Regional Ecological Management Strategy of Nature’s Contribution to People (NCPs) on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau

Balancing human needs with nature’s contributions is essential for sustainable development. The nature’s contribution to people (NCPs) framework helps identify ecosystem benefits; however, few studies have applied it to conservation priorities on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau. Here, we first proposed an assessment method on the supply and demand of the critical NCPs, including habitat maintenance (NCP1), climate regulation (NCP4), and water quantity regulation (NCP6), and assessed NCPs from 2000 to 2020. Then, we evaluated the importance and vulnerability of NCPs based on the NCP scores and multiple stressors, which refer to current and future socioeconomic and climatic factors and inter-annual variability. Finally, we identified the ecological priority conservation areas of NCPs by comprehensively considering the importance and vulnerability. The results revealed that the following: (1) the supply and demand of three NCPs across the QTP showed similar spatial distributions, with higher values in the southeast and lower in the northwest, whereas NCP4 and NCP6 showed increasing trends over time; (2) the importance of NCPs was higher in the eastern and western parts of the QTP, while the vulnerability of NCPs was greater in the central and northwest areas, with NCP1 and NCP4 recording much higher vulnerability scores (0.94 and 0.90, respectively) compared to NCP6 (0.14); and (3) based on the importance and vulnerability of NCPs, the priority conservation areas were primarily in the eastern QTP (13.68%), covering the Yangtze and Lancang basins, with key maintenance areas focused in the southwest, underscoring a significant ecological conservation emphasis in the eastern region from both supply and demand perspectives. These insights into the NCPs’ ecological conservation support regional coordination and ecological management to enhance human well-being.