An effective production structure of economic sectors may play an important role in balancing societal advances and environmental conservation, which are two competing sustainable development objectives. We tested the notion in the context of Tibet region. The region is considered to be a critical barrier for ecological security in China, whereas its environment is largely impacted by economic development that is dominated by major regional cities like Lhasa. To understand what the overall role of economic structures prevailed by major cities may play in the balancing act, we integrate a complex network with an input-output (IO) table from regional perspectives, to delineate the sector-based production and unravel more about the core sectors that drove the overall economic production from 2012 to 2107 in Tibet. We found that there was a significant influence of public administration and social security sector on production, but economy was largely contributed by primary and construction sectors, which highly depended on natural resource consumption. However, the production structure was undergoing a shift, largely reflected by the changes of the core sectors, which started leaning to service sectors with relatively higher productivity and lower environmental impacts. Meanwhile, it highlighted the challenges to sustain the economy without more withdrawal of natural resources, consequently towards more balanced development. Therefore, based on key production path assessment, we further put forward pathways towards more sustainable development by improving supply chain that is centered in agriculture, while transforming sectors around green manufacturing and shifting to more robust and productive service sectors.

There exist substantial differences in top-of-atmosphere direct radiative forcing of aerosols due to a region's economic production (RFp) and consumption (RFc), in the context of economic globalization, trade and globalizing air pollution. Yet an explicit systematic analysis of all socioeconomic and atmospheric factors determining the RF difference is lacking. Here, we evaluate five socioeconomic (population, per capita output, emission intensity) and atmospheric (chemical efficiency and radiative efficiency) factors that determine a region's RFp, RFc and their difference. We consider the RF of secondary inorganic aerosols, primary organic aerosols and black carbon by 10 regions worldwide in 2007. The population size varies by a factor of nine across the regions, and per capita output by 40 times from both production- and consumption-based perspectives. The cross-regional spread reaches a factor of 181 (species dependent) for production-based emission intensity and a factor of 96 for consumption-based intensity. From one region to another, production-based chemical efficiency changes within a factor of 5 and consumption-based efficiency within a factor of 3.5. Radiative efficiency varies slightly across the regions (within 2) from both production- and consumption-based perspectives. Although socioeconomic factors are often a greater driver for the difference between a source region's RFp and RFc, the atmospheric factors are also important for many source regions and species. Our results contribute to regional attribution of climate change and establishment of effective international collaborative mitigation strategies.