@Article{DowningWoDyAgSeJi:2021:WhWhLe,
               author = "Downing, Andrea S. and Wong, Grace Y. and Dyer, Michelle and 
                         Aguiar, Ana Paula Dutra de and Selomane, Odirilwe and Jimenez 
                         Aceituno, Amanda",
          affiliation = "{The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences} and {Stockholm University} 
                         and {Stockholm University} and {Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas 
                         Espaciais (INPE)} and {Stockholm University} and {Stockholm 
                         University}",
                title = "When the whole is less than the sum of all parts – Tracking 
                         global-level impacts of national sustainability initiatives",
              journal = "Global Environmental Change",
                 year = "2021",
               volume = "69",
                pages = "e102306",
                month = "July",
             keywords = "China, Cross-system social-ecological burdens, Reforestation, 
                         Sustainable Development Goals, Telecoupling framework, Trade 
                         routes.",
             abstract = "The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are 
                         described as integrated and indivisible, where sustainability 
                         challenges must be addressed across sectors and scales to achieve 
                         global-level sustainability. However, SDG monitoring mostly 
                         focuses on tracking progress at national-levels, for each goal 
                         individually. This approach ignores local and cross-border impacts 
                         of national policies and assumes that global-level progress is the 
                         sum of national, sector-specific gains. In this study, we 
                         investigate effects of reforestation programs in China on 
                         countries supplying forest and agricultural commodities to China. 
                         Using case studies of rubber and palm oil production in Southeast 
                         Asian countries, soy production in Brazil and logging in South 
                         Pacific Island states, we investigate cross-sector effects of 
                         production for and trade to China in these exporting countries. We 
                         use a three-step multi-method approach. 1) We identify distal 
                         trade flows and the narratives used to justify them, using a 
                         telecoupling framework; 2) we design causal loop diagrams to 
                         analyse social-ecological processes of change in our case studies 
                         driven by trade to China and 3) we link these processes of change 
                         to the SDG framework. We find that sustainability progress in 
                         China from reforestation is cancelled out by the deforestation and 
                         cross-sectoral impacts supporting this reforestation abroad. 
                         Narratives of economic development support commodity production 
                         abroad through unrealised aims of benefit distribution and 
                         assumptions of substitutability of socio-ecological forest 
                         systems. Across cases, we find the analysed trade supports 
                         unambiguous progress on few SDGs only, and we find many mixed 
                         effects where processes that support the achievement of SDGs 
                         exist, but are overshadowed by counterproductive processes. Our 
                         study represents a useful approach for tracking global-level 
                         impacts of national sustainability initiatives and provides 
                         cross-scale and cross-sectoral lenses through which to identify 
                         drivers of unsustainability that can be addressed in the design of 
                         effective sustainability policies.",
                  doi = "10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021.102306",
                  url = "http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021.102306",
                 issn = "0959-3780",
             language = "en",
           targetfile = "Downing_when.pdf",
        urlaccessdate = "20 maio 2024"
}