Efficacy assessments for ecosystem conservation without considering the interplay between social and ecological dimensions, and the lack of a social-ecological systems (SES) approach, might threaten sustainable livelihoods and food security, and often fail to meet multidimensional demands. Therefore, an appropriate framework revealing regime shifts and system feedback of the agriculture–ecology–economy nexus (AEEN) was developed in Lishui to deepen our understanding of the systematic responses of SES to disturbances. Both ecological and economic sectors exhibited positive developments, as indicated by vegetation restoration, enhanced biomass accumulation, and GDP growth. The industrial structure underwent remarkable changes, and the absolute dominance of agriculture was steadily weakened by second and tertiary sectors. Accordingly, employment and population structure changes were consistent with the industrial structure. The dominant proportion of primary sector employment was gradually substituted by growth in the second and tertiary sectors, whereas the population growth rate slowed due to low employment diversity and emigration. In terms of agricultural production, grain productivity declined substantially in 1985–2016, reversing the co-benefits observed among pairwise AEEN sectors in 1978–1984 and 2017–2023 into trade-offs in 1985–2016. Our findings are expected to enrich understanding about complexity of interconnected nexus sectors and to inform compound, systematic, intensive, and effective approaches that ultimately support coordinated policy formulations for SES-based long-term governance of forest cities, while enabling cross-cutting and balanced solutions that deliver co-benefits across sectors and stakeholders.
Jiang et al. (Thu,) studied this question.