Measuring telecouplings in the global land system: A review and comparative evaluation of land footprint accounting methods

Brückner, Martin; Fischer, G.; Tramberend, Sylvia; Giljum, Stefan

doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2015.03.008

Cited by 180 publications

(110 citation statements)

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“…This is the case for There have been many studies that consider distributional issues related to resource use and related ecological pressures. The topics and indicators investigated range from the distribution of CO 2 emissions (Strazicich and List, 2003;Nguyen Van, 2005;Aldy, 2006;Padilla and Serrano, 2006;Duro and Padilla, 2006;Ezcurra, 2007;Duro and Padilla, 2008;Criado and Grether, 2011;Cantore, 2011;Steinberger et al 2012), to energy efficiency distribution (Alcantara and Duro, 2004;Miketa and Mulder, 2005;Duro et al 2014), of the ecological footprint (Dongjing et al 2010, White, 2007Wu andXu, 2010, Duro andTeixidó-Figueras 2013;Teixidó-Figueras and Duro 2014, 2015a, 2015b, material flow indicators Giljum et al, 2014a;Wiedmann et al, 2015), water (Chen and Chen, 2013;Hoekstra and Mekonnen, 2012) and land (Bruckner et al, 2015;Weinzettel et al, 2013;Yu et al, 2013). These analyses provide information on how resource use is currently shared among nations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The second aim 1 There are other environmental indicators that also consider the territorial versus footprint dichotomy whose inclusion to the analysis would certainly be of interest. This is the case of virtual water (Chen and Chen, 2013;Hoekstra and Mekonnen, 2012) or other land area indicators (Bruckner et al, 2015;Weinzettel et al, 2013;Yu et al, 2013). However, the set of indicators used was chosen reflecting the availability of data and their accessibility to the authors.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

International inequality of environmental pressures: Decomposition and comparative analysis

Teixidó-Figueras

Steinberger

Krausmann

et al. 2016

Ecological Indicators

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Natural resource scarcity is no longer merely a remote possibility and governments increasingly seek information about the global distribution of resource use and related environmental pressures. This paper presents an international distributional analysis of natural resource use indicators. These encompass both territorial (national production) and footprint (national consumption) indicators for land-related pressures (human appropriation of net primary production, HANPP, and embodied HANPP), for material use (domestic material extraction and consumption and material footprint), and for carbon emissions (territorial carbon emissions and carbon footprints). Our main question is "What, both from a territorial and a footprint perspective, are the main driving factors of international environmental inequality?". We show that, for the environmental indicators we studied, inequality tends to be higher for footprint indicators than for territorial ones. The exception is land use intensity (as measured by HANPP), for which geographical drivers mainly determine the distribution pattern. The international distribution of material consumption is mainly a result of economic drivers whereas, for domestic extraction, demographic drivers can explain almost half of the distribution pattern. Finally, carbon emissions are the environmental pressure that shows the highest international inequality because of the larger contribution of economic drivers.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

International inequality of environmental pressures: Decomposition and comparative analysis

Teixidó-Figueras

Steinberger

Krausmann

et al. 2016

Ecological Indicators

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“…Because the material flow data is not available in sectoral resolution, assumptions as to the allocation of material flows to economic sectors must be made in constructing the environmental extension. This method, referred to as environmentally extended input-output analysis (EEIOA) and essentially based on Leontief's framework [5,6], is constantly advanced and applied to RMC or material footprints [7][8][9] as well as to other RMC-type indicators on energy [10,11], carbon and greenhouse gas emissions [12][13][14], land (reviewed in [15] and [16]), the Ecological Footprint [17,18], water (reviewed in [19]), changes in biodiversity [20], and labor requirements [21,22] and inequality [23] associated with traded goods and services.…”

Section: The Challenge Of Measuring Progress Towards Sustainability Imentioning

confidence: 99%

Raw Material Equivalents: The Challenges of Accounting for Sustainability in a Globalized World

2015

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Abstract:The indicator domestic material consumption (domestic extraction + importsexports) is widely used to track the scale, composition, and dynamics of material use. As production increasingly occurs at a spatial distance from the demand it ultimately satisfies, new accounting challenges arise that this indicator may not be able to meet. In response, indicators in raw material equivalents (RME) have been developed to account for material use, no matter where it occurs, associated with final demand. RME indicators are most commonly calculated based on monetary input-output tables with material extensions. The resulting indicators, which are rapidly gaining scientific and political importance, must be interpreted as stemming from a mixed monetary and physical accounting approach. How such an approach differs from a physical accounting approach is shown in this article using an input-output model with a material extension. Neither the physical nor the mixed monetary and physical approach is found to generate results which are incorrect. Instead, the results must be interpreted in light of the assumptions entailed in the approach on which they are based. In making possibilities and limits of interpretation in both cases transparent, RME indicators can more readily be discussed and used by sustainability scientists and practitioners.

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“…As different parts of the world are increasingly interconnected, many key issues of our time are profoundly shaped by telecouplings, such as global land use change (Verburg et al 2013, Bruckner et al 2015, urbanization (Alberti 2015, Fang andRen 2017), trade impacts (Sun et al 2017), wildlife conservation Liu 2016, Hulina et al 2017), international economic development (Galaz et al 2015), water scarcity , energy security (Fang et al 2016), species invasion , and forest sustainability (Liu 2014). On the one hand, some issues have been exacerbated by telecouplings.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Feedback of telecoupling: the case of a payments for ecosystem services program

Yang¹,

Lupi²,

Zhang³

et al. 2018

E&S

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ABSTRACT. Around the globe, previously isolated rural areas are increasingly connected with other distant places (e.g., cities) by telecouplings (i.e., environmental and socioeconomic interactions over distances) such as payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs, labor migration, and tourism. Although many studies have estimated impacts of telecouplings in rural areas, little is known about how these impacts might in turn affect telecouplings themselves through feedbacks. Using household survey data collected in China's Wolong Nature Reserve for giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca), we evaluated an unexpected impact of the telecoupling of the Grain to Green Program (GTGP)-one of the largest PES programs in the world. This impact may trigger a feedback that can strengthen the GTGP in the future. A previous study in Wolong found that afforestation on marginal cropland promoted by the GTGP has significantly intensified crop damage by wildlife on nearby remaining cropland. We evaluated how this change might in turn affect the GTGP by estimating the impact of crop damage induced by the current GTGP on local households' willingness to participate in possible future GTGP. Our results show that due to the impact of the current GTGP on crop damage, local households may enroll 10.4% more cropland that is close to the afforested lands in future GTGP, which suggests a positive feedback that will strengthen the influences of the GTGP in Wolong and beyond. Our study highlights that local human-nature interactions driven by telecouplings, such as human-wildlife conflicts, may trigger feedbacks that affect telecouplings themselves. With improved understanding of telecouplings' feedbacks, scientists, policy-makers, and conservation practitioners can better anticipate the complex interactions among different places and design effective conservation strategies for achieving sustainability objectives such as those set by the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.

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Measuring telecouplings in the global land system: A review and comparative evaluation of land footprint accounting methods

Cited by 180 publications

References 81 publications

International inequality of environmental pressures: Decomposition and comparative analysis

International inequality of environmental pressures: Decomposition and comparative analysis

Raw Material Equivalents: The Challenges of Accounting for Sustainability in a Globalized World

Feedback of telecoupling: the case of a payments for ecosystem services program

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