The restoration of ecosystems provides an important opportunity to improve the provision of ecosystem services. Achieving the maximum possible benefits from restoration with a limited budget requires knowing which places if restored would produce the best combination of improved ecosystem services. Using an ecosystem services assessment and optimization algorithm, we find choices that generate maximum benefits from ecosystem restoration. We applied a set of weights to integrate multiple services into a unified approach and find the optimal land restoration option given those weights. We then systematically vary the weights to find a Pareto frontier that shows potentially optimal choices and illustrates trade-offs among services. We applied this process to evaluate optimal restoration on Hainan Island, China, a tropical island characterized by multiple ecosystem service hotspots and conditions of poverty. We analyzed restoration opportunities with the goal of increasing a provisioning service, plantation revenue, and several water-related ecosystem services that contribute to improved water quality and flood mitigation. We found obvious spatial inconsistencies in the optimal location for maximizing separate services and tradeoffs in the provision of these services. Optimized land-use patterns greatly out-performed the non-target restoration scheme. When explicit consideration of the importance of poverty alleviation was taken into account, the location of the prioritized areas shifted and trade-offs among services varied. Our study emphasizes the importance of integrating social concerns into land-use planning to mitigate conflicts and improve equity, especially in the areas where poverty and hotspots of biodiversity and ecosystem services are highly geographically coincident.

Gross Ecosystem Product (GEP) is an aggregate measure of the monetary value of final ecosystem services, or the direct benefits that people derive from nature. In this study, we focus on the 'Chang-Zhu-Tan' (CZT) urban agglomeration—an emerging megacity of over 15 million people situated on the Yangtze River—as a case study of the dynamics of ecological production amidst rapid urbanization. In this study, we couple a spatial-temporal analysis of regional ecological change based on remote-sensing data with economic valuation methods (e.g. travel cost method) using official statistics and survey data. We find that while the land cover of natural ecosystems decreased slightly between 2000 and 2015, their quality—and therefore economic value—greatly improved. From 2000 to 2015, the GEP of CZT increased by 56.77%. In particular, the value of regulating services grew by 7.43% (calculated using inflation-adjusted prices). GEP can reflect nature's contribution to human well-being. At the same time, its long-term trends can serve as an indicator of the extent and quality of local and regional ecosystems, thereby providing a corrective or complement to more conventional measures of development. Although urbanization increases spatial constraints on the management of natural capital, progress in ecological protection and restoration can still improve the quality of ecosystems and the services they provide. Our study shows how GEP, and the value of natural capital it reflects, can grow amidst the pressures of rapid urbanization.

Significance
To achieve sustainable development, there is a pressing need to move beyond conventional economic measures like gross domestic product (GDP). We develop gross ecosystem product (GEP), a measure that summarizes the value of the contributions of nature to economic activity. We illustrate the calculation of GEP in Qinghai Province, China, to show that the approach is tractable both across China and globally. Known as the water tower of Asia, Qinghai is the source of the Mekong, Yangtze, and Yellow Rivers and nearly two-thirds of GEP derives from water-related values. GEP was greater than GDP in Qinghai in 2000, and was three-fourths as large as GDP in 2015. China is using GEP to guide investments in ecosystem conservation and restoration.

Abstract
Gross domestic product (GDP) summarizes a vast amount of economic information in a single monetary metric that is widely used by decision makers around the world. However, GDP fails to capture fully the contributions of nature to economic activity and human well-being. To address this critical omission, we develop a measure of gross ecosystem product (GEP) that summarizes the value of ecosystem services in a single monetary metric. We illustrate the measurement of GEP through an application to the Chinese province of Qinghai, showing that the approach is tractable using available data. Known as the “water tower of Asia,” Qinghai is the source of the Mekong, Yangtze, and Yellow Rivers, and indeed, we find that water-related ecosystem services make up nearly two-thirds of the value of GEP for Qinghai. Importantly most of these benefits accrue downstream. In Qinghai, GEP was greater than GDP in 2000 and three-fourths as large as GDP in 2015 as its market economy grew. Large-scale investment in restoration resulted in improvements in the flows of ecosystem services measured in GEP (127.5%) over this period. Going forward, China is using GEP in decision making in multiple ways, as part of a transformation to inclusive, green growth. This includes investing in conservation of ecosystem assets to secure provision of ecosystem services through transregional compensation payments.

The central challenge of the 21st century is to develop economic, social, and governance systems capable of ending poverty and achieving sustainable levels of population and consumption while securing the life-support systems underpinning current and future human well-being. Essential to meeting this challenge is the incorporation of natural capital and the ecosystem services it provides into decision-making. We explore progress and crucial gaps at this frontier, reflecting upon the 10 y since the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. We focus on three key dimensions of progress and ongoing challenges: raising awareness of the interdependence of ecosystems and human well-being, advancing the fundamental interdisciplinary science of ecosystem services, and implementing this science in decisions to restore natural capital and use it sustainably. Awareness of human dependence on nature is at an all-time high, the science of ecosystem services is rapidly advancing, and talk of natural capital is now common from governments to corporate boardrooms. However, successful implementation is still in early stages. We explore why ecosystem service information has yet to fundamentally change decision-making and suggest a path forward that emphasizes: (i) developing solid evidence linking decisions to impacts on natural capital and ecosystem services, and then to human well-being; (ii) working closely with leaders in government, business, and civil society to develop the knowledge, tools, and practices necessary to integrate natural capital and ecosystem services into everyday decision-making; and (iii) reforming institutions to change policy and practices to better align private short-term goals with societal long-term goals.

China makes a unique and vital contribution to maintaining global and regional waterbird diversity and conservation. Despite considerable historical conservation efforts, the continued loss of waterbird diversity and abundance necessitates a contemporary review of Chinese sites of conservation significance. The Ecological Protection Red Line (EPRL) was proposed by China’s Central Government in 2013 to protect areas providing crucial ecosystem services and provides the opportunity for such a review to enhance waterbird conservation in China. By incorporating various sources of data, surveys and information, we identified a suite of sites of waterbird conservation significance in China, following the Ramsar Site Criteria/Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) Criteria. In total, we identified 422 sites, of which the existing 286 IBA sites formed the basis of the site safeguard network. Altogether, these sites of waterbird conservation significance constitute over 727,000 km2 (7.6% of China’s land surface). Over half of the area of these sites is outside China’s national nature reserves, thus confirming the importance and urgency of including them in the EPRL for the effective conservation of waterbird sites. We suggest that this assessment of sites of waterbird importance offers a useful model to apply to other taxa, such as terrestrial birds and mammals.

Over 240 migratory water bird species depend on China's 18,000 km coastline as a vital stopover area. However, the rapid loss of natural wetlands has threatened this seasonal water bird migration over the last few decades. In the present study, to improve our understanding of the pattern and amount of habitat loss in key stopover areas (KSAs) and the spatial covariance between habitat loss and economic development, we conducted a spatially explicit evaluation of coastal habitat loss in KSAs and explored its relationship with social and economic dynamics along the China coast by integrating high-spatial resolution satellite imagery with an updated coastal water bird investigation data set. The remote sensing survey detected a habitat loss percentage of 19.4% in the KSAs during 2000 and 2010. Aquaculture, urbanization, and land reclamation were responsible for the most severe disturbances to coastal habitats. These results demonstrate that the losses of wetland habitats in the KSAs in Chinese coastal areas are more severe than those in other coastal areas even though more protective measures have been implemented in these areas. Risk-based analysis showed that the risk of habitat loss was greatest in undeveloped regions with rich natural wetland and large populations, thereby demonstrating the critical importance of shifting the focus of water bird conservation to these regions to ensure the conservation of migratory water birds in the East Asian–Australasian Flyway. These findings disagree with the hypothesis that more habitats are lost when the economy is more developed. Therefore, we suggest that focusing conservation decisions on areas undergoing urbanization might improve the effectiveness of conservation measures given the pressures due to various forms of wetland exploitation.

Rural China has seen an increase in its migrant workers returning home. As a result, many of these workers’ children, who had previously boarded at school, needed to return home as well. While the existing research indicates that boarding affects the development of disadvantaged children, the effect of the switch to nonboarding on the growth of vulnerable boarding children remains unknown. Using two-stage data from 20,594 fourth- and fifth-grade students in rural Shaanxi and Gansu provinces as well as the difference-in-differences method, this study estimates the impact of switching to nonboarding on the academic performance and mental health of vulnerable boarding students. The results suggest that the shift toward nonboarding significantly reduces boarding students’ academic performance, and further testing shows that these results are robust. Additionally, the switch to nonboarding insignificantly increased the standardized mental health scores of rural primary school students but significantly increased their standardized impulsive tendency scores. Heterogeneity analysis found that boarding students whose mothers had lower educational achievement or whose families belonged to lower economic levels had poorer academic performance after switching, while boarding students whose parents had higher education achievement or myopia possessed better mental health after switching. This study offers novel, policy-relevant insights into potential strategies that would improve the academic performance and mental health of students who transition to nonboarding, especially those with low-educated parents and those belonging to poor families.