Recognizing of Urban Biodiversity for Territorial Planning from Informal Settlements

We live in an increasingly urban world that puts an unprecedented pressure on ecosystems. This trend presents an urgent challenge in terms of conservation of the biodiversity and many of the ecosystem services on which society depends. Unfortunately, the importance of biodiversity and the benefits we get from it do not represent an immediate concern for the approximately 900 million people living in slums without basic services, poor housing and unsanitary living conditions. This review attempts to tackle the question of how to integrate urban biodiversity into slums contexts through a comparative analysis of cities, the study of planning tools and criteria and the proposal of local actions for biodiversity in informal settlements. These actions are composed by a toolkit that presents, the territorial and social convergence through successful examples of integrating the challenges of poverty and degradation of our ecosystems.