Dan Qiao

Under the severe situation of increasing global climate change, it is urgent to improve the ability of cities to cope with climate change and achieve sustainable development. As a key institutional arrangement for China’s climate adaptation, the climate-resilient city initiative has been piloted in 67 cities across two batches since 2017, aiming to foster urban resilience through systematic governance. Based on complex adaptive system theory, this study constructs an urban ecological resilience evaluation framework under the “Pressure–State–Response” (PSR) model. Using panel data from 243 prefecture-level cities from 2010 to 2022 and a difference-in-differences model, it empirically examines the impact of climate-resilient city construction on ecological resilience, further exploring the moderating mechanism of government attention to environmental protection and spatial heterogeneity effects. Key findings include the following: (1) climate-resilient city construction significantly enhances urban ecological resilience, with pilot cities experiencing an average increase of approximately 0.74%; (2) government attention to environmental protection strengthens policy effectiveness, demonstrating a significant positive moderating effect; and (3) policy effects show notable regional variations, with more pronounced improvements in resource-based cities, western regions, and ecologically vulnerable areas.

The resilience of forests refers to the ability of a forest to withstand disturbance and maintain its function and control. After an early phase of historical logging to support economic development, changes in the socio-ecological resilience of key state-owned forest areas in Northeastern China (later collectively referred to as Northeastern state-owned forests) after implementing a total logging ban policy remain unknown. In this study, the Northeast state-owned forest area was selected as the study area, and based on the panel data from 2008 to 2021, the indicator system at both social and ecological levels was established, and the socio-ecological resilience of the Northeast state-owned forest area was assessed using comprehensive weights and set-pair analysis. The results show that (1) the logging ban policy effectively improves socio-ecological resilience, which reached the highest point of the whole measurement period in 2018. (2) The socio-ecological system has a certain self-adjustment and resilience but has shown a decreasing trend in recent years. By exploring the causes behind the results, we can provide guidance and suggestions for the further implementation of the logging ban policy and, at the same time, provide some lessons for other developing countries with similar problems.