Towards the progress of ecological restoration and economic development in China's Loess Plateau and strategy for more sustainable development

China's Loess Plateau (LP) is one of the most typical regions with serious soil erosion. Its ecological restoration, economic development, and social progress are directly related to realizing China's national sustainable development goals (SDGs). With intensive field investigations, comprehensive analyses of statistical data, remote sensing data, and local monitoring data, this current research explored the achievements in local ecological restoration and economic development, discussed the main problems faced by the LP, and assessed the sustainable development status of the LP. Moreover, drawing from a 3C system approach (classification–coordination–collaboration), this research proposed the sustainable development strategies for more sustainable LP. We found that the LP's ecological restoration and economic development made remarkable achievements since 2000. However, the environment was still fragile and regional development was still lagging behind. In realizing SDGs, further improvements on clean water and sanitation, decent work and economic growth, industry, innovation and infrastructure, reduced inequalities, and climate action are needed. Coordinated and collaborated efforts are expected from multiple hierarchical levels including household, watershed, region, and nation in developing LP. Specifically, human-environment interactions should be highlighted at the household level, upstream-downstream interactions that are catering to the particular characteristics of the LP is encouraged at the watershed level, and regional and urban-rural interactions shall play an increasingly important role at the regional level. While at the national level, the central government should carry out a systematic overarching design. To better realize the goal of more sustainable LP, this research calls for (1) forming an actor-network consists of multi stakeholders, including the central government, local government, watershed, families, ecosystem and environment, enterprises, NGOs, and scientists, and (2) paying attention to ecosystem management, ecological restoration, industrial structure optimization, ecological agriculture, rural infrastructure, and ecological civilization construction in the future development.