Regional Sustainable Development

This chapter first reviews major trends and popular research topics in the field of regional sustainable development, and then summarizes major progress in the study area in China by focusing on five sub-topics, that is, how to understand the coupling relationships between human and nature, how to delineate the carrying capacity of natural resources and the environment, how to evaluate the status of sustainable development of a region, how to utilize natural resources in a sustainable way, and how to achieve regional sustainable development with better governance. Lastly the section calls for multi-disciplinary studies for guiding practice of regional sustainable development and for more attention to the role of regional governance.