Integrated Adaptation Tipping Points (IATPs) for urban flood resilience

Ahmed, Farhana; Khan, M. Shah Alam; Warner, Jeroen; Moors, E.J.; Scheltinga, Catharien Terwisscha van

doi:10.1177/0956247818776510

Cited by 20 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…First, a small number of papers between 2007 and 2012 used the social tipping point as a framing device or metaphor rather than an actual object of study (e.g., Moser & Dilling, 2007;Totten, 2012;Westley et al, 2011). Starting around 2010, social tipping studies began to appear in three distinct fields: climate adaptation (Ahmed et al, 2018;Kwadijk et al, 2010;Werners et al, 2013), financial markets (Battiston et al, 2016;Preis et al, 2011;Tan & Cheong, 2016), and resource management in social-ecological systems (Castilla-Rho et al, 2017;Gronenborn et al, 2017;Renaud et al, 2013). A major shift occurred in 2020 and 2021, with an explosive growth of articles making an explicit link While this scholarship has added meaningful contours to the concept of social tipping over time, major contestations remain regarding the nature of the concept.…”

Section: The Rise Of the Social Tipping Pointmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social tipping points everywhere?—Patterns and risks of overuse

Milkoreit

2022

WIREs Climate Change

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The last few years have witnessed an explosion of interest in the concept of social tipping points (STPs), understood as nonlinear processes of transformative change in social systems. A growing body of interdisciplinary scholarship has been focusing in particular on social tipping related to climate change. In contrast with tipping point studies in the natural sciences-for example climate tipping points and ecological regime shifts-STPs are often conceptualized as desirable, offering potential solutions to pressing problems. Drawing on a well-established definition for tipping points, and a qualitative review of articles that explicitly treat social tipping points as potential solutions to climate change, this article identifies four deleterious patterns in the application of the STP concept in this recent wave of research on nonlinear social change: (i) premature labeling, (ii) not defining system boundaries and scales of analysis, (iii) not providing evidence for all characteristics of tipping processes, and (iv) not making use of existing social theories of change. Jointly, these patterns create a trend of overusing the concept. Recognizing and avoiding these patterns of "seeing the world through tipping point glasses" is important for the quality of scientific knowledge generated in this young field of inquiry and for future science-policy interactions related to climate change. Future research should seek to identify empirical evidence for STPs while remaining open to the possibility that many social change processes are not instances of tipping, or that certain systems might not be prone to nonlinear change.

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Section: The Rise Of the Social Tipping Pointmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social tipping points everywhere?—Patterns and risks of overuse

Milkoreit

2022

WIREs Climate Change

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“…The presence of limits to adaptation has been long recognized (Adger et al, 2009), yet there are few empirical studies addressing this (Ahmed et al, 2018;Mechler et al, 2020;Thomas et al, 2021). An adaptation limit is defined as a point at which an agent can no longer secure valued objectives from intolerable risk through adaptive action (Dow et al, 2013).…”

Section: Connecting Social Tipping Points Adaptation Limits and Syste...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Social tipping points and adaptation limits in the context of systemic risk: Concepts, models and governance

et al. 2022

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Physical tipping points have gained a lot of attention in global and climate change research to understand the conditions for system transitions when it comes to the atmosphere and the biosphere. Social tipping points have been framed as mechanisms in socio-environmental systems, where a small change in the underlying elements or behavior of actors triggers a large non-linear response in the social system. With climate change becoming more acute, it is important to know whether and how societies can adapt. While social tipping points related to climate change have been associated with positive or negative outcomes, overstepping adaptation limits has been linked to adverse outcomes where actors' values and objectives are strongly compromised. Currently, the evidence base is limited, and most of the discussion on social tipping points in climate change adaptation and risk research is conceptual or anecdotal. This paper brings together three strands of literature - social tipping points, climate adaptation limits and systemic risks, which so far have been separate. Furthermore, we discuss methods and models used to illustrate the dynamics of social and adaptation tipping points in the context of cascading risks at different scales beyond adaptation limits. We end with suggesting that further evidence is needed to identify tipping points in social systems, which is crucial for developing appropriate governance approaches.

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“…For example, Siders (2019) does indeed integrate psychological, institutional, and practical barriers to managed retreat, but does not adopt the kind of explicit multi-scalar framework we are proposing here. Due to the degree of complexity in the challenges posed by coastal threats and managed retreat (see Hino et al 2017), adopting panarchy as a heuristic to explore and visualize perhaps less obvious cross-scalar effects represents a promising tool to avoid unintended consequences and identify potential leverage points and virtuous cycles for sustainable transformation (Abson et al 2017;Ahmed et al 2018;Angeler et al 2016). However, it is essential to integrate intra-individual psychological processes (e.g., risk perceptions) in this framework as a critical scale that can facilitate or impede managed retreat across multiple scales.…”

Section: Integrating and Reconceptualizing Managed Retreatmentioning

confidence: 99%

The promise of panarchy in managed retreat: converging psychological perspectives and complex adaptive systems theory

Greenlees

Cornelius

2021

J Environ Stud Sci

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This paper interrogates the nature of climate resilience by adopting “panarchy” as a heuristic model to visualize how small-scale processes such as individual environmental risk perceptions are interrelated with broader social and ecological systems to confer community resilience. Thematic analysis of resident interviews from a pilot study conducted in the Rockaways, New York revealed the foundations of environmental risk perceptions and the ways in which they are both a product of and catalyst for social-ecological system (SES) resilience. The debate around managed retreat necessitates a complex systems perspective to promote equitable and just adaptation and transformation while avoiding unintended consequences which often result from single-scale inquiry. Integrating risk perception in the explicit multi-scalar model of panarchy proposes a new way to think about the complex social, economic, political, and psychological processes converging across space and time to confer community resilience and visualize the complexity inherent in relocation. In other words, connecting climate resilience and managed retreat with psychological processes like risk perception emphasizes the importance of implementing multi-scalar interventions to build community adaptive capacity.

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Integrated Adaptation Tipping Points (IATPs) for urban flood resilience

Cited by 20 publications

References 27 publications

Social tipping points everywhere?—Patterns and risks of overuse

Social tipping points everywhere?—Patterns and risks of overuse

Social tipping points and adaptation limits in the context of systemic risk: Concepts, models and governance

The promise of panarchy in managed retreat: converging psychological perspectives and complex adaptive systems theory

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