Urban centres across the globe are increasingly confronted with the compounding threats of climate change, including intensifying urban heat islands, escalating flood frequencies, declining biodiversity, and weakening ecosystem services — challenges that conventional infrastructure-based and technology-centered policy responses have demonstrably failed to resolve comprehensively. This study examined the role of ecological principles in shaping climate-resilient urban policy, with particular emphasis on the integration of green infrastructure, biodiversity conservation, and ecosystem-based adaptation strategies within urban planning frameworks. Employing a mixed quantitative approach, cross-sectional data were collected from 320 urban districts across 32 cities in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Univariate descriptive statistics characterized the distribution of key ecological and urban resilience indicators. Bivariate Pearson correlation analyses revealed strong and statistically significant associations between urban green cover and urban heat island intensity (r = –0.71, p < 0.001), flood incidence (r = –0.64, p < 0.001), carbon sequestration capacity (r = 0.78, p < 0.001), and biodiversity indices (r = 0.69, p < 0.001). Three nested multilevel regression models, accounting for city-level clustering (ICC = 0.24–0.31), demonstrated that green cover and ecological policy scores jointly and interactively reduced urban climate vulnerability, with the final model explaining 68% of marginal variance and 81% of conditional variance in climate risk outcomes. The findings confirm that ecologically informed policy planning significantly outperforms technologyonly approaches in delivering durable urban climate resilience. The study recommends the mainstreaming of ecological principles in urban master plans, increased investment in green-grey hybrid infrastructure, and the institutionalisation of biodiversity impact assessments in urban development approvals.