NEWS • 2024-09-04
Long-term Wellbeing and Risks of Abrupt Changes – A Journey
At the EAERE 2024 conference, Anne-Sophie Crépin, Deputy Director of the Beijer Institute, delivered a keynote on how society can manage the risks of abrupt environmental changes while sustaining long-term wellbeing.
An economist frequently working in transdisciplinary collaborations, Anne-Sophie Crépin uses tools like dynamic modelling, complex adaptive systems, and behavioural experiments to address these challenges.
Her presentation, partly based on the paper “The Economics of Tipping Points: Some Recent Modelling and Experimental Advances” (Li et al. 2024), focused on understanding and managing ecological and Earth system tipping points. These tipping points include critical transitions in ecosystems, such as coral reefs shifting from healthy to bleached states, the collapse of fisheries, and the transformation of forests into savannas. On a larger scale, they include abrupt changes in vital Earth systems like the Amazon rainforest, the Greenland ice sheet, and the Indian summer monsoon.
Crépin explored how to model these thresholds and regime shifts, the management challenges they present, and the importance of addressing the risks and uncertainties associated with them. She also posed critical questions about whether tipping points justify a precautionary approach. Additionally, she shared insights from behavioural experiments that examine human responses to tipping points, emphasizing the need for innovative strategies to manage these environmental challenges effectively.
Her work underscores the urgency of understanding and addressing tipping points to ensure the long-term resilience of both ecosystems and human societies.
The EAERE 24, the 29th Annual Conference of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, was held in July 2024.
