The increase in population and economic development has made environmental issues more serious and threatens regional ecological security and sustainable development. Currently, most indicators in the related research field of ecological security tend to be socio-economic and neglect depicting the state of the ecosystems. This study, therefore, assessed the ecological security by constructing the evaluation index system embedded in the ecosystem service supply and demand based on the pressure–state–response model and identified the key obstacles to ecological security in the Pearl River Delta from 1990 to 2015. Our results showed that soil retention, carbon sequestration, and water yield increased with fluctuation except for grain production and habitat quality. The grain demand, carbon emission, and water demand increased sharply by 10.1%, 769.4%, and 17.5%, respectively. The ecosystem service supply areas were mainly located in the low hills, while the demand regions were mainly in the low plain areas. The ecological security index’s decline in vitality was caused by the decrease in the pressure index, indicating that the ecological security showed an inevitable deterioration and increased pressure on the ecosystem. During the study period, the source of the five key obstacle factors changed from the state layer and response layer to the pressure layer. The accumulative degree of the five top obstacle factors was above 45%. Therefore, governments should grasp the key indicators to improve ecological security as this study provides the theoretical basis and scientific information for sustainable development.

Ecotourism and agricultural development have been proven to have synergistic effects, although few studies have employed a spatial planning approach to incorporate tourism growth into crop cultivation planning. This study constructed a theoretical framework of environmental suitability—farmland accessibility—tourist’s landscape preferences for crop cultivation planning to link regional agriculture and ecotourism development. The spatial planning of rapeseed cultivation in Qinghai Province was chosen as a case study. The main research methods include an environmental suitability analysis based on remote sensing and Maxent modeling, a farmland accessibility analysis based on a GIS platform, and a landscape preference questionnaire survey of tourists. According to the survey’s findings, almost 80% of tourists thought rapeseed flowers enhanced the beauty of natural landscapes. This demonstrated the enormous potential of rapeseed fields for fostering ecotourism. Based on environmental factors, the optimum region for rapeseed cultivation covered 5.38% of the study area, or roughly 6327 km². The comprehensive optimum zone, which encompassed both agricultural accessibility and environmental suitability, was equal to 12.63% of the study area’s farming area, or around 929 km². This study’s crop cultivation suitability framework can integrate agricultural and ecotourism development, with substantial implications for achieving coordinated economic, social, and environmental development.

Attaining optimal eco-efficiency is of paramount importance in promoting the sustainable and harmonious development of the economy and environment within urban agglomerations. Firstly, this paper utilizes the Super-SBM model with undesirable output to measure the eco-efficiency (EE) of 64 cities in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei metropolitan region (BTHMR), the Yangtze River Delta (YRD), the Pearl River Delta (PRD), and the Chengdu–Chongqing Economic Zone (CCEZ) from 2006 to 2019. Secondly, this study puts forth a novel and comprehensive index system aimed at evaluating the urbanization efficiency and sheds light on the spatiotemporal changes in EE and urbanization efficiency. Finally, the STIRPAT model is used to examine the influencing factors of EE and to investigate the correlation between EE and urbanization efficiency. The study found that the overall EE of the four typical urban agglomerations is high, but the trend varies with a decrease of about 12.9% from 2006 to 2019. The mean EE is in the order of CCEZ > PRD > BTHMR > YRD, with mean values of 0.941, 0.909, 0.842, and 0.732, respectively. The level of science and technology and the urbanization efficiency have a significant positive impact on EE, while population, industrial structure, FDI, and greening level have an inhibitory effect on urban eco-efficiency. Based on the results, policy suggestions such as paying attention to regional heterogeneity and giving full play to the government’s macro-regulatory role in shaping the economic and industrial structure are proposed to serve as a guide for the coordinated development of urban agglomerations under the Dual Carbon Target.