Urban areas are now responsible for most of the consumption of the world’s resources, including about 75% of global primary energy 5 and 76% of wood used 6, 7, as well as associated emissions and waste generation 8. Over the past several decades rural-urban relations have shifted, and global economic integration has led to an expansion and thickening of city dependence on imported resources and global distribution of waste 2, leading to what Taylor 3 terms city ‘hinterworld’ relations, or an urban reliance on ‘global hinterlands’ 4. Historically, cities, while centers of trade and power, depended on their regional ecosystems and adjacent rural hinterlands for their sustenance. Urban regions cannot be sustained without the support of resources from regional and global hinterlands 1. We suggest an agenda for research to evaluate the potential for transferrable MUR governance innovation to enable sustainable and equitable PCSs. In London and Tianjin, waste capture reduced consumption of hinterland resources, whereas in Bangkok, the aim was to improve the sustainability of resource use in coastal and marine hinterlands. Three cases are used to illustrate governance innovation in MUR-PCS interactions: industrial symbiosis in Tianjin, China electricity production in London, UK and the adoption of standards and labels for seafood in Bangkok, Thailand. Actions taken within MURs influence the sustainability of global PCSs, and vice versa but that influence is complicated by complex governance intersections. These roles, coupled with their concentration, clustering and centrality effects, mean MURs have a disproportionately large effect on the sustainability of global production-consumption systems (PCSs). Mega-urban regions (MURs) are important consumers or traders of resources from, or producers of wastes destined for, the global hinterlands.
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