Abstract

Although Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been used to study telecoupled agricultural supply chains, these approaches do not usually incorporate the territorial variability of production systems. This study addresses this gap by integrating the territorial-LCA approach within the telecoupling framework, enabling the assessment of environmental impacts along the supply chain, from agrochemical manufacturing to the final distribution of fruit in consumer countries. South-Central Chile was defined as the sending system and 76 nations as receiving systems. In addition, 58 countries manufacturing agrochemicals for the sending system were assessed. A territorial LCA approach was applied to the sending system to evaluate and compare the environmental performance of agricultural regions. The results indicate that agrochemical manufacturing constitutes a significant spillover system, as several producing countries are not directly involved in fruit consumption. During the crop production phase, environmental impacts were primarily driven by cultivated area, doses and types of agrochemicals, and regional geomorphological conditions. During the distribution of fruits, transport mode, export volumes, and trade distances influenced total impacts. Across the 76 supply chains assessed, those serving the fruit demand of six receiving systems accounted for between 78.5% and 87.5% of the total environmental burden, revealing a pronounced concentration of environmental pressures within export-oriented trade networks. Overall, this study highlights that integrating territorial LCA into the telecoupling framework provides a systemic perspective on cross-border environmental interactions and improves the accuracy of impact estimation associated with sending systems, thereby strengthening the evidence base for environmental governance of globalized agri-food systems.