Interacting enabling conditions for accelerating system transition to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees

The IPCC Special report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, as well as preceding and following Assessment reports have pointed to the need for strengthened climate mitigation and described ‘enabling conditions’ that have the potential to provide such strengthening due to their mutual reinforcing interactions. These conditions relate 1) multi-level governance, effectively including local to global actors from a wide range of societal niches, 2) strong institutional capacities, 3) behavioral changes to 1.5°C compatible lifestyles, 4) technological innovation for carbon neutral technologies and their surrounding socio-technological system, progressively lowering costs and increasing acceptance, 5) design and implementation of multi-objective multi-instrument policy packages and 6) climate finance (investment for mitigation and adaptation and divestment of fossil systems) and the underlying risk perceptions. Our research uses qualitative system dynamics modelling to deepen the understanding of these enabling conditions by describing their main underlying mechanism. Two Dutch cases, relating to chemical clusters and cycling mobility, are explored in more detail to showcase the (potential) manifestation of enabling conditions and reinforcing feedbacks between them that might lead to tipping dynamics.