Economic development and ecological restoration guided by policies has had a profound impact on the relationship between ecosystem service supply and consumption in the past few decades. Exploring the relationship in specific study areas is necessary to support regional planning for sustainability. In this study, we analyzed the equilibrium relationship between ecosystem service supply and consumption driven by economic development and ecological restoration from 1995 to 2018 in Northeast China. We quantified the supply and consumption of three critical ecosystem services, food production, water yield and atmospheric regulation, and identified the main areas for supply and consumption of ecosystem services. We measured the quantity and spatial equilibrium relationship between ecosystem service supply and consumption driven by economic development and ecological restoration at economic megaregion scale. We found the new industrial structure shaped by regional economic development policies formed the new ecosystem service consumer demand. The development of agricultural industry not only resulted in the increase of water consumption, but also the scope of water consumption was expanded in Northeast China. The development of tertiary industry causes the change of atmospheric regulation consumption in urban agglomeration. What’s more, economic development exacerbated imbalances in the supply and consumption of ecosystem services. The unbalanced areas where food supply was less than consumption were in the clusters of Harbin, Changchun, Shenyang, and coastal cities. Since food products can circulate freely through the market, this imbalance will not fundamentally affect regional food security, but will improve the level of agricultural industrialization and scale. The implementation of the grain economic policy caused the rapid expansion of unbalanced areas where water supply was less than consumption. The incredible space mismatch between the supply and consumption of ecosystem services still exists for a long time. However, the implementation of the ecological restoration didn’t effectively solve the problem of insatiable ecosystem service consumption. The ecosystem service consumption brought by economic development need to be given the utmost attention when formulating ecological restoration policies and economic development policies. The results can provide insights for enhancing economic sustainability in northeast china, as well other economic megaregion with similar characteristics throughout the world.

Afforestation is a promising nature-based climate solution for mitigating climate change, but it is subject to a complex web of biophysical, cost-benefit, market, and policy processes. Although its biophysical feasibility has been established, the cost, market, and policy constraints that affect climate change mitigation through afforestation are still unclear. Here, we estimate such cost, market, and policy constraints on the basis of biophysical feasibility. Our findings reveal that implementation costs are a more relevant constraint than opportunity costs on mitigating climate change through afforestation. The China Certified Emission Reduction market currently provides only a 0.308 % incentive for climate change mitigation through afforestation, due to market access constraints. The current market prices of China Certified Emission Reduction, China Carbon Emissions Trading Exchange, and Nature Based Carbon Offset in Voluntary Carbon Market constrain 88.15 %, 87.95 %, and 85.75 % of CO₂ removal actions through afforestation, compared to the carbon price scenario (US$62.97 tCO₂^-1) of the EU Emissions Trading System. Moreover, land policy under the scenarios of prohibiting conversion of cultivated land to forest and forest restoration in degraded areas exhibit 8.87-29.59 % and 65.16-74.10 % constraints, respectively, on mitigating climate change through afforestation compared to land-use freedom conversion scenarios from 2020 to 2060. Thus, enhancing the incentive price of CO₂ removal, addressing the market access barrier, strengthening cooperation between global carbon markets, and exploring carbon-neutral and food multi-oriented land policies can be valuable sources of mitigation efforts over the next 40 years.

Faced with the dual pressure from global climate change and increasing air pollution, China has gradually clarified the adoption of market-based tools to improve the ecological environment. Based on Chinese provincial panel data from 2006 to 2020, this paper analyzes the synergistic governance effect and influence mechanism of China’s carbon emissions trading scheme (ETS) on pollution control and carbon emission reduction by using a multiperiod difference-in-differences (DID) model. The empirical results show that China’s ETS has achieved the synergistic governance effect of pollution control and carbon emission reduction. The heterogeneity analysis shows that ETS can significantly enhance the synergistic governance effect in areas with higher total factor productivity (TFP) and stronger administrative intervention. More importantly, the mechanism analysis shows that China’s ETS promotes the synergistic governance effect of pollution control and carbon emission reduction mainly through industrial structure upgrading and energy structure transformation. The effect contribution values are 22.42% and 9.40%, respectively. This study contributes to deepening the effect of the carbon emissions trading scheme and also provides a reference for the design of a unified carbon trading market in China.

Measuring the profit contribution of ecological benefits is an important prerequisite for the operation of the value-realization mechanism of ecological products. Based on the theory of ecological benefits and ecosystem services, combined with system dynamics and the project cost-benefit method, a forest-ecosystem-service capitalization of the resources and assets value and the realization of an ecological product-benefit system is constructed. The value-realization project of the national reserve-forest ecological products in Nan-ping City, Fujian Province, the National Ecological Civilization Pilot Zone, was selected to calculate the cost and income during the 30-year operational period of the project, and to calculate the profitability of the forest-ecosystem ecological benefits in the project, using different scenarios. Scenario 1: The project income will only be enough to cover the costs of the project operation, and the cost will be recovered at the end of the project operation. Scenario 2: With policy-based ecological compensation, compared with scenario 1, the total project-input line-of-revenue breakthrough and total project-cost line were advanced by 3 years and 2.5 years, respectively. Scenario 3: With the additive effect of the ecological benefit of the ecosystem, compared with scenario 2, the total project-input line-of-revenue breakthrough and total project-cost line were advanced by 3.5 years and 6 years, respectively. It is suggested that the guiding role should be that of policy-based ecological compensation, expanding the scope of ecological-market access, and attracting social investors to participate in the development of ecological products by means of diversified ecological compensation such as market-oriented tools, so as to fully realize the profit contribution of ecological benefits to the project through the realization of the value of ecological products.

Virtually every country has a problem with preserving protected wild animals, and some countries have their way of protecting animals through legal measures. Animals are a nation’s wealth, just as are forest timber and non-timber forest products. This asset has an economic value that is worth quantifying. Ecosystem assessment is becoming an increasingly crucial factor in determining how much the environment contributes to economic value. Such studies require additional monetary modeling and evaluation of non-market services. This research presents a willingness to pay (WTP) approach to calculate the value of protecting wild animal species. The study area was in North Sulawesi, one of Indonesia’s provinces located at the northern tip of Sulawesi Island. The questionnaire format for collecting data was the dichotomous choice contingency assessment method (DCCVM), and the sample size was 428 respondents. Based on willingness to pay, we assessed the contingency of single bounded dichotomous choice (SBDC) by estimating each protected animal’s average (mean) value in three classes, namely mammals, birds, and reptiles. The mean result of the monetary assessment of protected mammal species was IDR 1,801,870 (USD 124.27), IDR 836,670 (USD 57.70) for protected bird species, and IDR 819,700 (USD 56.53) for protected reptiles. Any loss in wild animals incurs a natural resource debt burden for future generations to repay, just as does forest loss. If we do not want to leave the forest empty for our future generations, we must continue implementing nature conservation measures, including the protection and restoration of wild animals.