The Dartington Declaration:
Tipping the Future

The Dartington Declaration:
Tipping the Future 

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The world has entered a new reality. Global warming will soon exceed 1.5°C. This puts humanity in the danger zone where multiple climate tipping points pose devastating risks to billions of people. Already, warm-water coral reefs are crossing their thermal tipping point and experiencing unprecedented mortality, threatening the livelihoods of hundreds of millions who depend on them. Polar ice sheets are approaching tipping points, committing the world to metres of long-term sea-level rise that will affect hundreds of millions. 

Every fraction of a degree of additional warming increases the risk of triggering further damaging tipping points. These include the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation that would radically undermine global food and water security and plunge northwest Europe into prolonged severe winters. Together, climate change and deforestation put the Amazon rainforest at risk of widespread dieback below 2°C global warming, threatening incalculable damage to biodiversity, disrupting rainfall patterns and impacting many millions of people in the region and worldwide. 

These climate tipping point risks are interconnected, and most of the interactions between them are destabilising, meaning tipping one system makes tipping another more likely. The resulting impacts would cascade through the ecological and social systems we depend upon, creating escalating damages. If this were to occur, it would be a catastrophic outcome for humanity and the risk grows ever higher as we continue on our current path. 

These risks must shift our perspective on climate change and nature loss from a gradual process to one in which irreversible and devastating changes are possible. Once committed, by pushing large systems like the Greenland ice sheet or the Amazon rainforest across their tipping points it becomes very difficult to return to the world we know today. 

How hot we let it get and for how long really matters in preventing climate tipping points. The magnitude and duration of global temperature overshoot above 1.5°C has to be minimised – and ultimately global warming will need to be reduced towards 1°C. Global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions must be halved by 2030 (compared to 2010 levels) and then reach net zero by 2050. This requires an unprecedented acceleration of fossil-fuel phase-out, rapid mitigation of methane emissions and other short-lived climate pollutants, and fast scaling of sustainable carbon removal from the atmosphere, especially through the protection and restoration of forests and other natural carbon sinks.  

If we wait to cross tipping points before we act, it will be too late. The only credible risk management strategy is to act in advance. But the window for preventing damaging tipping points is rapidly closing. Current Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and binding long-term or net zero targets are not enough. They still commit the world to ongoing global warming that will likely exceed 2°C before 2100. This demands immediate, unprecedented action from policymakers at COP30 and leaders worldwide. 

To achieve such a radical acceleration of action requires transformations triggering social tipping points that generate self-amplifying change in low-carbon technologies and behaviours, towards zero emissions. An example can be seen in the plummeting price and rapid rollout of solar power and battery storage. Targeted policies, particularly mandates that provide certainty in the transition, can help trigger and accelerate this kind of cascading positive change.  

As experts in Earth systems, climate, natural and social sciences, our plea to leaders, policymakers and all people around the world is to act now and act fast. If we wait, it will be too late. Policy and civil society must pull together to prevent further damaging tipping points and seize the opportunities of positive tipping points. This is a hugely consequential moment. The planet’s future hangs in the balance. Which way it tips is down to our actions now and in the years to come.

Signees of the Dartington Declaration

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Scientists

Other Supporters