Dear colleague,

We are excited to see the working group continuously grow with new members and welcome all of you to our network! We hope you will join us actively in sharing your latest research, jobs, datasets or methods concerning land-use change and telecoupling. 

As always, we strongly encourage you to approach us with new ideas for webinars and blog-posts. Our blog is open short pieces presenting new research or reflections on specific challenges or opportunities for telecoupling research. 

In this fifth issue of our newsletter, we are happy to invite you to our next webinar on the transdisciplinary challenges of telecoupling research with inputs from Allison Thomson, Jonas Ø. Nielsen and Andreas Heinimann (June 18th, 3-4pm CEST). 

We also present a number of new interesting papers, an invitation for a conference session this week, and our latest blog-post by Nicolas Roux and Abduallah Shaik with Julie Zähringer based on their interesting work presented at the webinar in April.

All the best for now, 

Your WG coordinators
Cecilie Friis & Julie Zähringer 

Aurora Torres and other GLP colleagues published a paper in One Earth, “Sustainability of the global sand system in the Anthropocene”. The paper presents the framework of sand-supply networks that integrates material flow analysis with the telecoupling framework to provide a robust and holistic perspective on sand sustainability across space and time.

Almut Schilling-Vacaflor published "Hardening foreign corporate accountability through mandatory due diligence in the European Union? New trends and persisting challenges" with a colleague in Regulation & Governance. The paper discusses the timely and important regulatory efforts at EU level addressing the negative environmental and human rights impacts associated with its global supply chains. A short video is also available at: https://youtu.be/dnQZsPNvRL0.

In an invited reflection on the paper “Coupled Human and Natural Systems” by Liu et al. 2007, Jianguo Liu, Thomas Dietz, and others published “Coupled Human and Natural Systems: The evolution and applications of an integrated framework” in Ambio’s 50th Anniversary Collection. The original paper was one of the “most influential papers in the past 50 years” since the first issue of Ambio: Journal of Environment and Society (by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences). This reflection describes how the framework of coupled human and natural systems evolved to the telecoupling framework and metacoupling framework. It also illustrates some applications to other disciplines, policy, and conservation.

A new paper by Mairon G. Bastos Lima, Martin Persson and co-authors in Current Research in Environmental Sustainability, "Large-scale collective action to avoid an Amazon tipping point - key actors and interventions", applies a collective-action lens to the problem of Amazon deforestation and identifies six key variables that interventions may target.

David Akinwamide and colleagues published a paper in the 2020 Conference Proceeding of Tropical Environment Journal titled “Geospatial analysis of environmental challenges and health risk level of GSM Mast in Abuja city centres”. The paper uses geospatial analytical techniques to determine the proximity level of GSM masts to residents, using 10m buffer zone test and the mental health risk level within 100m buffer distance. The results indicated multiple clustering of GSM masts in the city centres with a very high level of environmental challenges and mental health hazards. Find the presentation on Youtube.

A special issue entitled "Through the Lens of Telecoupling: New Perspectives for Global Sustainability" was published in Sustainability. A total of 14 articles are included in the special issue, many of them authored by members of the Telecoupling Working Group.

Research Scientist in econometric and geospatial analyses of sustainable supply chain policies, ETH Zürich, with Rachael Garrett. Deadline: 15 June

We welcome news, events, publications and job postings from the community. The deadline for content to appear in our next issue is 16 August 2021. Please submit items for consideration to the Working Group Coordinators at telecoupling@glp.earth.