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      Leveraging the metacoupling framework for sustainability science and global sustainable development

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          ABSTRACT

          Sustainability science seeks to understand human–nature interactions behind sustainability challenges, but has largely been place-based. Traditional sustainability efforts often solved problems in one place at the cost of other places, compromising global sustainability. The metacoupling framework offers a conceptual foundation and a holistic approach to integrating human–nature interactions within a place, as well as between adjacent places and between distant places worldwide. Its applications show broad utilities for advancing sustainability science with profound implications for global sustainable development. They have revealed effects of metacoupling on the performance, synergies, and trade-offs of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) across borders and across local to global scales; untangled complex interactions; identified new network attributes; unveiled spatio-temporal dynamics and effects of metacoupling; uncovered invisible feedbacks across metacoupled systems; expanded the nexus approach; detected and integrated hidden phenomena and overlooked issues; re-examined theories such as Tobler's First Law of Geography; and unfolded transformations among noncoupling, coupling, decoupling, and recoupling. Results from the applications are also helpful to achieve SDGs across space, amplify benefits of ecosystem restoration across boundaries and across scales, augment transboundary management, broaden spatial planning, boost supply chains, empower small agents in the large world, and shift from place-based to flow-based governance. Key topics for future research include cascading effects of an event in one place on other places both nearby and far away. Operationalizing the framework can benefit from further tracing flows across scales and space, uplifting the rigor of causal attribution, enlarging toolboxes, and elevating financial and human resources. Unleashing the full potential of the framework will generate more important scientific discoveries and more effective solutions for global justice and sustainable development.

          Abstract

          This article highlights major advances in scientific discoveries for sustainability science from applying the integrated metacoupling framework, illustrates implications for global sustainable development, and offers future perspectives to further empower the framework.

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          Most cited references129

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          A general framework for analyzing sustainability of social-ecological systems.

          A major problem worldwide is the potential loss of fisheries, forests, and water resources. Understanding of the processes that lead to improvements in or deterioration of natural resources is limited, because scientific disciplines use different concepts and languages to describe and explain complex social-ecological systems (SESs). Without a common framework to organize findings, isolated knowledge does not cumulate. Until recently, accepted theory has assumed that resource users will never self-organize to maintain their resources and that governments must impose solutions. Research in multiple disciplines, however, has found that some government policies accelerate resource destruction, whereas some resource users have invested their time and energy to achieve sustainability. A general framework is used to identify 10 subsystem variables that affect the likelihood of self-organization in efforts to achieve a sustainable SES.
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            A safe operating space for humanity.

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              A Computer Movie Simulating Urban Growth in the Detroit Region

              W Tobler (1970)
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                Natl Sci Rev
                Natl Sci Rev
                nsr
                National Science Review
                Oxford University Press
                2095-5138
                2053-714X
                July 2023
                31 March 2023
                31 March 2023
                : 10
                : 7
                : nwad090
                Affiliations
                Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Michigan State University , East Lansing, MI 48823, USA
                Author notes
                Author information
                https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6344-0087
                Article
                nwad090
                10.1093/nsr/nwad090
                10255777
                37426486
                ad26d442-c3d9-41cf-b529-7bb0a62094c3
                © The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of China Science Publishing & Media Ltd.

                This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                : 08 November 2022
                : 06 March 2023
                : 29 March 2023
                : 09 June 2023
                Page count
                Pages: 24
                Funding
                Funded by: National Science Foundation, DOI 10.13039/100000001;
                Award ID: 1924111
                Award ID: 2033507
                Award ID: 2118329
                Funded by: AgBioResearch, Michigan State University, DOI 10.13039/100011138;
                Funded by: Norwegian University of Science and Technology, DOI 10.13039/100009123;
                Categories
                REVIEW
                EARTH SCIENCES
                Special Topic: Coupling Human and Natural Systems
                Nsr/9
                AcademicSubjects/MED00010
                AcademicSubjects/SCI00010

                biodiversity,ecosystem services,human–nature interactions,planetary boundaries,telecoupling,sustainable development

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