Telecoupling mediates ecosystem services bundles through social interrelationships

Ecosystem services research and management need to incorporate complex social-ecological interconnections across scales to address sustainability challenges. Such cross-scale interactions can be analysed through a telecoupling framework as it connects human and natural coupled systems through flows over long distances. Here, the telecoupling framework allows us to uncover the winners and losers regarding access to ecosystem services, the power differences regarding ecosystem services management among social actors and the scale at which power is concentrated. Our results suggest that the spatial mismatch between the dependence on ecosystem services (local level) and decision making (supra-local level) can foster both environmental degradation and inequity to distant communities. We conclude that providing a more equal access to ecosystem services and sharing the power in decision making at local scale across social actors can counteract the negative impact on sustainability of such mismatch. (Resume d'auteur)