Biodiversity mainstreaming offers a suite of concepts and tools to integrate nature into urban spatial, development and land use planning. But mainstreaming biodiversity is a challenging endeavour in cities characterised by massive population growth and levels of poverty and informality that defy conventional planning approaches. In these cities, population growth and urban sprawl outpace a city’s ability to support sound development, or deliver basic services in newly settled areas. Under these conditions, it is difficult to lobby for the value of urban nature unless the rationale for nature is development oriented. For development and biodiversity to be mutually beneficial, nature must be solution oriented, financially efficient and must demonstrate benefits to livelihoods, local economies and urban resilience. From this perspective, biodiversity mainstreaming is about articulating NBSs in a manner that supports biodiversity conservation and social and economic development.
