EGUsphere EGUsphere EGUsphere EGUsphere Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/egusphere-2026-177 Criticality and critical agency in societal tipping processes towards sustainability Smith E. Keith https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7702-0809 1 Folke Carl 2 3 4 Kitzmann Niklas 5 6 Milkoreit Manjana 7 Olsson Per 3 Winkelmann Ricarda https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1248-3217 5 6 8 Crépin Anne-Sophie 2 3 Eder Christina 9 Harring Niklas 10 Heitzig Jobst https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0442-8077 5 Katsanidou Alexia 9 11 Lenton Timothy M. 12 Mauelshagen Franz 13 Minor Kelton 14 Otto Ilona M. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4935-7660 15 Rezai Armon 16 Scheffran Jürgen https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7171-3062 17 Stadelmann-Steffen Isabelle 18 van der Ploeg Rick 19 20 Wunderling Nico https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3566-323X 21 Donges Jonathan F. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5233-7703 2 5 Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden Anthropocene Laboratory, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Member of the Leibniz Association, Potsdam, Germany Institute for Physics and Astronomy, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway Integrative Earth System Science, Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, Jena, Germany GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Member of the Leibniz Association, Cologne, Germany Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany Global Systems Institute, University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom Department of History, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany Data Science Institute, Columbia University, New York, United States of America Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change, University of Graz, Graz, Austria Institute for the Political Economy of Public Policy, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria Institute of Geography, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany Institute of Political Science and Oeschger Center for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland Department of Economics, Oxford University, Oxford, UK University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Center for Critical Computational Studies (C3S), Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany 21 01 2026 2026 1 29 Copyright: © 2026 E. Keith Smith et al. 2026 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-177/ The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-177/egusphere-2026-177.pdf

Rapid societal transformations are necessary to mitigate risky anthropogenic climate change and maintain human systems within Earth's planetary boundaries. Societal tipping processes have gained attention as mechanisms towards sustainability, yet generalisable solutions for intentionally transforming societal systems remain unclear. Here, we emphasise the significance of uncovering the systemic societal conditions enabling tipping from a complex adaptive systems perspective. Building upon research on societal tipping, transitions, and transformations, we develop the concepts of <em>criticality </em>&ndash; the likelihood of societal tipping &ndash; and <em>critical agency</em> &ndash; the human capacity to shape conditions that increase or reduce systemic criticality. We identify the transformation stages of criticality as the key analytical focus, and explore the phases of enacting critical agency within the societal tipping process. Criticality can serve as a crucial compass for policymakers, entrepreneurs, and activists, and other change-makers illuminating how critical agency can be used to instigate desired 'positive' societal tipping.