A key aspect of mitigating global climate warming is enhancing the carbon storage capacity of terrestrial ecosystems. China’s Grain for Green Program (GFGP) is the largest ecological restoration project in the world, which is closely associated with land use change. A systematic assessment of the GFGP’s impact on regional carbon storage is of great significance for promoting regional development and maintaining ecosystem stability. Therefore, this study selects a typical dry-hot valley area—Yanjin County—as the study area, which serves as an ecological protection barrier in Southwest China. We employed the InVEST model and Geo-detector model based on land use data from three periods (2000, 2014, and 2019), combined with static overlay analysis methods, in order to evaluate the impact of the implementation of GFGP on the spatial and temporal distribution of carbon storage. We also explored the driving factors of the spatial differentiation of carbon storage. The results indicate that, since the implementation of the GFGP, a total of 180.03 km² of cropland has been converted to forestland, increasing the forest cover rate from 81.83% to 83.37%. The project has contributed 5.88 × 10⁵ t to regional carbon storage, effectively offsetting carbon emissions caused by human activities such as urban expansion while also promoting the growth of regional carbon storage. The implementation of the GFGP has led to changes in three types of land use. Among them, converting cropland to forestland (3262 t/km²) is the most effective carbon sequestration method, and converting cropland to grassland (2530 t/km²) has shown great potential in carbon sequestration. Additionally, the study found that elevation (0.038–0.059) is the main factor affecting the spatial differentiation of carbon storage, and the interaction between elevation and other factors can effectively enhance the carbon sequestration capacity of regional ecosystems. Overall, the GFGP not only plays a significant role in combating climate warming but also makes an important contribution to improving the stability and sustainability of regional ecosystems.

The public-goods nature of ecological products and heterogeneous stakeholder interests mean that protected areas often face weak coordination, limited incentives, and uneven benefit distribution in the identification, transformation, and return of ecological value. Under increasingly strict conservation objectives, ecological product provision is shifting from direct resource use towards maintaining ecosystem functions and realising experiential value. This helps safeguard ecosystem integrity but raises demands on institutional pathways for value transformation and on the sustainability of community livelihoods. Using Pudacuo National Park in China as a case, this study develops an analytical framework linking supply–demand structures, value chains, and value co-creation, and applies policy document analysis, semi-structured interviews, field observation, and process tracing to examine mechanisms of ecological value realisation under strict conservation. The results show that: (1) a collaborative governance network integrating park authorities, local governments, and concession operators provides a stable organisational basis for ecological value identification and transformation; (2) strengthened provision of non-material ecological products reorients the supply system towards regulating and cultural services, driving a shift from material output to function- and experience-oriented provision; (3) a multi-level community participation model combines labour embedding, livelihood diversification, and institutionalised benefit return to form an ecological value return mechanism grounded in value co-creation. Together, these mechanisms support a relative balance between ecological protection and community development under strict protection and offer empirical insights into the institutional logic of ecological value realisation in strongly protected contexts.