These case studies will bring to life how tipping point risks impact these spheres, and how positive tipping points can be triggered to bring about a transition to a just and regenerative future. We invite you to join us to share progress on these case studies to-date and to help shape them as we move forwards. We value your input and hope you can join us.

Wednesday 2 July 2025 16:00 – 18:00

Forecasting & Governing Tipping Points in the SPG, AMOC and the Greenland Ice Sheet

Convenors: Reyk Börner (Utrecht University, Netherlands), Henk Dijkstra (Utrecht University, Netherlands), Amber Boot (Utrecht University, Netherlands), Swinda Falkena (Utrecht University, Netherlands), Manjana Milkoreit (University of Oslo, Norway), Richard Wood (Met Office, UK)

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), Sub Polar Gyre (SPG) and Greenland Ice Sheet are central climate tipping elements due to their global influence and complex interaction with other Earth system tipping elements. Intricate feedbacks between the AMOC and relatively fast-scale processes like the SPG circulation, oceanic convection, and sea ice formation imply that abrupt AMOC shifts could occur on decadal timescales, with severe impacts. A substantial decline or even collapse of the AMOC before the year 2100 cannot be ruled out. This calls for an urgent incorporation of AMOC, SPG and Greenland Ice Sheet tipping risks in climate adaptation and mitigation strategies. We invite scientists, policymakers, opinion leaders and stakeholders to gather for the latest scientific update on these issues, guided by a critical assessment of uncertainties. Contributions may explore the drivers, impacts, and advances towards robust early warning of tipping, drawing from modelling, observations and theoretical studies. We also invite contributions on policy and governance measures that could address risks and the associated (geo) political dynamics. Papers could address governance efforts at different scales (global, regional, national); who should be engaged in such policymaking and how this relates to the existing political landscape related to climate change.

Wednesday 2 July 2025 16:00 – 18:00

Early Warning Signals for Tipping Points: From Detection to Action

Convenors: Ruth Chapman (University of Copenhagen, Denmark), Florian Diekert (University of Augsburg, Germany), Paul Ritchie (University of Exeter, UK)

Tipping points play an increasingly prominent role in the assessment of potential risks and opportunities under ongoing climate change. The identification and analysis of these events has motivated joint research across fields such as climatology, sociology, and mathematics. The development of early warning signals to anticipate approaching tipping points constitutes a particularly important advance in our monitoring capabilities, physical understanding, and governance response. Investigating the inherently complex processes of interest under the scope of dynamical systems theory has yielded indicators of system stability applicable to a wide range of potential negative and positive tipping points. In some applications, system specific indicators have proven to be effective in anticipating abrupt transitions. Yet, despite scientific advances in monitoring and detecting early warning signals (EWS) of imminent tipping points in social-ecological systems, the application of EWS in decision-making and management has been limited. This session welcomes contributions from recent developments of early warning signal methods to applications that check for early warning signals in Earth Systems and Socio-Ecological systems, including positive tipping points. We will discuss different approaches for operationalizing EWS in decision-making and will showcase potential solutions to long-standing challenges in EWS interpretation and application.

Wednesday 2 July 2025 16:00 – 18:00

Report Case Study: Coral Reefs

Facilitators: Paul Pearce-Kelly (Zoological Society of London, UK), Chris Yesson (Zoological Society of London, UK)

The second Global Tipping Points report will be published in 2025 to coincide with COP 30, taking place in November in Belém, Brazil. As part of the report, a team of international scientists are writing case studies on three key elements of the Earth system. These case studies will bring to life how tipping point risks impact these spheres, and how positive tipping points can be triggered to bring about a transition to a just and regenerative future. We invite you to join us to share progress on these case studies to-date and to help shape them as we move forwards. We value your input and hope you can join us.

Monday 30 June 2025 15:00 – 17:00

Econometric and Agent-Based Modelling Approaches to PTPs / Modelling PTPs

Convenors: Jean-Francois Mercure (University of Exeter), Jonathan Donges (The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research)

Econometric and agent-based modelling approaches can play a crucial role in understanding and modelling positive tipping point dynamics. These methodologies can be deployed in a wide range of context, from renewable energy transitions to sustainable food systems. We invite submissions to explore this growing field of research.

Monday 30 June 2025 15:00 – 17:00

Community Engagement and Accelerated Climate Action

Convenors: William Solecki (City University of New York, USA), Peter Lefort (University of Exeter, UK)

Recent climate change adaptation and mitigation research presses for the need to dramatically accelerate transformative action via policy regime shifts. At the local scale, meaningful community engagement in the climate action decision making process is often seen as a key mechanism to achieve these goals. While empirical evidence highlights the linkages between community engagement and more equitable climate policy responses and outcomes, understanding of the precise connections between community engagement, accelerated climate action, and positive social tipping points remains limited. In particular, there is a need for better understanding of how different engagement pathways link with root, context, and proximate drivers of positive social tipping points, why some engagement strategies are meaningful in some communities but not others, what role community resilience, adaptive capacity and networking play in this process, what might be engagement-related early ‘warning’ signals of policy system transitions, and how new engagement strategies or initiatives can be rapidly developed, assessed, and implemented. This proposed session examines the linkages between community engagement and positive social tipping points from a variety of vantage points including the presentation of new empirical research from both the Global South and the Global North, assessment of the current state of knowledge and identification of research gaps, and review of methodological breakthroughs, such as use of AI/ML, that advance case study robustness and allow analysis of a larger number of community engagement cases.

Monday 30 June 2025 15:00 – 17:00

Positive Tipping Points for Business and Civil Society

Facilitators: Moritz Spielberger (World Wildlife Fund, Germany), Franziska Gaupp (University of Osnabrück/ The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany)

This workshop will introduce the concept of positive tipping points and co-create a positive tipping points process for behavioural change with participants. It will start with a presentation of learnings from past positive tipping points co-creation workshops in business and civil society contexts. In the second part, participants will be led through a positive tipping points process related to behavioural change as tipping element, exploring tipping conditions within individuals as well as social environments.

Monday 30 June 2025 15:00 – 17:00

Leading Real Change

Facilitator: Jaqueline Kerr (Leading Real Change)

This workshop empowers corporate sustainability leaders to reframe Scope 3 emissions as an opportunity for transformative change. Through interactive exercises and evidence-based tools, participants will co-create actionable strategies to engage stakeholders, activate networks, and scale solutions across sectors. The session focuses on leveraging collaboration and systems thinking to achieve measurable progress on sustainability goals.

Monday 30 June 2025 15:00 – 17:00

Communicating Earth System Tipping Points

Convenors: Margot Hurlbert (Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy), David Tabara (Global Climate Forum)

Getting Earth system tipping points (ESTP) communication right will be increasingly important. Not engendering paralysis and fear, but corrective and positive change, will require careful framing that acknowledges group based identity, values, agendas and the current polarized social milieu. Getting communication right creates the reflective space for social and interdisciplinary learning, capacity building, cooperation and global governance that could address ESTPs. Ultimately, communication creates the window of opportunity for the policy change of preventing and mitigating ESTPs. This interactive session will draw on presenter and audience participation in framing early warning systems, new warning systems, and response systems to the uncertainty and special dynamics of ESTP including AMOC collapse and permafrost loss.

Tuesday 1 July 2025 11:00 – 13:00

From Theory to Real-World Application: Empirical Insights on Positive Tipping Points and Interventions (Part 1: Data)

Convenors: Tatiana Filatova (Delft University of Technology, Netherlands), Claudia R. Binder (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland)

Tipping points represent thresholds where small, targeted actions trigger significant systemic changes, driven by self-reinforcing feedback. Positive tipping points (PTP) for accelerating sustainability transitions offer a new perspective for addressing urgent social-ecological and socio-technical challenges. While the theoretical foundations of PTPs are growing, there is a notable lack of empirical understanding of how specific interventions enable these change dynamics in societies and how they are sustained across diverse contexts. Key questions persist about how feedback mechanisms function in practice, which interventions prove most effective, and how tipping dynamics vary across complex systems like, e.g., energy and food systems or climate adaptation. This session invites contributions focusing on the empirical study of PTPs, e.g., data allowing for anticipating PTPs and the role of interventions therein. We aim to address critical questions, including but not limited to: empirical identification of feedback loops and PTPs; design and evaluation of practical interventions; actors and agency; evidence on actionable and impactful PTPs. We welcome contributions that examine empirical examples drawing from a broad diversity of backgrounds from academia or practice, showcasing how knowledge on PTPs has been (co-)produced. Comparative studies, innovative methodologies, and practitioner-oriented frameworks are particularly encouraged.

Tuesday 1 July 2025 11:00 – 13:00

Emotions as Tipping Points in a ‘Net Zero’ Transition

Convenors: Melanie Rohse (Anglia Ruskin University, UK), Laura Fogg Rogers (University of the West of England, UK)

Delivering a ‘net zero’ transition necessitates understanding people’s emotional desires for the future. Human emotions have the potential to speed up the transition or delay it with social, political and cultural negative tipping points. Visceral feelings like eco-anxiety and solastalgia are mobilised in political action, direct action and other forms of protest. Emotions and affects which run counter to the goal of transition need to be reckoned with as negative tipping points. Right-wing actors have stoked net zero culture wars, amplifying attachments to high-carbon lives and increasing resistance to calls for decarbonisation. Policy and societal actors must find ways of working with these affective energies to channel desires for action into programmes for rapid societal decarbonisation. We are keen to hear from researchers exploring the interplay between climate emotions and affects, on the one hand, and political/policy action for a rapid transition, on the other hand, as well as research which examines what it means to enable positive social tipping points in the transition. We welcome contributions from researchers at all career stages and disciplines, and are open to different conceptualisations of ‘emotions’, ‘feelings’, and ‘affect’ and ways of studying them as tipping points. We will be exploring publication options after the conference.

Tuesday 1 July 2025 11:00 – 13:00

Catalysing Collective Action across the Civic System

Facilitators: Kate Jago, Mark Hodgson and Zoey Cooper (civic convenors)

An action workshop designed to rediscover the power of gathering wide ranges of expertise to develop new models of civic collaboration. Exploring collective insights across the systems complexity of public service integration with research, business, third sector and civil society. We invite stakeholders to develop collective future visions that are deeply integrated with transformational policy making, using constellations as collaborative, participatory frameworks building capacity and capabilities for imagining, sensemaking, experimenting and open inquiry.

Tuesday 1 July 2025 11:00 – 13:00

A Healthy Approach to Tipping Points

Facilitators: Anya Gopfert (Co-chair Faculty of Public Health Sustainable Development Special Interest Group, UK), Maria van Hove (Faculty of Public Health Climate Change Committee, UK), Laurie Laybourn (Chatham House, UK), Courtney Howard (Global Climate and Health Alliance, Canada), Jemilah Mahmood (Sunway Centre for Planetary Health, Malaysia)

The bad and the good: this session will focus on the predicted ill-impacts of crossing Earth system tipping points on human health, as well as opportunities for health-focused work in service of planetary health. In recent years, over 80 countries have committed to sustainable healthcare, meaning that a sector responsible for approximately 5% of greenhouse gas emissions, containing over 40 million trusted messengers and which allocates 10% of Global World Product is now moving en masse to decarbonize, bringing with it the potential to accelerate positive socio/economic/political tipping points within the food, energy and transport sectors. Political salience and social support for this work is enhanced by near-term benefits including improved health and decreased healthcare costs via reduced air pollution, improved activity levels, and healthier plant-rich diets. This workshop will focus on understanding both negative and positive tipping points of relevance to health, as well as the communications benefits of discussing planetary change within a frame that highlights health and wellbeing.

Tuesday 1 July 2025 11:00 – 13:00

Tipping to What: Where do we go from here?

Facilitator: Peter Horton (Gaia’s Company, UK)

Our current economic valuation system does not make Earth system sense’ (Lenton and Watson). Join performer and musician, Peter Horton for a creative exploration of this dilemma. The drivers of the climate crisis are the result of an economic valuation system which is not ‘natural’, in the Earth system sense, but a creation of the human imagination. With 2024 as the hottest year on record, we need urgently to think creatively to envisage an economic system that does make Earth system sense. The search for potential positive tipping points immediately begs the question: Tipping to What? Is there an agreed, planet-wide vision of how the Earth system works and what we need to do to live within it? The science for such a vision does exist, in the work of Lovelock and Margulis on the Gaia world view, but how many people know about it? The workshop will focus on: (1) identifying aspects of Gaia science which provide the ‘vision for change’, (2) the action required to communicate this vision globally (3) the strategies needed for bringing about a tipping point to an economic system which does make Earth system sense. Explore your creative side and coproduce a vision of an alternate future.

Tuesday July 2025 16:00 – 18:00

Positive Tipping Points for Accelerating Climate and Sustainability Action (Part 2: Modelling)

Convenors: Tatiana Filatova (Delft University of Technology, Netherlands), Sirkku Juhola (University of Helsinki, Finland), Claudia R. Binder (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland)

Climate and ecological crises already disrupt nature and socio-economic systems worldwide. Yet, timely and widespread action is lagging. Positive Tipping Points in Society (S-PTP) are considered key accelerators of speedy green transitions, effective transformational climate adaptation, and reversing environmental degradation. Still, scientific knowledge of S-PTP is fragmented: little is known about interactions of governance, social, behavioural, economic, or financial mechanisms driving tipping, and its speed. We invite scholars and practitioners interested in understanding how such social processes unfold, what theoretical feedbacks are behind S-PTP, how such social tipping can be modelled over time, and how qualitative and quantitative data on S-PTP enters simulations. Presentations discussing the following topics are especially welcome: mechanisms of S-PTP (cause-effects, feedbacks) grounded in various social science theories; case-studies of S-PTP processes in climate adaptation, mitigation or sustainability in general; simulation models exploring S-PTP dynamics; methods for detection of S-PTP in data and models. Participants will discuss how the knowledge of S-PTP can inform the design of effective policies, and investment priorities for climate mitigation & adaptation and for the wider social-ecological systems. Ultimately, we would like to explore how S-PTP, if identified early and acted upon, can lead to transformative, inclusive, acceptable, and timely action.

Tuesday 1 July 2025 16:00 – 18:00

Unlocking Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) Positive Tipping Points: Scaling Solutions for a Net-Zero Future

Convenors: Juan Carlos Silva Tamayo (IE University, Spain), Liam Bullock (Centro Superior de Invesitgaciones CIentificas, Spain)

This session will explore the science and strategy behind achieving positive tipping points for Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) technologies, focusing on their potential to drive global net-zero transformations. Presenters will discuss the conditions required to trigger self-sustaining, positive CDR tipping points that could exponentially accelerate carbon drawdown. Key topics will include ecosystem-based and industrial CDR methods, technological advancements for MRV, policy frameworks, social inovation and financing mechanisms that could rapidly scale these solutions globally. Attendees will gain insights into how combining technological innovation with nature-based solutions can catalyze critical momentum towards a stabilized climate, delivering lasting environmental and economic benefits.

Tuesday 1 July 2025 16:00 – 18:00

Positive Tipping Points in Practice: The PTP Toolkit

Facilitator: Peter Lefort (University of Exeter, UK)

We share the development of the Positive Tipping Points Toolkit, an open source resource co-developed with changemakers around the world to help apply the PTP framework in practice across a variety of sectors – including activism, business, education and more. This includes details of the participatory research process to develop the toolkit, and activities from the toolkit itself which bring the concepts of enabling conditions, feedback loops, and non-linear systems to life in an engaging and experiential way.

Tuesday 1 July 2025 16:00 – 18:00

AI & Collective Intelligence for Positive Tipping Points

Facilitator: Hywel Williams (University of Exeter, UK)

The purpose of this event is to bring together a research community to explore the use of AI and collective intelligence approaches to promote positive tipping points for the environment. This is an interdisciplinary challenge requiring computational, social and environmental scientists to work together. The workshop will focus on sharing ideas on maximise the impact of research and identifying areas for potential collaboration.

Tuesday 1 July 2025 16:00 – 18:00

Climate Activism: Video Workshop

Facilitators: Freya Newman (Global Optimism) and Emma Askew (Earth Minutes, UK)

This workshop aims to unleash delegates’ creativity enabling them to create a short campaign video related to tipping points. To spark the creative process, participants will listen to a series of brief presentations from climate activists involved in different forms of activism that have the potential for exponential uptake and transformational change. Taking inspiration from the presentations, participants then write and produce their own short campaign video to communicate the importance of one form of activism that most reflects and appeals to their values, motivations and skills. The resulting short campaign video will be released to social media platforms within a few days of the workshop.

Wednesday 2 July 2025 11:00 – 13:00

Catalysing Social, Behavioural and Ethical Tipping Points for Accelerating Climate Action

Convenor: Nicholas Harrison (Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, USA)

Implementing climate action is disruptive and challenging. It demands transformation across our economies and societies which often poses tough choices, ethical dilemmas and trade-offs between competing priorities. Too often implementation of climate action ignores or overlooks the diverse underlying beliefs, values, and moral considerations of those involved, resulting in slow uptake, backlash or failure. Conversely, policies, instruments and interventions that take account of such ethical dimensions have shown to be transformative. Better consideration and management of the ethical dimensions of climate action is therefore an important systemic leverage point for accelerating its implementation. This session will explore emerging research and practice, to better understand the potential for catalysing social, behavioural, and ethical tipping points to unlock and accelerate delivery of climate action.

Wednesday 2 July 2025 11:00 – 13:00

Positive Tipping Points at the Municipal/City Scales

Facilitator: Rune Bastrup (Democracy X, Denmark)

How can the emerging science of positive tipping points guide municipal and city-level leadership in accelerating consumption-based emissions reductions? Rune Baastrup is the managing director of Democracy X, a Copenhagen based organization with a staff of 50 experts in deliberative democracy, systems learning and mobilization for collective action on climate change and other grand societal challenges from the local to the international level. Drawing on this experience, Rune will support participants to explore the issues associated with catalysing change at a local governmental level.

Wednesday 2 July 2025 11:00 – 13:00

What’s the Story? Communicating Tipping Points

Facilitators: Franziska Gaupp (University of Osnabrück & The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany), Sina Loriani (The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany), Donovan Dennis (The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany)

This workshop focuses on how we communicate knowledge of tipping points, both the risks of Earth system tipping points (ESTP) and the opportunities that the identification of positive tipping points may bring. What are the key messages? Who is our audience? And what is the best way to communicate with them? This workshop will guide participants in an interactive way through a storytelling process and enable them to create their own tipping point communication piece.

Wednesday 2 July 2025 16:00 – 18:00

Positive Tipping Points in Social-Ecological Systems

Convenor: Sebastian Villasante (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain/ University of British Columbia, Canada)

The world is facing a series of era-defining, environmental and social challenges, including climate change, biodiversity loss, increased inequality and poverty. The concept of positive tipping points (PTPs), the idea that deliberate interventions can trigger fast and self-perpetuating changes in social-ecological systems, is gaining traction in response. As history shows, there are dark sides of transformations with potential unintended consequences, distributional impacts, and the potential for vested interests to co-opt or reap the benefits of such processes. Enabling social tipping points towards radical transformations could benefit from more diverse perspectives to open up the solution space, with a particular emphasis on the inclusion of marginalised voices. Multiple examples of non-linear positive change exist in both marine and terrestrial social-ecological systems. In identifying and operationalizing PTPs, this session will present a new database with the ongoing collection of case studies of PTPs in different geographic, economic and cultural contexts. Inspirational examples in diverse social-ecological systems such as coral reefs and Marine Protected Areas will be discussed.

Wednesday 2 July 2025 16:00 – 18:00

Social Tipping: the Role of AI and Digital Technologies

Convenors: Viktoria Spaiser (University of Leeds, UK); Hywel Williams (University of Exeter, UK); Tristan Cann (University of Exeter, UK)

Digital technologies are now fully integrated with all aspects of our life and economy. In this session, we will explore the roles they can play in enabling and hindering progress towards positive social tipping. For instance, digital trace data (e.g. from social media) can help us to monitor societal dynamics and capture trends that could facilitate positive social tipping. New advances in generative AI provide new tools for climate change communication (e.g. offering assistance in democratic deliberation to find climate solutions) and for climate action mobilisation (e.g. assisting with behavioural changes), but also for researching social tipping dynamics in unprecedented way (e.g. through the simulation of interacting agents powered by generative AI). Insights gained in this way could help to identify new interventions that harness these dynamics and move them towards triggering positive social tipping points. However, we need to be aware of the problems with digital technologies, such as social media and generative AI, which can be used to spread misinformation, increase polarization or heighten energy demand (e.g. through the development of more complex generative AI models run by larger user bases). In this session, both perspectives (enabling vs. hindering) will be brought together to better understand the opportunities and challenges these technologies bring.

Wednesday 2 July 2025 16:00 – 18:00

Learning from Tobacco Control: Understanding and Challenging Negative Feedback Loops

Facilitator: Iain Black (University of Strathclyde Business School, UK)

This session explores how to embed learnings from tobacco control on how corporate actors assert deliberate dampening effects on positive social tipping points (PTPs). With support from experiences of campaigning within antagonistic environments, participants will work to identify negative feedback mechanisms, actors, and interventions designed to slow a socially just transformation. The final section examines campaigning, framing, and education solutions to remove, across scales, these loops, and their enabling conditions.

Wednesday 2 July 2025 16:00 – 18:00

Positive Tipping Points for Nature

Facilitators: Scarlett Benson (Systemiq, UK), Talia Smith (Systemiq, UK), Mike Barrett (World Wildlife Fund, UK)

Tbc

Conference Convenors

Tim Lenton

Johan Rockström

Ricarda Winkelmann

Registration

Welcome Lunch

Welcome & Plenary Session 1Earth System Tipping Points and Risks

Break

Research Sessions & Action Workshops

Earth Systems Tipping Points and Risks

Governance

Positive Tipping Points

Drinks Reception & Canapés

Fireside Chat: Paul Polman & Jonathon Porritt

Paul Polman Planetary Guardian, Business Leaderand co-author of Net Positive

Jonathon PorrittSustainability Campaigner and Author

Plenary Session 2Social-Ecological Tipping Points

Break

Research Sessions & Action Workshops

Earth Systems Tipping Points and Risks

Governance

Positive Tipping Points

Lunch

Plenary Session 3Governance of Earth Systems Tipping Points & Risks

Break

Research Sessions & Action Workshops

Earth Systems Tipping Points and Risks

Governance

Positive Tipping Points

Poster Presentations

BBQ

Plenary Session 4Positive Tipping Points in Socio-Technical Systems

Break

Research Sessions & Action Workshops

Earth Systems Tipping Points and Risks

Governance

Positive Tipping Points

Lunch

Plenary Session 5Positive Tipping Points in Food, Nature and Social-Ecological Systems

Break

Research Sessions & Action Workshops

Earth Systems Tipping Points and Risks

Governance

Positive Tipping Points

Poster Presentations

Street Food, Entertainment & Activities

Plenary Session 6Positive Tipping Points Governance and Action

Break

Closing Session

Closing Lunch

Monday 30 June 2025 15:00 – 17:00

Governance Implications of Earth System Tipping Points

Monday 30 June 2025 15:00 – 17:00

Tipping Points and National Security – Closing the Blind Spot

Tuesday 1 July 2025 11:00 – 13:00

Tipping Points and Finance: Risks, Drivers and Intervention Points

Tuesday 1 July 2025 11:00 – 13:00

Planetary Solvency

Tuesday 1 July 2025 11:00 – 13:00

Routes to managing tipping risks beyond 1.5°C

Tuesday 1 July 2025 16:00 – 18:00

Earth System Tipping Points, Human Mobility and Governance

Tuesday 1 July 2025 16:00 – 18:00

Human Rights and Climate Tipping Points

Wednesday 2 July 2025 11:00 – 13:00

Earth System Tipping Risks: Testing the Limits of International Environmental Law

Wednesday 2 July 2025 11:00 – 13:00

More Games, Fewer PDFs? Effective Methods for Engaging Policymakers on Tipping Points

Wednesday 2 July 2025 16:00 – 18:00

The Thin Red Line: Tipping Points, Climate and Conflict

Wednesday 2 July 2025 16:00 – 18:00

What if… Geopolitical Knock-On Effects

Wednesday 2 July 2025 16:00 – 18:00

Short-Lived Climate Forcers and Tipping Points

Monday 30 June 2025 15:00 – 17:00

Earth Systems Tipping Points and Risks – An Overview

Monday 30 June 2025 15:00 – 17:00

Exploring Risk Assessment for Climate Tipping Points in Europe

Tuesday 1 July 2025 11:00 – 13:00

Welcome & Plenary Session 1
Earth System Tipping Points and Risks

Earth Systems
Tipping Points
and Risks

Positive Tipping
Points

Paul Polman
Planetary Guardian, Business Leader
and co-author of Net Positive

Jonathon Porritt
Sustainability Campaigner and Author

Plenary Session 2
Social-Ecological Tipping Points

Earth Systems
Tipping Points
and Risks

Positive Tipping
Points

Plenary Session 3
Governance of Earth Systems Tipping Points & Risks

Earth Systems
Tipping Points
and Risks

Positive Tipping
Points

Plenary Session 4
Positive Tipping Points in Socio-Technical Systems

Earth Systems
Tipping Points
and Risks

Positive Tipping
Points

Plenary Session 5
Positive Tipping Points in Food, Nature and Social-Ecological Systems

Earth Systems
Tipping Points
and Risks

Positive Tipping
Points

Plenary Session 6
Positive Tipping Points Governance and Action