With the world facing a looming polycrisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and growing inequalities, there is an urgent need to enable societal transformation for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people (NCPs). However, what this transformative change looks like and how to achieve it will look different in different contexts and requires taking diverse peoples, their knowledge systems and aspirations into account. In this context, there is growing interest in the idea of positive tipping points, whereby it is possible to leverage the non-linear dynamics of complex systems to achieve aspirational transformative change. However, it is important to consider the feedback loops driving systems into negative change and what the potential risks are associated with ‘positive’ tipping, asking critical questions like positive to whom and positive where.
