Capacity of China's Sustainability to Resist Climate Change

Achieving sustainability and coping with climate change are the greatest challenges to human survival and harmonious human-nature relationship. However, we lack research on quantifying the capacity of sustainability to resist climate change over space and time. Here, we developed a quantification method to assess resilience of sustainability (includes economic, social, and environmental dimensions) to climate change, and performed the first demonstration in China’s 280 cities. We found that resilience of China’s sustainability to climate change improved from 2005 to 2017, especially in Southwest China, but 6.8% of cities showed a decreasing trend. With the improvement of the resilience, the synergy among resilience in economic, social, and environmental dimensions increased. Economic development and sustainability improvement related to a higher but more disparity of the resilience. This study encourages researchers and policymakers worldwide to focus on resilience of sustainability to climate change to help achieve sustained development and prosperity under climate change