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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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, tourism slowed down as the world went into lockdown. This pause in tourism provides a unique opportunity to analyze the environmental and socioeconomic effects of tourism by comparing tourism participation levels before, during, and after the pandemic restrictions. We examined tourism in Iceland, an island nation in the Arctic where international tourists vastly outnumber residents. Specifically, we systematically analyzed the materials, energy, tourist, and information flows, as well as the causes, effects, and agents of tourism in Iceland using the framework of telecoupling (human-nature interactions over distances). Results show that the U.S., U.K., and Nordic countries sent the highest numbers of tourists to Iceland. Flows of tourists to Iceland were tracked based on international flights and cruise ships, with Iceland’s tourism industry returning close to pre-pandemic levels in 2022 for air arrivals, while cruise ship tourism was slower in returning to pre-pandemic levels. Agents in the Icelandic tourism industry include government entities, local businesses, tour operators, and many others. There are diverse causes for tourism in Iceland, such as the demand for nature-based tourism and a cooler climate. International tourism in Iceland had both substantial environmental effects (CO2 emissions, damage to sensitive areas, etc.) and socioeconomic effects (e.g., increases in GDP and jobs). Many effects also spillover to the rest of the world as increases in CO2 emissions contribute to global climate change. Tourism is also expected to continue increasing after Iceland’s 2022 marketing launch of “Iceland Together in Progress.” Since Iceland has had such a strong tourism rebound, other countries around the world (especially other Arctic countries) that are looking to increase their tourism can gain insights from Iceland. However, it is important to make tourism more sustainable (e.g., reduction in CO2 emissions).