Not all tipping points are negative – and not all of them relate to the climate. So, what are positive tipping points? And how about social tipping points as well?
Dr Steve Smith, Research Fellow at the Global Systems Institute and Green Futures Solutions at the University of Exeter, knows the answers. Steve was a lead author on the 2023 and 2025 Global Tipping Points reports, and is a leader in the field of positive tipping points for several years.
He is with us at the Global Tipping Points 2026 Conference at Sunway University in Malaysia to explain the concepts to us. We’ll find out about how positive tipping points might come about, what is needed for them to gain traction, and just how little of a country’s population is needed to get firmly behind an issue to affect real change.
Steve will tell us about the drivers and barriers to change, the importance of groups of businesses to progress, and the role of keystone actors, and the technological, societal and environmental factors that come into play.
This episode was produced in conjunction with the Sunway Centre for Planetary Health, hosts of the conference.
Transforming Tomorrow
Sustainability is key for any business that wants to build a lasting legacy. From carbon footprints to biodiversity to modern slavery, seabeds to factory floors, everything matters.
On Transforming Tomorrow, we make the complex understandable, the theory practical, as we guide you through the ever-changing and often exciting world of sustainability in business.
Speaking to internationally renowned experts and business leaders, we uncover how to mainstream environmental, social and economic sustainability into purposeful business strategy and performance.
Whether you are leading transition in your business, want to build a corporation with a green heart or change your individual actions, or just want to know more about how space weather might affect your operations, Transforming Tomorrow is the show for you.
Hosts Jan and Paul bring insight, perspective, and not a little amount of disagreement, to all the subjects, helping you find the message among the madness.
Join us every Monday to uncover new insights and become a little more inspired that you can make a difference.
You can find transcripts for most episodes at: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/pentland/resources-for-education-and-practice/transforming-tomorrow-podcast/transcripts/
Send your questions on any of the issues we discuss in Transforming Tomorrow to [email protected] or fill in our feedback form here: https://forms.office.com/e/7Bw4rDiRDt
Find out more about the Pentland Centre and its work here: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/pentland/
Meet the Hosts
Professor Jan Bebbington is the Director of the Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business at Lancaster University. Jan is an expert on accounting, benchmarking (to her co-host’s annoyance), and how business and sustainability intersect.
Jan loves nature and wants to protect it – and hopes she can change the world (ideally for the better). She is also motivated to address inequality wherever it is found and especially to eliminate forced, bonded or child labour. Transforming Tomorrow is one small step on that quest.
Paul Turner is a former sports journalist who now works promoting the research activities in Lancaster University Management School – a poacher turned gamekeeper as his former colleagues would have it.
Paul has always been interested in nature and the natural environment – it comes from growing up in Cumbria – and has been a vocal proponent of the work of the Pentland Centre since joining Lancaster University. He does not like rankings and benchmarking, and is not afraid to say so.