A modeling framework for World-Earth system resilience: exploring social inequality and Earth system tipping points

Abstract

The Anthropocene is characterized by the strengthening of planetary-scale interactions between the biophysical Earth system and human societies. This increasing social-ecological entanglement poses new challenges for studying possible future World-Earth system trajectories and World-Earth resilience defined as the capacity of the system to absorb and regenerate from anthropogenic stresses such as greenhouse gas emissions and land-use changes. The World-Earth system is currently in a non-equilibrium transitional regime of the early Anthropocene with arguably no plausible possibilities of remaining in Holocene-like conditions while sheltering up to 10 billion humans without risk of undermining the resilience of the Earth system. We develop a framework within which to conceptualize World-Earth resilience to examine this risk. Because conventional ball-and-cup type notions of resilience are hampered by the rapid and open-ended social, cultural, economic and technological evolution of human societies, we focus on the notion of `pathway resilience', i.e. the relative number of paths that allow the World-Earth system to move from the currently occupied transitional states towards a safe and just operating space in the Anthropocene. We formalize this conceptualization mathematically and provide a foundation to explore how interactions between Earth system resilience (biophysical processes) and World system resilience (social processes) impact pathway resilience. Our analysis shows the critical importance of building Earth system resilience to reach a safe and just operating space. We also illustrate the importance of World system dynamics by showing how perceptions of fairness coupled with regional inequality affects pathway resilience. The framework provides a starting point for the analysis of World-Earth resilience that can be extended to more complex model settings as well as the development of quantitative planetary-scale resilience indicators to guide sustainable development in a stabilized Earth system.

Connecting human behaviour, meaning and nature

“…(e) Story 5: Growth under liberal humanism that acknowledges complexity and the biosphere This is an extension of Story 4 that recognizes that societies are co-creating a complex system with the biosphere. Society is challenged with increasing costs associated with maintaining social, economic and technological complexity, but whether society succumbs to the complexity it creates depends on the biosphere-a complex system with nonlinear dynamics that can shift too fast for humans to respond [25,55,56]. This imagined order is just emerging.…”

Reflections on the past and future of whole Earth system science

“…Recent work attempts to develop a stylized model that enables human and environmental interactions to occur dynamically. In such World-Earth modelling frameworks environmental change not only causes impacts, but also human response and potential social tipping points (Anderies et al, 2023).…”

Framings in Indigenous futures thinking: barriers, opportunities, and innovations

“…Across the globe, human societies faces major existential challenges from climate change, biodiversity loss, altered biogeochemical flows, and social unrest driven by competitive and accumulative social and economic systems that are causing growing inequities and injustices (Anderies et al 2023;Richardson et al 2023;. Innovations in technologies, transformations in governance, economic and social systems, and new capabilities that empower human agency and embrace our diversity are widely recognised as an essential to meet these challenges (Biggeri and Tapia 2023;Diaz et al 2019;Folke et al 2021).…”