Tipping Points in Australia's Future

The project plan

In answering these questions we plan to recruit several enthusiastic and talented postdoctoral or postgraduate students to work with our team of world-leading advisors. This will not only provide a rigorous scientific underpinning to our products but will also equip some young people with the skills and experience to continue this work into the future.

Initially the project will build on several areas in which the project team have world-leading expertise:

• Understanding of how tipping point changes have come about in the past, how several social, economic and environmental processes could be building towards tipping points now, and where we could be looking for unexpected tipping points in coming decades

• Understanding of changes in attitudes and responses of people to fears of disastrous change and how to help society deal with those attitudes constructively

• Understanding of what gives ecological and social systems both general resilience – ability to cope with a broad range of challenges - and specific resilience – ability to cope with particular known or anticipated challenges.

As the project proceeds, we want to involve a broader range of people, from across society, who have experience dealing with non-linear change and building resilience in society (for example, in health, business, community, politics). By doing this we hope to identify common challenges and solutions.

The ultimate products of the project will be a series of research and communication reports designed to clarify the key issues in relation to these topics for a broad range of decision makers. These will include a blueprint for maintaining and, where necessary, improving Australia’s preparedness for future change. Included in these reports will be an assessment of what types of people and processes are likely to give Australia that preparedness and how they might b encouraged and supported.