The Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region (NX region) of Northwestern China is threatened by increased meteorological drought induced by climate change (CC) and constraints on water supply from the Yellow River. Thus, the NX region is representative of attempts to adapt to CC and variability in China’s arid regions. Field visits, a questionnaire and in situ inspections were conducted in 2012–2014 to understand people’s perception and awareness of drought and its impact, particularly with respect to adaptation strategies. We mainly focused on drought adaptation actions and planning implemented at the government level under the double pressures of drought and allocation. We described a suitable adaptation pathway for socio-economic sustainable development and discussed existing adaptation barriers. Construction of modern efficient water-saving agriculture lies at the core of drought adaptation, with socio-economic sustainable development being the ultimate goal. To achieve this, policies and institutional, engineering, technological, structural and social initiatives and measures—classified into macro adaptation strategies and specific coping measures—are implemented. Adaptation often encounters obstacles, e.g., policy issues from household contract responsibility systems, funding difficulties of low-income farmers, traditional behavioral habits and low education and literacy levels among farmers. The adaptation pathway involves the construction of modern efficient water-saving agriculture. Agricultural water savings are then transferred to developed industries, which back-feed socio-economic sustainable development in the NX region.

This longitudinal study applies decade-spanning socioeconomic indicators (2013–2022) from the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei urban agglomeration. An integrated analytical framework was developed, merging the super-efficiency slack-based measurement (SBM) methodology with entropic weighting techniques to quantify tourism efficiency and economic development. Subsequent phases employed a multi-method analytical cascade: coupling coordination assessment modeling for system interaction analysis, standard deviation ellipses for spatial dispersion characterization, and Markovian transition matrices for temporal pattern identification. The investigation concludes with evolutionary trajectory projections using gray system forecasting GM(1,1) modeling. The analytical findings reveal the following patterns: (1) Within the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei metropolitan cluster, tourism efficiency demonstrates a consistent upward trajectory, manifesting spatial differentiation characteristics characterized by a dual-core structure centered on Tianjin and Baoding, with higher values observed in northwestern areas compared to southeastern regions. Concurrently, regional disparities exhibit progressive convergence over temporal progression. (2) The level of economic development in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei city cluster has been rising steadily, demonstrating a geospatial distribution of ‘central concentration with peripheral attenuation, with the north-east being better than the southwest’, and the gap between the regional differences has become broader over time. (3) The coupling between tourism efficiency and the level of economic development in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei city cluster has generally improved, with Beijing and Tianjin predominantly in a coordinated regime, and some cities in Hebei Province about to shift from dysfunctional to coordinated, and, spatially, the coupling and coordination in northern sectors demonstrate superior performance compared to southern counterparts nationally. (4) The coupling coordination degree of the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei city cluster in the next eight years is predicted by the gray GM(1,1) prediction model and the overall continuation of the growth trend of the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei city cluster over the past ten years, thus verifying the importance of the regional integrated policy frameworks in the system integration of the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei metropolitan system.