Urban flourish or peril: Navigating the safe and just space through the lens of ecosystem services in China’s urbanization

Urbanization develops with the goal of establishing improved and more sustainable habitats for residents. Environmental and social performance must be simultaneously monitored to ascertain whether regions are progressing towards or deviating from the safe and just space (SJS) in urbanization. Despite relevant studies, the absence of indicators that bridge ecological preservation and human well-beings renders dual monitoring challenging. This study bridged the gap by exploring the interactions between urbanization, ecosystem services (ESs), and basic water, energy, and food (WEF) needs within the SJS framework across China and its provinces. By quantifying the minimum and actual demands for freshwater withdrawal, carbon emissions, phosphorus emissions, and land use, as well as the supply of ESs into unified biophysical indicators, we found that: (1) China can meet the basic WEF needs for all from 2000 to 2020, but only water and land provisioning ESs can operate within the SJS. Carbon emissions surpassed the sequestration capacity in 2010, while phosphorus purification ES has consistently been unsafe. (2) The SJS performance in terms of ecological and social fulfilment exhibited scale differences and undergone changes with urbanization. Overall, no province in China can consistently operate within all SJSs. (3) In the process of urbanization, improvements in ecological protection and production practices in most provinces expanded the size of SJS, but the continuous increase in total demand failed to steer regions toward safer spaces. Our framework emphasized the common but differentiated pathways that regions at varying stages of urbanization navigate to achieve safety and justice. It also provides an applicable solution for regions aiming to pursue urban growth while maintaining ecological conservation and social justice, ultimately achieving sustainable development.