A commentary on this article appears in this issue on page 961.

Humans currently face a problematic ecological dilemma regarding economic growth. It is difficult to meet human needs by only studying economic growth created by artificial costs, and all countries need to pay attention to the task of improving the level of human welfare under the constraints of an ecological environment from the perspective of sustainable development. The focus of ecological wellbeing performance (EWP) is how to achieve the maximum welfare level output or achieve higher welfare level improvement with the fewest conversions of natural and ecological inputs. In this paper, we use the super-efficiency SBM model to measure the EWP of Chinese provinces and cities, traditional and spatial Markov probability transfer matrices are established based on time series analysis and spatial correlation analysis of the global Moran’s index, and the characteristics of the spatiotemporal variations of EWP are analyzed by comparing the matrices. The evolution trend for a certain future period is predicted, and the influences of geographical spatial patterns on the spatiotemporal evolution of EWP are discussed. On this basis, according to the calculation and analysis of the characteristics of China’s EWP, provinces and cities in China need to focus on improving their own resource utilization efficiency and strengthen environmental supervision to improve EWP. Finally, policy recommendations are put forward. First, special laws and regulations need to be introduced for resource utilization and ecological protection. The second recommendation is to promote and improve the mechanism of public participation in the rational utilization of resources and protection of the ecological environment. The third recommendation is to establish a dynamic monitoring system for resource utilization and ecological environmental protection. The fourth recommendation is to strengthen structural adjustment and accomplish high-quality economic development.

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Although it is generally believed the Grain for Green programme (GFG) implemented in China has attenuated soil erosion, the extent to which it is effective still needs verification. Taking Yan'an in the Loess Plateau as the study area, we analysed both total effect and efficiency differences during GFG implementation. Results showed that, while soil erosion on average decreased from 4,884.49 to 4,087.57 t km−2 yr−1, counties with higher GFG implementation intensity achieved a lower soil conservation effect. For example, Wuqi ranks third in the GFG implementation intensity among all counties in Yan'an, but its actual soil erosion reduction is the lowest, only 54.1% of Yan'an's average level. To analyse the reason for the efficiency difference, the concept of soil conservation potential was proposed. It is concluded that the soil conservation effect is controlled by the soil conservation potential. Ideally, regions with high soil conservation potential should get priority in the GFG application, yet there is a significant spatial mismatch between the GFG implementation intensity and the soil conservation potential because the correlation coefficient is only −0.05, which weakened the soil control effect. A dynamic implementation mechanism was put forward for the formulation and optimization of ecological programmes and projects in future: first, using the soil conservation potential to determine the implementation intensity in each region; second, adjusting the intensity to the changes of the soil conservation potential in the following implementation; third, repeating above steps to ensure high efficiency of soil erosion control, and achieving the sustainability and effectiveness of the ecological projects.

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