Will China’s territorial spatial planning policies enhance land use sustainability? An integrated assessment under global environmental change

Land use sustainability (LUS) has exhibited profound impacts on addressing global change and achieving sustainable development. Although numerous policies have been implemented to improve LUS, their effectiveness remains unclear. This study builds an integrated assessment to model LUS dynamics in China for 2035 under nine scenarios, combining Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs), Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), and three land use policy-oriented scenarios: Business As Usual (BAU), Biodiversity and Agricultural Adaptation (BAA), and Chinese Territorial Spatial Planning (TSP). Using the global change analysis model and future land use simulation model, we quantify changes and interactions among Ecological Sustainability (ES), Production Sustainability (PS), and Living Sustainability (LS). Under BAU, ES declines are predominant – with improvements observed in only 5 provinces under SSP126 and SSP245, and 3 provinces under SSP460 – while significant trade-offs emerge between ES-PS and PS-LS, with modest ES-LS synergy. In contrast, BAA outperforms enhancing average LUS, while TSP yields the most optimal outcomes. Specifically, under SSP126-TSP, up to 22 provinces show highest ES and LS, and PS peaks in 24 provinces. Meanwhile, Pearson correlation coefficient between ES-LS synergy reaches 0.46 under SSP126-TSP. Overall, TSP markedly reduces trade-offs and fosters synergies across all dimensions. These findings highlight TSP’s critical role in sustainable land use and provide actionable insights for policymaking to achieve sustainable development goals in China and globally.