Low-carbon transitions are particularly acute in coal and carbon-intensive regions (CCIRs), which face not only technological and economic barriers but also deep socio-political and cultural obstacles in moving away from carbon lock-in. Transforming these regions requires destabilizing and reconfiguring high-carbon regimes, often demanding structural changes across technological, socio-economic, political, and cultural domains. Despite increased attention to the decline of unsustainable energy systems, much research and policy remain short-sighted, often overlooking paradoxes, trade-offs, and spill-over effects during transitions. This Special Issue addresses the complexity of sustainability transitions in CCIRs from an interdisciplinary social science perspective, drawing on nine original contributions from the TIPPING+ project. The collection introduces advanced concepts, methods, and empirical evidence to better understand and navigate transitions in CCIRs, focusing on Social-Ecological Tipping Points. Through diverse case studies across Europe, Asia, and North America, the articles examine the interplay of forces shaping transition trajectories and highlight their non-linear, multi-scalar, and justice-sensitive nature. The Special Issue introduces frameworks for diagnosing transition states and identifying tipping dynamics, with attention to timing, territoriality, and equity. It further analyzes how political, economic, and governance conditions, as well as place-based narratives and cultural framings, influence the destabilization of carbon lock-ins and the legitimacy and direction of change. Collectively, the articles reframe transitions in CCIRs as embedded, justice-centred, and culturally contested processes, providing actionable insights for research, policy, and planning in sustainability transformations.

Sea level rise (SLR) will affect Europe's coasts over the coming decades and beyond, giving rise to ongoing challenges in governing coastal and marine areas. Progress is being made in adapting to and addressing these challenges at both national and sub-national levels across all major European sea basins. This paper assesses progress in coastal adaptation governance in Europe by, first, characterising the socio-economic and political contexts in European sea basins and then by reviewing coastal-adaptation-relevant policy frameworks in place at regional and national levels within each of these sea basins. The regional frameworks reviewed are derived from regional sea conventions and are assessed for their legal status and their inclusion of SLR information. The national coastal policy frameworks reviewed include national adaptation plans focusing on coastal areas and marine spatial planning instruments for all European member states, as well as public financing arrangements for coastal adaptation, focusing on flood risk reduction measures. Key national policies for coastal adaptation are assessed for which coastal hazards they address, the extent to which they incorporate sea level rise information and their inclusion of SLR-specific adaptation measures. Finally, the paper presents governance challenges that arise due to the complexity of adaptation to SLR, i.e. time horizon and uncertainty, cross-scale and cross-domain coordination, and equity and social vulnerability, and discusses examples illustrating how each of these challenges is being addressed in different European sea basins. The paper finds that for all basins, regional policy frameworks generally do not include specific provisions for SLR or coastal adaptation, while at the national level, significant progress on SLR governance is being made. For all basins except for the Black Sea, all countries have reported observed and future SLR hazards and have adopted adaptation strategies. The inclusion of adaptation measures specific to SLR is less advanced, as most sea basins have at least one country that does not include specific SLR adaptation measures in either their adaptation strategies or their marine spatial plans. Regarding SLR governance challenges, key examples of how these are being addressed include approaches for incorporating flexibility into coastal planning, e.g. dynamic adaptation pathways in the Netherlands or dike crest widening in Germany, as well as co-development of nature-based adaptation solutions in Italy. Examples of addressing equity and social vulnerability challenges include the emerging issue of climate ligation illustrated through several court cases on liability for SLR-related damage.

This chapter introduces an interdisciplinary perspective to investigate the transition process and to identify empirical evidence of social-ecological tipping points (SETPs) in the case studies on coal and carbon intensive regions (CCIRs) analyzed in the project TIPPING+. The interdisciplinary lens considers different modes of thought, frameworks, and multiple perspectives and interests from diverse stakeholders, a systems’ understanding, and different culture considerations across the CCIRs. Within this interdisciplinary process, we applied various lenses to study the potential for SETPs by combining insights from human geography, social psychology, regional socio-technical systems, and political economy perspectives on the phases of low carbon transitions and on the justice component of the transitions. Subsequently, this chapter gives an overview of how the eight CCIRs case studies in this book have applied various interdisciplinary lenses to investigate the regional transition and the emergence of SETPs.