Workers harvesting bananas for export to the Chinese market, Luang Namtha Province, Laos, February 2018. Photo: Cecilie Friis
Workers harvesting bananas for export to the Chinese market, Luang Namtha Province, Laos, February 2018. Photo: Cecilie Friis

Telecoupling Research Towards Sustainable Transformation of Land Systems

Short Description

The telecoupling concept has been proposed to describe socio-economic and environmental interactions, flows and feedbacks over distance and across scales that cause change in otherwise separated land systems. As an analytical framework, the telecoupling framework brings together a systemic perspective on land-use change with flow- and network-oriented analytical approaches. As such, it is a clear and concrete response to the scientific and applied need for interdisciplinary exchange to tackle the challenges of global interconnectivity and (un)sustainability in land-use change.

Yet, while methodological and conceptual advancements have been made, and an emerging body of empirical studies is examining telecoupling in land-use systems, more collaboratory research is urgently needed in order to 1) foster a better understanding of how global interconnectivity influences land-use change in particular places and at particular moments in time; 2) capture and account for distant, unexpected feedbacks and spillovers that challenge social and environmental sustainability and 3) enhance evidence-based decision- and policy-making through transformative land governance initiatives for the sustainable management of land.

Goals and Objectives

The specific objectives of this Working Group are:

  1. Provide a platform for the diverse group of Land System Scientists working on telecoupling related questions to foster better interdisciplinary exchange and the consolidation of knowledge on methodological, conceptual and empirical issues related to telecoupling of land use systems.
  2. Advance the understanding of challenges and opportunities presented by telecoupling to sustainable land-use change
  3. Identify potential best practices and methodologies for designing transformative interventions into telecoupled land use systems that fosters sustainable development.
  4. Bringing together early and advanced-stage researchers
  5. Communicating telecoupling research activities and advances to non-academic stakeholders

GLP Themes: Telecoupling of land use systems, Land governance

 

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Blog

Livelihoods, markets and conservation

This blog post summarises a recently published article based on in-depth mixed method research in a national park in northern Laos. The paper sets out the livelihood implications of increasing conservation interventions coupled with accelerating marketisation of resident livelihoods. The authors draw out the major livelihood strategies pursued by residents and highlight the inequitably distributed costs and benefits of conservation actions at the village sites.   Read full post

Related Information

News

March 2, 2023

Global shocks, cascading disruptions, and (re-) connections: viewing the COVID-19 pandemic as concurrent natural experiments to understand land system dynamics

A new paper in Landscape Ecology examined how studying the Covid-19 pandemic's severe impacts on land users and landscapes around the world allow a better understanding of how global shocks, cascading disruptions, and reconnections influence contemporary land systems. The paper grew out of a collaboration between multiple GLP Working Groups.

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News

February 22, 2023

EVENT RECAP: Launching the Telecoupling Working Group 2.0

The GLP working group Telecoupling Towards Sustainable Transformation held a webinar on 19 January 2023 to launch the second phase of the group. Watch the recording to learn more about what was discussed and next steps.

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News

February 1, 2023

Transparency, traceability and deforestation in the Ivorian cocoa supply chain

A new paper in Environmental Research Letters uses publicly-available remote-sensing and supply chain data for Côte d'Ivoire, the world's largest cocoa producer, to quantify cocoa-driven deforestation and trace 2019 cocoa exports and the associated deforestation from their department of origin, via trading companies, to international markets. 

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Working Group Coordinators

 

Working Group Members