Sustainable Land Use Under Climate Pressure Through Economic Governance and Policy Innovation for Degraded Ecosystems

ABSTRACT Sustainable land use in degraded ecosystems is increasingly constrained by climate pressure, yet the role of governance remains unevenly explained. This study examines whether economic governance and policy innovation improve sustainable land use efficiency (SLUE) under climate stress and whether these effects spill over across cities. Using a city‐year panel of 200 Chinese prefecture‐level cities from 2005 to 2020, SLUE is measured with a DEA framework and then analyzed with two‐way fixed effects and a spatial Durbin model under inverse‐distance and rook‐contiguity matrices. The local estimates show that economic governance and policy innovation are positively associated with SLUE, whereas climate pressure is negatively associated with it. In the fully controlled baseline model, a 1% increase in economic governance and policy innovation is associated with about a 0.0259% and 0.0184% increase in SLUE, while a 1% increase in climate pressure is associated with a 0.0292% decline. Spatial results show positive clustering in SLUE, negative climate spillovers from neighboring cities, and short‐run adverse neighbor effects of governance and policy upgrading under immediate contiguity. The findings indicate that land policy in degraded ecosystems should combine local implementation capacity, adaptive policy design, and cross‐city coordination under shared climate stress.