17 September 15:00-16:30 CEST

Barriers to Positive Social Tipping Points and How to Overcome Them

Positive social tipping points, moments when small actions trigger large-scale societal change, can drive transformations toward sustainability. However, these tipping points can be slowed, weakened, or even blocked. Understanding these dampening effects is critical for designing strategies that reduce resistance and accelerate change. 

Join AIMES, the Earth Commission, Future Earth, and the WCRP’s Safe Landing Climates Lighthouse Activity for a webinar exploring the latest scientific insights on positive social tipping points and the barriers they can face. This discussion will bring together experts to examine examples and how science and policy can address them.

Agenda

  • Iain Black (University of Strathclyde): Introduction and framing
  • Gerard Hastings (University of Stirling): Case study on tobacco control and public health campaigning (exploring a contested, longitudinal campaign to tip social systems and avoid shallow outcomes)
  • Stewart Kirkpatrick: Lesson from digital campaigning
  • Followed by a moderated discussion by Amira Mukendi (University of Strathclyde), who will also bring in seed examples from fashion and social media influencing

A recording of the webinar will be provided afterwards.

Back to series overview.

Speakers

Iain Black
University of Strathclyde

Iain Black is a professor at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, and specializes in research on sustainable consumption and climate change, with a focus on advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

His work explores the reasons behind people’s choices not to consume, the dynamics of deconsumerisation, responses to scarcity, and the so-called “green gap”— the disconnect between people’s intentions to act sustainably and their actual behavior.

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Gerard Hastings
University of Stirling

Gerald Hastings is a emeritus professor at the Institute for Social Marketing at the University of Stirling. He founded and led the Institute, where his career focused on examining the impact of marketing on society, both its benefits and its harms.

His research and expertise have informed governments, policymakers, and civil society organizations around the world. He has served as Special Advisor to the House of Commons Health Select Committee on its inquiries into the tobacco, food, pharmaceutical, and alcohol industries, and regularly advises the World Health Organization on communicable and non-communicable disease. He has also acted as an expert witness in litigation against the tobacco industry in the UK and internationally, and in 2011 successfully defended academic freedom by preventing the industry from accessing confidential research through Freedom of Information.

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Stewart Kirkpatrick

Stewart Kirkpatrick is a digital strategist with expertise in content strategy, digital marketing, and media management. He has held senior roles shaping Scotland’s digital media and campaigning landscape.

He was also Editor, part-owner, and director of The Caledonian Mercury, Scotland’s first fully online national newspaper, as well as editor of scotsman.com (2000–2007). He has also served as Content Marketing Director at w00tonomy, part of the Scottish Government’s digital roster.

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Amira Mukendi
(Moderator) University of Strathclyde

Amira Mukendi joined the department of marketing at the University of Strathclyde as a lecturer in 2021. Her research explores sustainable consumption, social media, and questions of inclusion and exclusion in markets, with a particular focus on fashion and beauty.

Her work has been  published in the European Journal of Marketing and the Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management.

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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.

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.

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)is an international research institute that advances systems analysis and applies its research methods to identify policy solutions to reduce human footprints, enhance the resilience of natural and socioeconomic systems, and help achieve the sustainable development goals.

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)

The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) is advancing the frontier of integrated research for global sustainability, and for a safe and just climate future. A member of the Leibniz Association, the institute is based in Potsdam, Brandenburg and connected with the global scientific community. Drawing on excellent research, PIK provides relevant scientific advice for policy decision-making. The institute’s international staff of about 400 is led by a committed interdisciplinary team of Directors.

University of Exeter, Global Systems Institute

The Global Systems Institute (GSI) is thought-leading in understanding global changes, solving global challenges and helping create a flourishing future world together, through transformative research, education and impact. GSI's aim is to work with others to secure a flourishing future for humanity as an integral part of a life-sustaining Earth system. GSI's aim to be a ‘go to’ place for global change researchers from around the world, bringing them together with industry, policymakers, students and other stakeholders to tackle shared problems, and acting as a catalyst that enables translation of this research into applications that deliver tangible and sustainable social and ecological benefit.

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.