ABSTRACT. Interactions between distant places are increasingly widespread and influential, often leading to unexpected outcomes with profound implications for sustainability. Numerous sustainability studies have been conducted within a particular place with little attention to the impacts of distant interactions on sustainability in multiple places. Although distant forces have been studied, they are usually treated as exogenous variables and feedbacks have rarely been considered. To understand and integrate various distant interactions better, we propose an integrated framework based on telecoupling, an umbrella concept that refers to socioeconomic and environmental interactions over distances. The concept of telecoupling is a logical extension of research on coupled human and natural systems, in which interactions occur within particular geographic locations. The telecoupling framework contains five major interrelated components, i.e., coupled human and natural systems, flows, agents, causes, and effects. We illustrate the framework using two examples of distant interactions associated with trade of agricultural commodities and invasive species, highlight the implications of the framework, and discuss research needs and approaches to move research on telecouplings forward. The framework can help to analyze system components and their interrelationships, identify research gaps, detect hidden costs and untapped benefits, provide a useful means to incorporate feedbacks as well as trade-offs and synergies across multiple systems (sending, receiving, and spillover systems), and improve the understanding of distant interactions and the effectiveness of policies for socioeconomic and environmental sustainability from local to global levels.

Polenske K. R. (2004) Competition, collaboration and cooperation: an uneasy triangle in networks of firms and regions, Regional Studies38, 1021-1035. Many analysts maintain that firms can meet the challenges of global competition by establishing improved competitive, collaborative or cooperative activities, hereafter called 'the 3Cs'. The paper proposes that effective industrial and regional competition is often constrained by perceived and real spatial, labour, and organizational boundaries that limit the 3C relationships within the networks of firms and regions. The paper makes three contributions to the literature. First, it distinguishes collaboration from cooperation as collective types of behaviour and asserts that both can form part of an uneasy triangle of industrial interrelationships with competition. Second, it uses the 3C relationships to help explain the 'success' of industrial organizations as portrayed by analysts in alternative industrial and regional restructuring models, namely the Italian, Japanese and Global models. It examines how analysts deal with the spatial, labour and organizational boundaries in these alternative models. Third, it shows that none of the models was sufficiently general to cover all the restructuring issues as the world has moved into the globalization form of development. Throughout, the paper asserts that an understanding of the interrelationships among the 3Cs and the primary constraints affecting those relationships will help local and national government and industrial decision-makers make effective firm, labour and regional policies.Polenske K. R. (2004) La concurrence, la collaboration, et la cooperation: une alliance boiteuse triangulaire au sein des reseaux d'entreprises et de regions, Regional Studies38, 1021-1035. De nombreux analystes affirment que les entreprises peuvent relever le defi de la concurrence mondialisee par etablir de meilleures activites du point de vue de la concurrence, de la collaboration et de la cooperation, appelees ci-apres 'les trois C'. On laisse supposer que la concurrence industrialo-regionale efficace se voit entraver par des contraintes geographiques percues et reelles a l'emploi et a l'organisation qui limitent les rapports 3C au sein des reseaux d'entreprises et de regions. L'apport a la documentation est a trois temps. Primo, on distingue la collaboration de la cooperation comme un comportement plutot collectif, et on affirme que tous les deux peuvent faire partie d'une alliance boiteuse triangulaire de relations industrielles avec la concurrence. Secundo, on se sert des rapports 3C afin d'expliquer la 'reussite' des etablissements industriels que presentent les analystes dans divers modeles de la restructuration industrielle et regionale, a savoir les modeles italien, japonais, et mondial. Tertio, on laisse voir que pas un modele n'etait suffisamment general pour embrasser toutes les questions de restructuration au fur et a mesure de la mondialisation. Tout au long de l'article, on affirme qu'une meilleure comprehension des rela...

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I. The Problem and its Analytical Formulation 1. The object of the computations described in this paper was to determine what effect a hypothetical reduction in military accompanied by a compensating increase in non-military demand would have on the industrial composition and regional distribution of employment in the continental United States. By compensation is meant the maintenance of the total level of employment in the economy.In a paper published four years ago,' inputoutput analysis was used to estimate the effect of such a change in the structure of final demand on the industrial distribution of the labor force for the country as a whole. The present study carries that inquiry one step further. The impact of the hypothetical shift from military to civilian demand is projected here not only in inter-industrial, but also in inter-regional terms. Specifically, the territory of the continental United States has been subdivided into 19 distinct regions, and the shift in the industrial composition of output and employment was assessed for each one of them.Had we attempted to study each region separately and then simply to add the results to arrive at corresponding aggregates for the country as a whole, the total national output figures and the corresponding total input figures for each distinct category of goods and services could not have been expected to match. In other words, the results of such isolated regional studies would not comprise a consistent picture of the national economy as a whole. The simple scheme of multi-regional analysis on which the present computations are based provides for simultaneous balancing of all inputoutput flows from the point of view of each individual region, as well as for the U.S. economy as a whole.For some goods -let them be called Locala balance between production and consumption tends to be established separately within each region; for other goods -let them be identified as National -such a balance typically is achieved only for the country as a whole. Within each region the output of a National good might exceed or fall short of its total input, the deficit or surplus being evened out by exports to or imports from other regions. Retail Trade and Auto Repair Services are characteristically Local industries while Coal Mining and Aircraft Manufacturing are typically National. The difference between the two obviously should be explained in terms of the relative mobility or transportability of their output.To separate National industries from the Local, all sectors were arranged in order of the increasing magnitude of inter-regional, as compared with the intra-regional, trade of their respective products. Then, an admittedly somewhat arbitrary cut was made across that array, setting apart the Local industries, serving mainly users located within the region in which production occurs, from the National industries, supplying the entire national or even international market, whose products typically are being shipped for this reason in comparatively large amounts across regi...

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