Highlights:
- The contrasted nature of the RESCCUE activities and their - sometimes not so obvious - link to climate change required a clarification of the project approach, which is based on vulnerability reduction and “adaptation-relevant” activities implementation.
- This approach has been validated by the usefulness of what has been achieved. The tools deployed to define and assess the project's contribution to adaptation have met with mixed success.
- The project never had to choose, in practice, between nature-based solutions (NbS) and "hard" solutions. In the particular context of the project's pilot sites, the social process that is at the heart of NbS implementation seems to clearly outweigh a more technical approach, to the point where NbS can be requalified for nature- and people-based solutions.
- The project contributed to two international initiatives on oceans and climate change. Three scientific articles were published: one by Science prior to COP21 on contrasted futures for ocean and society, another one by Nature Climate Change on the implications of the Paris agreement for the ocean, and a last one in Frontiers in Marine Science on ocean solutions.
- The low use of climate science in RESCCUE raises important questions that can only be addressed through enhanced collaboration between development and scientific stakeholders.
A synthesis summarizes how climate change was addressed in RESCCUE.