Downing, Andrea S., Wong, Grave Y., Dyer, Michelle, Aguiar, Ana Paula, Selomane, Odirilwe, and Jimenez Aceituno, Aceituno (2021) When the whole is less than the sum of all parts – Tracking global-level impacts of national sustainability initiatives. Global Environmental Change, 69. 102306.

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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 socioecological 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.

Item ID:	90890
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1872-9495
Keywords:	Sustainable Development Goals, China , Telecoupling framework, Reforestation Trade routes, Cross-system social-ecological burdens
Date Deposited:	02 Mar 2026 23:09
FoR Codes:	41 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 4104 Environmental management > 410402 Environmental assessment and monitoring @ 40% 41 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 4104 Environmental management > 410404 Environmental management @ 40% 44 HUMAN SOCIETY > 4401 Anthropology > 440101 Anthropology of development @ 20%
SEO Codes:	19 ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY, CLIMATE CHANGE AND NATURAL HAZARDS > 1902 Environmental policy, legislation and standards > 190209 Sustainability indicators @ 100%
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