Incorporating ecosystem services to assess progress towards sustainable development goals: A case study of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China

To promote coordinated development of the global economy, society, and environment, The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations (UN) specifies 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) with 169 nested targets. Studies have shown that a healthy ecological environment and stable ecosystem services (ESs) provide an important foundation for achieving the SDGs. Due to the lack of quantitative methods for assessing the contribution of ESs to SDGs, very few empirical studies have been conducted to examine how knowledge of ESs can guide regional sustainable development. From the perspective of an ES cascade, we proposed a systematic approach for quantifying progress towards environment-related SDGs in terms of ES indicators, based on the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB). The scores of multiple SDGs and the SDG Index increased significantly across the YREB from 2000 to 2015, mainly attributed to the improvement of food and water provisioning services. Significant spatiotemporal variation in sustainable development levels was observed between provinces within the YREB. For example, the sustainable development levels in the eastern YREB clearly trailed those in the central and western YREB, and the SDG scores and SDG Index scores declined gradually. Among 11 provincial regions in the YREB, the SDG Index scores of nine provincial regions increased gradually, whereas those of Zhejiang and Shanghai declined. Strengthening the assessment of the ES value for generating more comprehensive ES indicators and applying an integrated ES-based approach for monitoring and comparing the process of local and global sustainable development, are promising areas for future research.