Mitigating Land Degradation by Integrating Ecological Environmental Protection With Sustainable Landscape Planning in Vulnerable Drylands

ABSTRACT Land degradation in hyper‐arid zones represents a critical barrier to global sustainable development, often trapping local populations in a severe cycle of poverty and ecological collapse. Traditional restoration approaches frequently fail because they treat environmental recovery and economic growth as competing objectives rather than synergistic systems. This study investigates the Kubuqi Model in northern China to determine if sustainable landscape planning can effectively reverse desertification while simultaneously generating wealth. Using a comprehensive 32‐year longitudinal dataset spanning 1988 to 2020, we applied Ordinary Least Squares linear regression and the Rain Use Efficiency index to quantify the relationship between ecological restoration and socioeconomic metrics. The results reveal a transformative ecological recovery where vegetation coverage increased from 3.0% in 1988 to 53.0% in 2020, with predictive modeling forecasting coverage to exceed 60% by 2030. Notably, the Rain Use Efficiency index rose from ~1.8 to over 16. This finding is pivotal as it confirms that the restoration was driven by anthropogenic planning, including precision agriculture and renewable energy integration, rather than climatic variability. Consequently, the frequency of sandstorms plummeted from 80 days per year to merely 2 days per year. Crucially, our regression analysis establishes a strong economic coupling, evidenced by a coefficient of determination of 0.867 between vegetation coverage and household income. Furthermore, we identify a critical environmental threshold: the data indicate that exponential economic growth, where farmer income rose from 300 RMB to 17,000 RMB, only materialized after sandstorm frequency fell below 20 days per year. This suggests that reducing environmental hazards below this specific tipping point is a prerequisite for breaking the Sandstorm Poverty Trap. These findings confirm that integrating ecological protection with industrial planning creates a positive feedback loop, validating the Kubuqi Model as a scalable blueprint for achieving Land Degradation Neutrality in the world's vulnerable drylands. The twenty‐first century has seen desertification and land degradation, endangering the economies of billions and causing disruptions to global ecological security and sustainable development.