Our planet has sustained human life throughout history. But the planet’s ability to support our ever-increasing population is faltering due to the extraction of resources for excessive consumption. Climate change, intensive agriculture, habitat destruction, and pollution have driven the transition to unstable environmental conditions, which are only held together by diversity. As such, building an understanding of any ecological system must now include integration of the social systems that influence them, along with how diversity promotes resilience.

Studies of social-ecological systems postulate that environmental, economic, cultural, and political sub-systems are interconnected, so that feedback loops are always likely. This means that changes in one sub-system can amplify or stabilise the states of other sub-systems. The dynamics within and between sub-systems are usually not linear, while a disturbance in one system could lead to rapid and dramatic shifts in other sub-systems.

In extreme cases, changes in a sub-system could cross a threshold – or tipping point – consequently driving a potentially irreversible system change from one stable state to another. These tipping point dynamics can occur in both social and ecological systems. An abrupt change in states can spell disaster for an ecosystem, leading to significant shifts in ecosystem functioning, population dynamics and ecological interactions for all organisms – ranging from plants and animals to fungi and bacteria. As healthy ecosystem dynamics and biodiversity provide the foundation for many services that humans rely on, such as clean water and agriculture, these abrupt ecosystem changes can have dramatic impacts on livelihoods and societies.

A shared understanding of the tipping dynamics within social-ecological systems could help us to develop more sustainable and ecological management strategies. In a recent paper, researchers from universities in Germany, Brazil, Peru and Bolivia present an analytical framework to examine the social-ecological multiverse of the Southwestern Amazon.

Through the PRODIGY project, this international team of scientists created a framework that could be adapted for different social-ecological systems. Their efforts build on knowledge exchange with local people in various regions, along with previous field work that explored social-ecological systems and potential tipping points.

An example of a tipping point within the Amazon rainforest is how deforestation has caused prolonged droughts. The forest creates water vapour, which leads to tropical rainfalls in southern and western regions of the Amazon. However, after a certain amount of the rainforest had been felled, these regular afternoon rains disappeared. Droughts have now become far more frequent, prolonged and severe in these regions, which reduces agricultural productivity.

Preventing tipping points poses a unique challenge for researchers, due to the multiple and complex interacting subsystems and pathways, which are far less predictable than linear relationships.

To gain a deeper understanding of potential tipping points, the research team focused on the social-ecological system located at the tri-national border of Peru, Brazil and Bolivia in the Amazon. Much field work and local knowledge exchange had already been conducted in this region, providing the researchers with valuable data to develop their framework. The area shares an ecological sub-system, which is characterised by highly biodiverse tropical humid rainforest. This type of ecosystem faces many threats, including climate change and deforestation. The regional social system comprises a diverse society, including a growing urban population. Here, mobility between rural and urban areas is integrated into daily life, as local populations often have multiple households and engage in a combination of livelihood activities in both urban areas and the rainforest.

The research team developed a tipping matrix by identifying the sub-systems of the region, which they called tipping elements. For example, the Amazon rainforest is a tipping element of the climate system. The crucial properties of each sub-system, the driving forces influencing them, and the critical linkages and feedbacks between them were identified and incorporated into an advanced cross-impact matrix.

For the study area, the team identified four tipping elements: the soil ecosystem; the household livelihood system; the regional social system; and the regional climate system. Each of the four tipping elements impact each of the others. For example, degradation of the soil ecosystem could drive changes in the household livelihood system. Degraded soils decrease agricultural productivity, which in turn reduces the profitability of farming and may force an exploration of other income sources.

The framework can be adapted for any social-ecological system to examine its potential tipping pathways. Identifying these is an important step in identifying potential tipping cascades that can lead to a complete shift from one social-ecological state to another. Tipping cascades occur where the crossing of a tipping point in one tipping element leads to critical changes in another tipping element, potentially driving the latter past its own internal tipping point, and continuing the cascade like an accelerating domino effect.

For example, a regional farming community experiencing reduced agricultural productivity may increase deforestation activities. Through damaging the ecosystem services provided by the forest, this could serve to further reduce agricultural productivity. The cycle of failing agriculture and increasing deforestation may eventually drive the local population to clear more forest, tipping the regional social system into a new, likely unwanted state. Of course, global climate change also greatly impacts this scenario, meaning that we all share the responsibility.

Joint analysis of the interactions between tipping elements and potential cascading tipping points promotes a better understanding of the interactions within the social-ecological system. The adaptation of the research team’s analytical framework to other social-ecological systems could be augmented by incorporating empirical evidence gathered for individual sub-systems and their interactions.

Identifying critical linkages using the cross-impact matrix may serve to highlight the early warning indicators for tipping cascades. This could help prevent a tipping point being exceeded in one tipping element and triggering a cascade that alters the entire system. As such, this information is likely to be indispensable for monitoring and intervention activities, and for developing effective and sustainable policies in a fast-changing planet.

Ultimately, imagining the social-ecological multiverse could help us promote resilience in our current social-ecological systems. This would support us in implementing the transformations we need in order to reach enhanced socio-ecological conditions for all living beings on Earth.