Assessment of coastal sustainable development along the maritime silk road using an integrated natural-economic-social (NES) ecosystem

Understanding spatial change and its driving factors behind coastal development is essential for coastal management and restoration. There is an urgent need for quantitative assessments of sustainable development in the coastal ecosystems that are most affected by anthropogenic activities and climate change. This study built a theme-based evaluation methodology with the Natural-Economic-Social (NES) complex ecosystem and proposed an evaluation system of coastal sustainable development (CSD) to understand the complex interactions between coastal ecosystems and anthropogenic activities. The approach revealed the levels of coastal natural, economic, and social sustainable development in the countries along the Maritime Silk Road (MSR) from 2010 to 2020. The results showed (1) a decreasing trend for coastal sustainable development between 2010 and 2015 and a rapid increasing trend between 2015 and 2020; (2) spatially varied CSD, with higher levels in Europe and Southeast Asia and lower levels in South and West Asia and North Africa; and (3) a strong influence on CSD by a combination of economic and social factors and relatively little influence by natural factors. The study further assessed the natural, economic, and social development scores for 41 countries and compared them with the mean scores (MSR) to classify coastal development patterns into three stages (favorable, transitional, and unfavorable). Finally, in the context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the study highlighted the importance of more refined global indicators for CSD assessments.