Many deltas globally are centers for social and economic development,
so much so that their natural environment has
been rapidly transformed over relatively short periods of
times. These changes are manifested within the deltas themselves
through, for example, land use changes towards intensive
agriculture, but also at the river basin scale through, for
example, the development of dams and reservoirs along river
systems. In many cases, delta social-ecological systems have
tipped from Holocene characteristics to Anthropocene characteristics
and some deltas could tip to other system states
(we refer to them as “collapsed”) which would be unfavorable
from an anthropocentric perspective. We discuss this notion
of tipping points in deltas social-ecological systems as well
as opportunities to “tip back” to a previous state. We present
two examples, the Danube delta which is considered an Anthropocene
delta providing many opportunities for sustainable
social-ecological system development and the Mekong delta,
another Anthropocene delta where current development decisions
locally and at the basin scale could either increase the
resilience of social-ecological systems or tip these systems
towards an undesirable state.