The planetary boundary science now tells us that six of the nine planetary boundaries have been crossed. If essential earth systems and processes are perturbed beyond critical thresholds, they can undergo irreversible state shifts with potentially dire consequences, possibly even resulting in the planet irreversibly drifting away from stable conditions. This much is clear from the tipping elements, which identify planetary sub-systems that can potentially exhibit tipping behaviour and that play a key role in controlling the state of the earth system.

Various candidate tipping elements have been proposed, and a recent study has found evidence for the existence of approximately 15 climate tipping elements. Rising climate forcing, biosphere degradation, and other pressures are leading to the rapidly rising risk of pushing tipping elements beyond their tipping points, with several climate tipping elements showing signs of instability.

Crossing the tipping points will not only have environmental implications as their structure and functioning change, but is also likely to disrupt societies and their socio-economic and political systems that have developed with and are reliant on the stability of the Holocene.

The question of how, and whether it is a good idea at all, to govern the tipping elements has only recently been garnering attention, with some proponents setting out a range of possibilities and considerations, while others are more skeptical. The purpose of this workshop is to interrogate whether the tipping elements could function as a new “constitution” for law and governance in the Anthropocene.