Notions, such as leverage points, sensitive interventions, social tipping points, transformational tipping points, and positive tipping points, are increasingly attracting attention within sustainability science. However, they are also creating confusion and unresolved questions about how to apply these concepts when dealing with urgent global challenges such as rapid decarbonisation. We propose a relational methodology aimed at helping how to identify and support the emergence of positive ‘Social-Ecological Tipping Points’ (SETPs) that could bring about sustainability transformations. Our approach emphasises the need to pay attention to processes of social construction and to time dynamics. In particular, in a given social-ecological system, three key moments need to be considered: (1) The building of transformative conditions and capacities for systemic change, (2) A tipping event or intervention shifting the system towards a different trajectory or systems’ configuration, and (3) the structural effects derived from such transformation. Furthermore, we argue that the discovery and enactment of positive SETPs require considering multiple ontological, epistemological, and normative questions that affect how researchers and change agents define, approach, and assess their systems of reference. Our insights are derived from examining the implementation of household renewable energy systems at regional level in two rural areas of Indonesia and Bangladesh.

Technological innovation is considered to be one of the key strategies to maintain the global temperature below 2 °C. Since emerging and low-income countries are now responsible for reducing greenhouse gases (GHGs) under the Paris agreement, there is an implied need to balance their development mandate and climate change policies. This chapter highlights frugal eco-innovation as a means of providing basic needs while including the requirement to urgently address climate change in these regions. The characteristics of frugal and eco-innovation are explored to identify the appropriateness of technologies within the context of emerging and low-income regions. These characteristics are applied to demonstrate the economic and social benefits of the low-carbon technologies at the local level. Meanwhile, the eco-innovation’s characteristics demonstrate a potential for cascading positive impacts at a larger scale. Finally, the Alternative Pathways framework is applied to describe the trajectory of frugal eco-innovation through low-carbon narratives. This framework also helps to make explicit the dominating fossil fuel pathway and powerful actors while identifying alternative technology pathways and different (nondominating) actor groups that could potentially transform the rural energy system. Portable biogas is identified as a frugal eco-innovation that represents an alternative pathway which can potentially lead to wider transformation for the cooking energy sector in rural Indonesia. The innovation can create knock-on socioeconomic benefits for lower-income communities while contributing to GHG emission reduction at national level. This frugal eco-innovation process is led by the private sectors with the support of policy environment and acceptance and implementation at the local community level.