Climate policies and adaptation plans often assume that change will be gradual and predictable. Earth system tipping points challenge that assumption, because they can bring abrupt, non-linear and potentially irreversible change. Our official COP31 side event, organised through the EU-funded ClimTip project with colleagues at the Technical University of Munich, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, asks what being prepared for tipping means for people, institutions and decisions.
The event brings together science, policy, finance and civil society. Professor Niklas Boers (Technical University of Munich and PIK) and Elizabeth Sellwood (UNEP) will set out what is known about tipping risks and the uncertainty that surrounds them, with Andrew Harper (UNHCR) speaking to climate and displacement. A panel will then explore what this means in practice: Professor Rosalind Cornforth (The Pearl), Neha Sharma (Adaptation Fund), Dr Abdou Ali (CILSS/AGRHYMET) and Florence Kuali Iautu (Vanuatu National Advisory Board on Climate Change and Disaster Risk Reduction). Kuat Abeshev of ClimTip will moderate.
The Pearl’s ClimTip contribution brings tipping risks down to the scale at which people live. Here, we are tracing how a disruption to the West African Monsoon could pass from households in Sahelian livelihood zones, through markets and national economies, to sovereign risk. Deep uncertainty is not a reason to hold back from decisions. Our integrated climate-livelihood storylines describe plausible futures, including one in which the monsoon has passed a tipping point, so that decision-makers can test which adaptation actions hold up across all of them. That capability is already being built in the region. In September, climate scientists from across the Sahel worked with us at the AGRHYMET summer school in Accra, hosted by GSSTI, applying these methods to southern Mali.
Date and time: Thursday 19 November 2026, 13:15 to 14:45 (10:15 to 11:45 UK time)
Venue: Side Event Room 4 (Aşık Veysel), Blue Zone, Antalya Expo Center, Türkiye
If you are at COP31, please come and join us. If you are not, I will be sharing reflections here throughout the two weeks of the conference, and the ClimTip policy brief sets out the evidence behind the event.
Read the ClimTip event announcement.
Read the ClimTip policy brief.
Written by Professor Rosalind Cornforth, Director of The Pearl, University of Reading
ClimTip is funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union.