Achieving Sustainable Development Goals Through Urban Biodiversity Conservation and Animal-Centered Policies

Abstract

Habitat fragmentation and the loss of biodiversity and environmental degradation has accelerated as a result of the rapid urbanization process, creating great difficulties in achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Animal-centred Policies have helped build the effectiveness of Urban Biodiversity Conservation as a way to build ecosystem resiliences, environmental quality and sustainable city development. The paper delves into the contributions of urban biodiversity to the Sustainable Development Gaps of SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being), SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), SDG 13 (Climate Action) and SDG 15 (Life on Land). Existing methods of biodiversity conservation, biodiversity assessment and intelligent monitoring technologies are comprehensively reviewed to determine gaps and challenges in existing research. The results point to an integrated framework for SDG-oriented framework, integrating urban environmental data acquisition, biodiversity and wildlife monitoring, AI enabled spatial analysis, animal based governance and sustainability performance evaluation. The proposed framework is found to be significantly better than the conventional frameworks in terms of the biodiversity monitoring accuracy, which has been increased from 74% to 95%, habitat assessment, which has been increased from 70% to 93%, ecosystem service evaluation, which has been increased from 68% to 92%, wildlife detection, which has been increased from 72% to 96%, real-time monitoring capability, which has been increased from 60% to 97% and overall sustainability score, which has been increased from 72% to 95%. The framework is a scalable, evidence-based decision-support tool that can foster cities that are biodiversity-rich, climate resilient and animal inclusive, and that can help to speed up the global transition towards sustainable development.