Rethinking Global Land Use in an Urban Era

7. Applications of the Telecoupling Framework to Land-Change Science

7 Applications of the Telecoupling Framework to Land-Change Science Jianguo Liu, Vanessa Hull, Emilio Moran, Harini Nagendra, Simon R. Swaffield, and B. L. Turner II Abstract Over the past two decades, progress has been made in understanding and predicting land-use change in specific places, using frameworks such as coupled human-natural systems, coupled human-environmental systems, or coupled social-ecological systems. However, land-use change around the world is increasingly being driven by new agents and causes which emanate from distant locations, through forces such as trade, migration , transnational land deals, and species invasions. New conceptual frameworks are thus needed to account for such distant forces. This chapter applies a framework that explicitly takes distant forces into account in land-use change and builds on the concept of telecoupling (i.e., environmental and socioeconomic interactions among coupled systems over large distances). Telecoupling is a logical extension of coupled systems thinking; it draws insights from related concepts in different disciplines and serves as an umbrella concept to address and integrate various types of distant connections between coupled systems. The telecoupling framework includes five major and interrelated components: coupled human-natural systems, agents, flows, causes, and effects. An overview of the telecoupling framework is presented and two examples (transnational land deals and species invasions) demonstrate the application of the framework to global land use. Finally, challenges and opportunities in understanding telecouplings and their consequences are highlighted and calls made for new directions in land-change research. Introduction Over the past two decades, many advances have been made in understanding and predicting land-use dynamics at a global scale (Turner et al. 2007). In particular, land-use change has been extensively studied using systems 120 J. Liu et al. frameworks, such as coupled human-natural systems (McConnell et al. 2011; Liu et al. 2007a), coupled social-ecological systems (Walker et al. 2004), or coupled human-environmental systems (Moran 2010; Turner et al. 2003). Coupled systems are integrated systems in which humans and natural components interact. These frameworks view land use as a function of interactions between socioeconomic and ecological factors within a coupled system (i.e., local or internal couplings). Although the frameworks for these systems are helpful in guiding the analysis of internal forces in driving land-use change, they fall short in their consideration of the increasing scale, extent, and speed of existing and emerging connections between coupled systems over large distances. Distant connections between land-use systems are not new. They can be traced as far back as the third millennium BCE between areas now known as Iraq and India (Frank 1998). They were also present, for example, during the ancient Greek and Roman eras, along various trade routes in Asia, along the Silk Road between ancient China to Europe, and through the Columbian Exchange (following Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the Americas in 1492, which led to widespread exchange of animals, plants, humans, food, culture, and ideas between the Western and Eastern Hemispheres) (Nunn and Qian 2010). Great Britain’s rise to supremacy as an industrial power in the eighteenth century was also dependent on distant access to raw materials and markets. Modern connections progressed in the nineteenth century with advances in transportation, telecommunication, and economic industrialization (Headrick 1991). Today, even stronger connections have developed between coupled systems around the globe (Lambin and Meyfroidt 2011; DeFries et al. 2010; Seto et al. 2012b; Eakin et al. 2009; Haberl et al. 2009; Nepstad et al. 2006). These connections are related to many of the greatest and most complex challenges that face societies, such as food security, demands for energy, destruction of ecosystems, and biodiversity loss. To address these unprecedented challenges, new conceptual frameworks are needed to guide analyses of these increasingly important distant interconnections , so that future land use can more accurately be projected and better governance and policies on land-use change can be developed. In this chapter, we present a multidisciplinary conceptual framework for such interconnections and present examples to illustrate key components of the telecoupling framework and their relations to global land use. We highlight challenges and opportunities in addressing telecoupling, and call for new directions in landchange research. Overview of the Telecoupling Framework Many disciplines consider interactions between distant systems. The idea that distant places and processes are connected is well established, as is the idea of Applications of the Telecoupling Framework 121 humans and the environment being connected (Linnaeus 1749/1964...