The limits of capacity building

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 26 July 2019; doi:10.1038/s41558-019-0541-6

Randomized control trials are a potentially useful research design for identifying the causal effects of capacity-building interventions in the context of environmental development. But new research suggests that short-term capacity-building projects do not increase the rate at which local water districts in Costa Rica adopt climate adaptation strategies.