High-resolution map of China's sustainability

Abstract

Achieving sustainability is the key to a better future, which requires an accurate assessment of current and historic levels of sustainability at scales that can help targeted interventions. Yet, current assessments of sustainability are mostly focused at national and subnational levels that often fail to capture local and regional variations, especially in regions where management interventions are most needed. A grid-cell level analysis that can yield high-resolution maps of sustainability indices could address this challenge. This study aims to present the first high-resolution map of China's sustainability which integrates the social, economic, and environmental dimensions. The grid level sustainability maps reveal over 1.23 billion Chinese have been free from low sustainability area. There are large variations in sustainability across China with only 2.3% of the country in high sustainability zone and over 140 million, mostly in the northern and northeastern regions, inhabiting under low sustainability conditions. A lower sustainability index within each province is usually accompanied by higher variations of the index suggesting a lack of coordination and greater inequality between and within provinces. Our high-resolution maps of China's sustainability index provide valuable insights into the spatial distribution of sustainability in the country and could help policymakers identify regions to implement targeted interventions.