Research Projects
Fifteen individual PhD research projects put the telecoupling research approach into practice. They are are grouped in three overarching, interrelating work packages.
Processes
How inter-dependent are land and resource systems in today’s world, and what are new or unexpected actors and processes creating the telecouplings that produce these dependencies?
01: Understanding conservation telecouplings
Siyu Qin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
02: Social-ecological metabolism approaches to analyse telecouplings related to international trade
Nicolas Roux, Institute for Social Ecology, Vienna
03: How can private companies promote sustainable land use through their supply chains
Simon Bager, Université catholique de Louvain
04: Impacts of changing lifestyles and ecosystem service demands
Perrine Laroche, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
05: Measuring the effectiveness of corporate zero deforestation commitments in South East Asia
Floris Leijten, Unilever U.K.
Distance
How is sustainability governance of land use and land-based products affected by differences in the type of linkages and telecouplings and the scale at which they operate?
06: Spill-over effects of demands for certified tropical products in Europe
Pin Pravalprukskul, University of Copenhagen
07: Environmental impact assessments in a telecoupled world
Claudia Parra Paitan, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
08: Justices and injustices in the soy value chain
Finn Mempel, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
09: Characterisation and visualization of telecouplings in Large Scale Land Acquisitions
Gabi Sonderegger, University of Bern
10: Stickiness in international trade of agricultural and forestry products
Tiago Reis, Université catholique de Louvain
Impacts
Which enabling conditions are required to generate opportunities for a more sustainable allocation of resources in a telecoupled world?
11: Exploring telecouplings between mining and land change in Africa
Anna Frohn Pedersen, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
12: Governance institutions for sustainability in globally telecoupled systems
Johanna Coenen, Leuphana University of Lüneburg
13: Land use impacts of the clean development mechanism in a telecoupled world
Louise Marie Busck Lumholt, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
14: Telecouplings, supply chain analysis and transparency
Sahar Sajjad Malik, Earthworm Foundation
15: International forest conservation discourses and local decisions as telecoupled systems
Joel Gustav Persson, University of Copenhagen
The work packages provide a platform for collaborative, comparative and cross-sectoral research. Each PhD fellow is grounded in one of the three work packages, but also interact with the others as well as contribute to the synthesis activities. Working together and combining methodological expertise and disciplinary lenses will enable ESRs to quantify the impacts of telecouplings, explore causal links in them, and use their collective insights to identifying leverage points aimed at balancing trade-offs.