Methods to Assess the Impacts and Indirect Land Use Change Caused by Telecoupled Agricultural Supply Chains: A Review

Abstract

The increasing international trade of agricultural products has contributed to a larger diversity of food at low prices and represents an important economic value. However, such trade can also cause social, environmental and economic impacts beyond the limits of the countries directly involved in the exchange. Agricultural systems are telecoupled because the impacts caused by trade can generate important feedback loops, spillovers, rebound effects, time lags and non-linearities across multiple geographical and temporal scales that make these impacts more difficult to identify and mitigate. We make a comparative review of current impact assessment methods to analyze their suitability to assess the impacts of telecoupled agricultural supply chains. Given the large impacts caused by agricultural production on land systems, we focus on the capacity of methods to account for and spatially allocate direct and indirect land use change. Our analysis identifies trade-offs between methods with respect to the elements of the telecoupled system they address. Hybrid methods are a promising field to navigate these trade-offs. Knowledge gaps in assessing indirect land use change should be overcome in order to improve the accuracy of assessments.

Direct and indirect land-use change caused by large-scale land acquisitions in Cambodia

“…[3,4,10]). These is also a growing recognition of the importance of indirect effects of LSLAs, particularly iLUC, and the substantial challenges they pose for attribution and quantification [41,42]. This study is the first to quantify and compare direct and indirect LUC caused by LSLAs at the country scale.…”

A Synthesis of Opportunities for Applying the Telecoupling Framework to Marine Protected Areas

“…A suite of methods (e.g., life cycle analysis (LCA), footprints, input-output analysis) can be used for analyzing supply chains. These approaches can be telecoupled by broadening the spatial scale and explicitly incorporating spillover effects and feedback loops [92].…”

“…Parra Paitan and Verburg [92] recently highlighted the various applications of supply chain analyses for telecoupling research on agriculture. They discuss the potential for common approaches such as life cycle analysis, input-output methods, footprint analysis and agent-based models to be enhanced via adopting a telecoupled lens.…”

Land Suitability Evaluation and an Interval Stochastic Fuzzy Programming-Based Optimization Model for Land-Use Planning and Environmental Policy Analysis

“…In these exploratory endeavors, mathematical models play a vital role in quantitative analysis and decision making. Based on the review and sorting of existent related literature, these models could be divided into the following categories: first, spatial optimization models [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14]—the core problem of which lies in how to properly adjust and control the spatial relations among land-use resources so as to make their spatial structure reaches an optimal status which best meets the requirement of a sustainable development target. Second, programming models [15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22], including linear programming models, multi-objective programming models, and non-linear programming models, generally apply mathematical models to achieve the best outcome such as maximum profit or lowest cost.…”

“…Third, simulation models [12,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32], which provide the process of creating and analyzing a digital land-use prototype of a model to predict its performance in the real world. Forth, intelligent models [8,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41], which is a class of computational models, such as the agent-based model (ABM) and the cellular automata model. Models in this category can evaluate their impact by simulating individual land-use agents’ actions and their interactions, enabling knowledge of the overall system characteristics.…”