Biodiversity Friendly Cities (Biofriendly City) as a New Concept Against Climate Change.

Urban Farm DB summary

This 2023 paper introduces the concept of Biodiversity Friendly Cities (Biofriendly City) as a response to climate change. Citing a UN development report projecting that nearly 70% of the global population will live in urban areas by 2050, it argues this trend is driving rapid loss of urban green spaces and agricultural land, alongside environmental problems including transportation, infrastructure, energy, health and nutrition issues, air pollution, visual pollution and solid waste. Inadequate open and green spaces, obstruction of wind corridors, misguided urban planning, and light reflection from glass and shiny surfaces are described as contributing to urban heat island formation, while insufficient attention to natural and ecological thresholds leaves cities with difficult-to-reverse ecosystem damage and greater vulnerability to disasters. Urbanization is described as degrading productive landscapes such as urban green spaces and agricultural land, fragmenting habitats and increasing pressure on urban biodiversity, even as cities also create new habitats and species — with vascular plant and bird diversity in some temperate cities reported to surpass that of the surrounding landscape. Citing the IPCC, the paper notes global temperatures have already risen by 1.1°C, progressing toward 1.5°C.