Table 1_Sustainable development on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau: assessing progress, obstacles, and future pathways under the SDG framework.xlsx

To address this deficiency in quantitative sustainability assessments of the QTP, an economic-social-ecological indicator framework was integrated with multiple analytical methods: linear weighting to characterize spatiotemporal patterns, coupling coordination analysis to assess systemic synergy, Spearman’s rank correlation analysis to identify trade-offs and synergies, obstacle degree analysis to diagnose constraints, and SSP-based system dynamics modeling to simulate scenarios.

The results show the following: (1) The QTP has transitioned from weak sustainability to preliminary strong sustainability, with the ecological subsystem continuing to lag behind; its spatial advantage has shifted from the northern and eastern regions to the eastern and southern regions. (2) The overall coupling coordination degree increased from 0.158 to 0.504 but remained relatively low. Coordination between the economic and ecological subsystems was the weakest, with highly coordinated areas concentrated primarily in the southern and peripheral regions.