Telecoupling for Sustainable Development and Conservaton Across Local to Global Scales

The world is increasingly telecoupled through distant flows of information, matter, energy, organisms, people, money, and technology. Such telecouplings (socioeconomic and environmental interactions over distances) can drastically influence sustainable development and conservation across local to global scales. The integrated telecoupling framework offers novel perspectives on how human-nature interactions in one place can have enormous effects on those far away, and on how distant feedbacks affect people and landscapes. It treats landscapes and people in each place as a coupled human and natural system, and those in different places jointly as telecoupled human and natural systems. It also provides a systematic analytic lens to uncover and understand invisible mechanisms behind landscape dynamics and socioeconomic changes. The goal of this symposium is to showcase applications of the telecoupling framework to address important issues relevant to sustainable development and conservation, such as distant supply of and demand for ecosystem services and natural resources, international trade, and tourism. The presenters from around the world highlight a wide range of topics, such as water, food, energy, biodiversity, soil, fisheries, forests, microorganisms, and large mammals. The presentations enhance fundamental understanding of landscape sustainability and human well-being, and provide useful information for effective governance in the Anthropocene.