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Telecoupled environmental impacts are an obstacle to meeting the sustainable development goals

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  • Yiwen Zeng
  • Rebecca K. Runting
  • James E. M. Watson
  • Luis Roman Carrasco

Abstract

International trade is responsible for connecting human and natural systems across distant countries, and has profound implications for sustainability. In particular, telecoupling, the socioeconomic and environmental interactions between distant countries as a result of, among others, global trade, typically leaves less affluent nations bearing the largest environmental impacts. Telecoupling effects are likely to be pervasive to those trying to achieve the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but little is known about how telecoupling affects the SDGs beyond a subset of environment‐related targets. Here, we take a broad global network analysis approach to address this gap, and assess the vulnerability of the SDGs' indicators and their interactions to telecoupling across 180 countries. We find that a majority (~78%) of the SDG indicators are significantly correlated (p‐value

Suggested Citation

  • Yiwen Zeng & Rebecca K. Runting & James E. M. Watson & Luis Roman Carrasco, 2022. "Telecoupled environmental impacts are an obstacle to meeting the sustainable development goals," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(1), pages 76-82, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:sustdv:v:30:y:2022:i:1:p:76-82
    DOI: 10.1002/sd.2229
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    References listed on IDEAS

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