Owing to ecological degradation and fragility, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is vulnerable to economic development and anthropogenic activities. Therefore, studying the impact of eliminating extreme poverty on the ecological environment is important. In this study, based on the remote sensing ecological index (RSEI) and GDP data of poverty-stricken counties on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau from 2011–2019, the model of Economic-Ecological Development Coordination Degree (EEDCD) was constructed, and the difference-in-differences (DID) method was used to verify the impact of policy on EEDCD. The results are as follows: The poverty alleviation policy has considerably improved the EEDCD of counties on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. The coefficients of the core explanatory variables remained significantly positive throughout the inclusion of the control variables. To some extent, the above results reflect the robustness of the model results and demonstrate the change in EEDCD due to the implementation of the poverty alleviation policy. After implementing the poverty alleviation policy, the EEDCD of poverty-stricken counties on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau increased by approximately 66%. Based on the analysis of socioeconomic-related factors by geographic detector, it was found that population density changes, industrial structure changes, and fiscal expenditure had strong explanatory power for EEDCD change.

The vicious cycle between economy and environment is a key issue affecting the sustainable development of poverty-stricken areas, and how to break the environment-economic trap in poverty-stricken areas is a hot topic concerned globally. Therefore, this study uses county data from 2011–2019 of Yunnan-Guizhou-Guangxi rocky desertification contiguous poverty-stricken areas, and investigates the correlation and mechanism among industrial structure, ecological environment and economic growth in poverty-stricken areas based on the fixed effect model and the mediating effect model. The results show that there is a significant contradictory relationship between environmental protection and economic growth in the Yunnan-Guizhou-Guangxi rocky desertification contiguous poverty-stricken areas, while the industrial structure upgrading can alleviate the contradictory relationship. The mode of developing characteristic industries based on ecological resource endowment and then promoting economic growth can more effectively solve the contradiction between environmental protection and economic growth, which is conducive to breaking the environment-economic trap in poverty-stricken areas. This study provides a reference for the development of other poverty-stricken areas in the world, and also provides experience for promoting poverty reduction and sustainable development in the world.