Resilient Islands : tools and methodologies evaluation

Abstract

The Resilient Islands (RI) project is a collaboration between the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies(IFRC) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) aimed at helping Caribbean islands cope with the impacts of climate change by promoting ecosystem-based solutions that protect and restore coastal habitats proven to reduce risks. Born from a previous collaboration between TNC and the Grenada Red Cross titled “At the Water’s Edge”, this project sought to expand on the success of its predecessor. The RI project worked with communities to integrate ecosystembased adaptation strategies into national policies and implement ecosystem restoration projects in vulnerable coastal areas in the Dominican Republic, Grenada and Jamaica. The project combined each organisation’s strengths: the TNCs methodologies and tools for science-based environmental assessment with the IFRC’s deep community-based methodologies and tools. New methodologies and tools were also created. These combinations of pre-existing and new tools allowed for the community selection and assessment based on both science and local values, paving the way for context-specific ecosystem restoration projects. This evaluation examines nine methodologies and tools used throughout the RI project with an aim to determine their successes, opportunities for improvement, as well as potential to scale after considering how they were applied and/or modified.