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Abstract Domestic attempts to advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in a country can have synergistic and/or trade-off effects on the advancement of SDGs in other countries. Transboundary SDG interactions can be delivered through various transmission channels (e.g., trade, river flow, ocean currents, and air flow). This study quantified the transboundary interactions through these channels between 768 pairs of SDG indicators. The results showed that although high income countries only comprised 14.18% of the global population, they contributed considerably to total SDG interactions worldwide (60.60%). Transboundary synergistic effects via international trade were 14.94% more pronounced with trade partners outside their immediate geographic vicinity than with neighbouring ones. Conversely, nature-caused flows (including river flow, ocean currents, and air flow) resulted in 39.29% stronger transboundary synergistic effects among neighboring countries compared to non-neighboring ones. To facilitate the achievement of SDGs worldwide, it is essential to enhance collaboration among countries and leverage transboundary synergies. 

Abstract Understanding species distributions is a global priority for mitigating environmental pressures from human activities. Ample studies have identified key environmental (climate and habitat) predictors and the spatial scales at which they influence species distributions. However, regarding human influence, such understandings are largely lacking. Here, to advance knowledge concerning human influence on species distributions, we systematically reviewed species distribution modelling (SDM) articles and assessed current modelling efforts. We searched 12,854 articles and found only 1,429 articles using human predictors within SDMs. Collectively, these studies of >58,000 species used 2,307 unique human predictors, suggesting that in contrast to environmental predictors, there is no ‘rule of thumb’ for human predictor selection in SDMs. The number of human predictors used across studies also varied (usually one to four per study). Moreover, nearly half the articles projecting to future climates held human predictors constant over time, risking false optimism about the effects of human activities compared with climate change. Advances in using human predictors in SDMs are paramount for accurately informing and advancing policy, conservation, management and ecology. We show considerable gaps in including human predictors to understand current and future species distributions in the Anthropocene, opening opportunities for new inquiries. We pose 15 questions to advance ecological theory, methods and real-world applications. 

Abstract Numerous narrow marine passages around the world serve as essential gateways for the transportation of goods, the movement of people, and the migration of fish and wildlife. These global gateways facilitate human–nature interactions across distant regions. The socioeconomic and environmental interactions among distant coupled human and natural systems affect the sustainability of global gateways in complex ways. However, the assessment and analysis of global gateways are scattered and fragmented. To fill this knowledge gap, we frame global gateways as telecoupled human and natural systems using an emerging global gateway, the Bering Strait, as a demonstration. We examine how three telecoupling processes (tourism, vessel traffic, and natural resource development) impact and are impacted by the coupled human and natural system of the Bering Strait Region. Given that global gateways share many similarities, our analysis of the Bering Strait Region provides a foundation for the assessment of other telecoupled global gateways. 

Abstract Recent climate change has caused declines in ice coverage which have lengthened the open water season in the Arctic and increased access to resources and shipping routes. These changes have resulted in more vessel activity in seasonally ice-covered regions. While traffic is increasing in the ice-free season, the amount of vessel activity in the marginal ice zone (ice concentration 15–80%) or in pack ice (>80% concentration) remains unclear. Understanding patterns of vessel activities in ice is important given increased safety challenges and environmental impacts. Here, we couple high-resolution ship tracking information with sea ice thickness and concentration data to quantify vessel activity in ice-covered areas of the Pacific Arctic (northern Bering, Chukchi, and western Beaufort Seas). This region is a geo-strategically critical area that contains globally important commercial fisheries and serves as a corridor for Arctic access for wildlife and vessels. We find that vessel traffic in the marginal ice zone is widely distributed across the study area while vessel traffic in pack ice is concentrated along known shipping routes and in areas of natural resource development. Of the statistically significant relationships between vessel traffic and both sea ice concentration and thickness, over 99% are negative, indicating that increasing sea ice is associated with decreasing vessel traffic on a monthly time scale. Furthermore, there is substantial vessel traffic in areas of high concentration for bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus), and traffic in these areas increased four-fold during the study period. Fishing vessels dominate vessel traffic at low ice concentrations, but vessels categorized as Other, likely icebreakers, are the most common vessel type in pack ice. These findings indicate that vessel traffic in areas of ice coverage is influenced by distant policy and resource development decisions which should be taken into consideration when trying to predict future vessel-ice interactions in a changing climate. 

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 The Arctic is an epicenter of complex environmental and socioeconomic change. Strengthened connections between Arctic and non-Arctic systems could threaten or enhance Arctic sustainability, but studies of external influences on the Arctic are scattered and fragmented in academic literature. Here, we review and synthesize how external influences have been analyzed in Arctic-coupled human and natural systems (CHANS) literature. Results show that the Arctic is affected by numerous external influences nearby and faraway, including global markets, climate change, governance, military security, and tourism. However, apart from climate change, these connections are infrequently the focus of Arctic CHANS analyses. We demonstrate how Arctic CHANS research could be enhanced and research gaps could be filled using the holistic framework of metacoupling (human–nature interactions within as well as between adjacent and distant systems). Our perspectives provide new approaches to enhance the sustainability of Arctic systems in an interconnected world. 

Concurrently implemented green initiatives to combat global environmental crises may be curtailed or even sacrificed given the ongoing global economic contraction. We collected empirical data and information about green initiatives from 15 sites or countries worldwide. We systematically explored how specific policy, intended behaviors, and gains of given green initiative may interact with those of other green initiatives concurrently implemented in the same geographic area or involving the same recipients. Surprisingly, we found that spillover effects were very divergent: one initiative could reduce the gain of another by 22 % ~ 100 %, representing alarming losses, while in other instances, substantial co-benefits could arise as one initiative can increase the gain of another by 9 % ~ 310 %. Leveraging these effects will help countries keep green initiatives with significant co-benefits but stop initiatives with substantial spillover losses in the face of widespread budget cuts, better meeting the United Nations’ sustainable development goals.