Identifying the driving forces of global ecosystem services balance, 2000–2020

In 2019, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly announced the implementation of the “UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030)” initiative. However, overexploitation continues to severely impact the global ecosystem services (ESs) balance. Identifying the global ESs balance and its driving forces can effectively identify sensitive areas under such high ecological stress and corresponding governance responses. The world is currently facing increasing pressure on natural resources, while research on this issue remains controversial at global level. To address the gap, we portrayed the spatial characteristics of global ESs balance across county units worldwide in 2000, 2010, and 2020, and we further examined the driving forces of ESs balance covering six continents of the world (excluding Antarctica) by Geodetector model. Our results showed that the deficit areas of ESs balance were concentrated in urban and barren areas, while the surplus areas were distributed in areas with dense vegetation, especially primary forest communities. Furthermore, the global Moran's I value of ESs balance averaged 0.719 over three years, demonstrating a significant spatial dependence of its spatial distribution. According to the spatial statistical analysis, the factors that affected ESs balance varied among continents and had evolved over the last two decades. Nevertheless, nighttime light intensity and forest proportion consistently showed high contributions, with maximum values of 0.569 and 0.546, respectively. The contribution of socio-economic factors is higher in the developed regions and lower in the less developed regions. This work provides a framework for future global large-scale ESs balance assessments. It identifies similarities in impact mechanisms across continents and the dominance of individual drivers to encourage contextualized, collaborative governance in environmental policy.