25/11/2015
From teleconnection to telecoupling: Taking stock of an emerging framework in Land System Science is a joint IRI THESys publication co-authored by Cecilie Friis, Jonas østergaard Nielsen, Iago Otero, Helmut Haberl, Jörg Niewöhner and Patrick Hostert.
In this paper the authors review the state of the art of the telecoupling framework in the Land System Science literature. We trace the development of the framework from teleconnection to telecoupling and asserts the strength of the framework for addressing the spatial decoupling of causes and outcomes of land change processes, as well as multidirectional flows. We then discuss a number of analytical challenges related to the current conceptualisation of telecoupling, especially in relation to classification of system boundaries, hierarchies, power and scale; and propose ways for dealing with these by looking beyond land system science to insights from the fields of economic geography, socio-economic metabolism studies, political ecology and cultural anthropology that have long histories of dealing with global flows, exchanges and networks.
The full paper is available at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1747423X.2015.1096423 #.VlYV9tKrRdg