Assessing coupling interactions in a safe and just operating space for regional sustainability

Human activities affect the Earth System with an unprecedented magnitude, causing undesirable irreversible degradation. The United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide an integrated global action plan for sustainable development. However, it remains a great challenge to develop actionable strategies to achieve regional sustainability within social-environmental constraints. Here we proposed a framework, integrating safe and just operating space (SJOS) with SDGs, to assess regional sustainability and interactions between environmental performance and human well-being across scales. Despite China has not fully achieved sustainable development from 2000 to 2018, most provinces have shown significant improvements. Our analyses further delineated four development patterns (i.e., coupled and developed, coupled and underdeveloped, uncoupled and underdeveloped, and coupled and underdeveloped), and developed targeted strategies and pathways for each pattern to transition towards sustainability. Our operationalizable framework is broadly applicable to other regions or nations to actualize sustainable development. Here the authors propose an operationalizable framework, integrating safe and just operating space with Sustainable Development Goals, to assess regional sustainability and develops targeted strategies for actualizing sustainable development across scales.

Automated summary

Human activities have had an unprecedented impact on the Earth System, leading to irreversible degradation. The United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals provide a global action plan, but achieving regional sustainability within social-environmental constraints remains a challenge. The authors propose a framework that integrates safe and just operating space with the SDGs to assess regional sustainability and develop targeted strategies for sustainable development across scales. Despite China's incomplete achievement of sustainable development, significant improvements have been observed in most provinces.