BACKGROUND: Many key global sustainability challenges are closely intertwined (examples are provided in the figure). These challenges include air pollution, biodiversity loss, climate change, energy and food security, disease spread, species invasion, and water shortages and pollution. They are interconnected across three dimensions (organizational levels, space, and time) but are often separately studied and managed. Systems integration-holistic approaches to integrating various components of coupled

ABSTRACT. Interactions between distant places are increasingly widespread and influential, often leading to unexpected outcomes with profound implications for sustainability. Numerous sustainability studies have been conducted within a particular place with little attention to the impacts of distant interactions on sustainability in multiple places. Although distant forces have been studied, they are usually treated as exogenous variables and feedbacks have rarely been considered. To understand and integrate various distant interactions better, we propose an integrated framework based on telecoupling, an umbrella concept that refers to socioeconomic and environmental interactions over distances. The concept of telecoupling is a logical extension of research on coupled human and natural systems, in which interactions occur within particular geographic locations. The telecoupling framework contains five major interrelated components, i.e., coupled human and natural systems, flows, agents, causes, and effects. We illustrate the framework using two examples of distant interactions associated with trade of agricultural commodities and invasive species, highlight the implications of the framework, and discuss research needs and approaches to move research on telecouplings forward. The framework can help to analyze system components and their interrelationships, identify research gaps, detect hidden costs and untapped benefits, provide a useful means to incorporate feedbacks as well as trade-offs and synergies across multiple systems (sending, receiving, and spillover systems), and improve the understanding of distant interactions and the effectiveness of policies for socioeconomic and environmental sustainability from local to global levels.

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Computable General Equilibrium models, widely used for the analysis of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) are often criticized for having poor econometric foundations. This paper improves the linkage between econometric estimates of key parameters and their usage in CGE analysis in order to better evaluate the likely outcome of a Free Trade Area of the Americas. Our econometric work focuses on estimation of a particular parameter, the elasticity of substitution among imports from different countries, which is especially critical for evaluating the positive and normative outcomes of FTAs. We match the data in the econometric exercise to the policy experiment at hand, and employ both point estimates and standard errors from the estimates.The FTAA analysis then takes explicit account of the degree of uncertainty in the underlying parameters. We sample from a distribution of parameter values given by our econometric estimates in order to generate a distribution of model results, from which we can construct confidence intervals. We find that imports increase in all regions of the world as a result of the FTAA, and this outcome is robust to variation in the trade elasticities. Ten of the thirteen FTAA regions experience a welfare gain in which we are more than 95% confident. We conclude that there is great potential for combining econometric work with CGE-based policy analysis in order to produce a richer set of results that are likely to prove more satisfying to the sophisticated policy maker. (Financial Times, 2003)

This paper provides complete documentation for version 7 of the 'standard' Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model. This is the first comprehensive documentation of the model since the 1997 'GTAP book' and this updated version includes some important new features. On a substantive level, commodities and activities are separated, allowing for multi-product sectors, as well as multiple sectors producing the same commodity. Additional flexibility is provided for modeling of production and consumption behavior, and the valuation and naming conventions have been modified. In addition, this paper folds in important advances since the 1997 publication, including the revised treatment of non-homotheticity in final demand, the welfare decomposition and multi-modal international transportation. The paper opens with an overview which puts this widely used model in broader context. The model exposition is comprehensive and includes a bridging table linking the original, 'classic' model with the current version. This is followed by a section discussing the major extensions of the standard model and how they are being used. The paper closes with an overall assessment and a discussion of future research directions.JEL codes: C68, D58, D60, F1

are evaluated at market prices and face no further (border) taxes. Similarly, since domestic sales do not cross a border, they do not face such taxes either. In order to convert exports to fob values, it is necessary to add the export tax, denoted XTAX(i,r,s). Note that these taxes are written in a form that is destination destination/source-specific trade policy measures at the level of disaggregated regions and commodities (this varies by type of policy intervention), once the data base has been aggregated over either commodities or regions, bilateral rates of taxation will vary due to compositional differences. Therefore, it is important to maintain this bilateral detail in the modeling framework.