Urban resilience is a global concern, due to the concomitance of climate change and urbanization process. This is particularly true in Abu Dhabi, a rapid growing city in a coastal desert environment. Green infrastructure is considered a key tool for urban resilience and is promoted by the recent Green Abu Dhabi Infrastructure policy. GADI has various objectives: reduce the impact of sand storms, turn the city more attractive and walkable and by this way improve the citizens' health, by planting trees and lawns and preserving wild biodiversity in protected areas. In turn, GADI may contribute to the reconnection of urban dwellers with nature. To assess the efficiency of GADI policy to face these multiple challenges, we implemented a multidisciplinary method, crossing a social and ecological assessment of green and blue infrastructure at nested scales. We first assess the green infrastructure, using land-use data (OSM map) and NDVI (Sentinel images) and modelling the connection between vegetation patch with GIS. Surprisingly, this infrastructure is not negligible, but a botanical survey shows that most of the vegetated areas have a small number of species, mainly exotic, climate-sensitive and water-intensive. Irrigation water proceeds from desalinization plants, shading the ecological balance of this green infrastructure. Second, a social survey shows that the reconnection between urban-dwellers and nature is favored in natural and semi-natural green spaces, while the connection with family members, neighbors and friends is favored in more conventional spaces, less sensitive to trampling, with low biodiversity and simple landscapes. Informal practices of reconnection with the living, by organic gardening and nourishing birds within the dense city, reveal a search for a new relation with urban nature in the proximity of the housing. Third, we put to test the efficiency of the ecological frame with a waterbird, indicator of the quality of coastal environments, Egretta gularis, very popular with amateurs (Gbif database). We identified its core habitats (Mangrove, wetlands), those favorable (waterways, vegetation) and unfavorable to movements (built zones, roads, desert) and model the ecological network using Graphab software. Egretta gularis habitats are well-connected outside the city, and have only one efficient path through the city center. Thanks to a proactive policy, the green and blue infrastructure is more consistent than expected in a desert coastal city, and has ecological and social functions. It is favorable to the displacement of a large range coastal bird (Western Reef Heron) but should filter disturbance-sensitive, endangered or nocturnal species (hare, gerbils, reptiles). More research is required to assess its sustainability regarding global warming, sea level rise and the increased touristic pressure on protected areas.