Project acronym ERA
Project Earth Resilience in the Anthropocene (ERA)Integrating non-linear biophysical and social determinantsof Earth-system stability for global sustainabilitythrough a novel community modelling platform
Researcher (PI) johan ROCKSTRÖM
Host Institution (HI) STOCKHOLMS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH2, ERC-2016-ADG
Summary In 2015, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement on climate recognised the deteriorating resilience of the Earth system in the Anthropocene. Maintaining Earth in the interglacial state that enabled the world’s societies to evolve over the past 12,000 years will require industrialised societies to embark on global-scale social transformations. Otherwise, there is a real risk of crossing tipping points in the Earth system triggering abrupt and irreversible changes.
A critical gap is that although nonlinear social and biophysical dynamics are recognized, we remain trapped in linear thinking. Global modelling and analyses – despite much progress – do not adequately represent nonlinear processes and abrupt changes, and social responses to sustainable development are incremental.
The goal of this project is to fill this gap, by exploring the biophysical and social determinants of the Earth’s long-term stability, building up a novel community modelling platform for analysis of nonlinearity and abrupt shifts, and informing global sustainability policy processes. The project will investigate two hypotheses: 1) Interactions, feedbacks and tipping points in the biosphere could, even in the absence of continued high emissions from fossil-fuel burning, tip Earth into a new state, committing to global warming over 2C and possibly beyond 4C; and 2) Only nonlinear societal transformations that aggregate to the global scale can assure long-term stability of the Earth and keep it in a manageable interglacial state.
The five research tasks are Task 1: analysis of nonlinear biosphere dynamics governing Earth resilience. Task 2: integrating nonlinear dynamics in World-Earth models. Task 3: exploring tipping points in social systems for large-scale transformation. Task 4: backcasting pathways for achieving the SDGs. Task 5: integrating World-Earth dynamics into online learning and virtual-reality games, e.g. Planet3 and Minecraft.
Summary
In 2015, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement on climate recognised the deteriorating resilience of the Earth system in the Anthropocene. Maintaining Earth in the interglacial state that enabled the world’s societies to evolve over the past 12,000 years will require industrialised societies to embark on global-scale social transformations. Otherwise, there is a real risk of crossing tipping points in the Earth system triggering abrupt and irreversible changes.
A critical gap is that although nonlinear social and biophysical dynamics are recognized, we remain trapped in linear thinking. Global modelling and analyses – despite much progress – do not adequately represent nonlinear processes and abrupt changes, and social responses to sustainable development are incremental.
The goal of this project is to fill this gap, by exploring the biophysical and social determinants of the Earth’s long-term stability, building up a novel community modelling platform for analysis of nonlinearity and abrupt shifts, and informing global sustainability policy processes. The project will investigate two hypotheses: 1) Interactions, feedbacks and tipping points in the biosphere could, even in the absence of continued high emissions from fossil-fuel burning, tip Earth into a new state, committing to global warming over 2C and possibly beyond 4C; and 2) Only nonlinear societal transformations that aggregate to the global scale can assure long-term stability of the Earth and keep it in a manageable interglacial state.
The five research tasks are Task 1: analysis of nonlinear biosphere dynamics governing Earth resilience. Task 2: integrating nonlinear dynamics in World-Earth models. Task 3: exploring tipping points in social systems for large-scale transformation. Task 4: backcasting pathways for achieving the SDGs. Task 5: integrating World-Earth dynamics into online learning and virtual-reality games, e.g. Planet3 and Minecraft.
Max ERC Funding
2 492 834 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-10-01, End date: 2022-09-30
Project acronym FASDEM
Project Failing and Successful Sequences of Democratization
Researcher (PI) Staffan I. LINDBERG
Host Institution (HI) GOETEBORGS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH2, ERC-2016-COG
Summary The study of democratization lies at the center of political science and is increasingly important in economics, sociology, and history, and has become a central foreign policy objective. Yet, there is little conclusive evidence about in particular endogenous sequences of democratization critical to our ability to provide sound policy advise. FASDEM promises to revolutionize our understanding of the trajectories that fail to lead to democracy, and the pathways that are successful, by addressing two key questions: Which are the failing versus successful sequences of democratization? What are the determining causal relationships in these sequences?
Critical is the just finalized Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) dataset including some 350 indicators, 34 component-indices, and five main indices of varieties of democracy from 1900 to the present for 173countries – about 15 million data points on democracy. FASDEM, if funded, will use this data capitalizing on a set of novel analytical approaches, tools, and adaptations of modeling from evolutionary biology developed by a research team in a related, project, that together can establish sequences between sets of hundreds of ordinal variables. Under the second objective, FASDEM will take a step further developing upon the latest statistical methodologies of establishing causal identification in observational data, and use these to test each step of such manifest sequences. FASDEM will make a radical departure from the crude and “correlational” paradigm in democratization studies to detail and explain failing and successful sequences of democratization for the first time.
Summary
The study of democratization lies at the center of political science and is increasingly important in economics, sociology, and history, and has become a central foreign policy objective. Yet, there is little conclusive evidence about in particular endogenous sequences of democratization critical to our ability to provide sound policy advise. FASDEM promises to revolutionize our understanding of the trajectories that fail to lead to democracy, and the pathways that are successful, by addressing two key questions: Which are the failing versus successful sequences of democratization? What are the determining causal relationships in these sequences?
Critical is the just finalized Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) dataset including some 350 indicators, 34 component-indices, and five main indices of varieties of democracy from 1900 to the present for 173countries – about 15 million data points on democracy. FASDEM, if funded, will use this data capitalizing on a set of novel analytical approaches, tools, and adaptations of modeling from evolutionary biology developed by a research team in a related, project, that together can establish sequences between sets of hundreds of ordinal variables. Under the second objective, FASDEM will take a step further developing upon the latest statistical methodologies of establishing causal identification in observational data, and use these to test each step of such manifest sequences. FASDEM will make a radical departure from the crude and “correlational” paradigm in democratization studies to detail and explain failing and successful sequences of democratization for the first time.
Max ERC Funding
2 000 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-03-01, End date: 2022-02-28
