In China, the combination of land supply finitude and land use inefficiency has become a barrier to sustainable development in urban society and the economy. Land consolidation has been widely implemented as a tool to improve the quality and quantity of land use, but is mainly limited to rural areas and focuses on farmland production, while not taking into consideration of aspects such as life, production, and ecology. Furthermore, contemporary research usually focuses on one land consolidation project, ignoring practical project arrangement at a regional macroscopic level and lacking specific differentiation in designing land consolidation projects. This study aims to create a method to determine functional units for land consolidation (FULC) in metropolitan areas to facilitate the sustainable use of land resources and improve the efficiency of land use. Moreover, a framework to assess the overall demarcation of FULC is developed. The proposed model considers the production, life, and ecology functions in the demarcation decisions regarding FULC. A typical metropolitan area, that is, Haidian District, Beijing, is used as a case study to demonstrate this framework. The analysis shows that the model can provide technical support and practical references for planners and executors to arrange different land consolidation projects at the macroscopic level. By taking all production, life, and ecological properties of the land parcels into consideration, the proposed model enables local governments to meet their sustainable development targets by managing specialized projects for FULC as a spatial governance platform.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the National New-type Urbanization Plan (2014–2020) put forward the novel principle of “people-oriented” policy. Has the Chinese government’s plan achieved the expected results? To answer this question, the present study evaluates the impacts of New-type Urbanization on the subjective well-being (SWB) of residents. Based on the IV Ordered Probit Model and the data of Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS), we determined that (1) living in cities has a positive impact on SWB, and this impact is significant at a statistical level of 1%; (2) urban household registration (hukou) has no significant impact on SWB; and (3) “Gender”, “Income”, “Job”, “Politics”, “Education”, “Marriage”, and “Health” have significant effects on SWB. To improve residents’ SWB, the government should enhance the attractiveness of the city and significantly reform the household registration system.

The Antarctic region harbors abundant natural resources that constitute a common heritage site for humankind. However, given climate change and global resource scarcity, natural resource management has emerged as a pivotal issue in Antarctic governance. Assessing the value of natural resources is fundamental and crucial for ensuring their sustainable utilization and conservation. This study attempted to promote decision-makers’ understanding of the Antarctic using nature’s contribution to people (NCP) and provide an evaluation of the value of natural resources in the Antarctic, thereby contributing to sustainable global development. It developed a conceptual framework for evaluating natural resource values in the NCP, which includes scope delimitation, type identification, and value assessment. Economic value assessments were conducted for key NCPs in Antarctica. Based on existing biological, physical, and economic data, our initial estimates indicate that the economic value of the realized NCP is approximately 2.46 trillion CNY, with regulating NCP accounting for roughly 70% of the total value. If the potential NCP in the Antarctic were realized at foreseeable scientific and technological levels, the total economic value would reach approximately 105.62 trillion CNY. Regulating NCP accounted for most of the total value, but material NCP accounted for more than 20%. Overall, the development of natural resources and environmental protection are two sides of the same coin in the Antarctic, and there may be trade-offs between different NCPs. With increasing human activity, many NCP may be lost in the Antarctic region. This study develops a new perspective on the valuation of nature’s contributions to the Antarctic. The evaluation results can provide scientific evidence for decision-making and management of the development and utilization of natural resources in the Antarctic.

Marine protected areas (MPAs) in the Southern Ocean are essential tools for marine conservation and Antarctic governance, yet new MPA proposals under CCAMLR have long struggled to become formal institutional outputs. This study conceptualizes this gridlock as an “institutional anti-commons”: under CCAMLR’s consensus rule, heterogeneous participating members possess de facto blocking capacity, while unresolved reservations may weaken the stability and implementation basis of agreement. To examine this explanation, we develop an institutional anti-commons framework and examine it through an agent-based evolutionary game model embedded in multiplex interaction networks. The model represents the 26 sovereign-state members of CCAMLR and distinguishes scientific participation, facility exposure, commercial fishery interest, sovereignty identity, and economic capacity. It compares a binary support–objection model with a conditional-support negotiation model, operationalizes agreement through a no-explicit-objection criterion, and evaluates transfer, pre-decision coordination, and network-layer specifications. Mechanism comparison shows that supporter-maintenance transfer alone has difficulty breaking gridlock, whereas interaction coordination more effectively reduces explicit objection. This study extends anti-commons theory to institutional decision-making and offers a diagnostic framework for understanding delays in institutional innovation in high-threshold international environmental regimes.