Through my three decades in international development work from environment management to urban resilience to policy analysis to monitoring and evaluation, if I were to distill one recurring aspect – it is capacity.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines capacity as "the ability to learn or retain knowledge and to make a decision about an issue". This could be a combination of knowledge, skills, infrastructure, and resources that allow organizations, individuals, and groups to address issues, enhance awareness, solve problems, and learn lessons.

For a person to have capacity for a decision, he or she must be able to "understand information, make choices, and communicate the decision to others." Capability is defined as "the power or ability to do something."

Capacity is needed for completing a project successfully, and capability to assure its long-term sustainability. These aspects visibly support communities to thrive, and organizations and systems to innovate and adapt to achieve lasting impact.

Capacity and capability are the critical "invisible infrastructure" that ensures the effectiveness of development interventions through the efficient functioning of public systems to provide the desired quality of services.

However, despite its fundamental importance, capacity remains hidden due to its intangibility and its value is difficult to measure. Unlike projects that deliver physical infrastructure like roads, schools, hospitals and water treatment plants.

Building capacity and capabilities both at an individual and institutional level is now more important than ever as global challenges such as climate change, environment degradation, depleting natural water reserves, communicable diseases and technological advancements rapidly reshape the future.

Building capacity requires sustained investment over time, often without immediate, visible outcomes. This slow, often incremental process may not capture public attention or political will in the same way a new bridge or highway might.

Moreover, capacity-building efforts can be complex, requiring cooperation among organizations, regions, countries and sectors, investment in education and training, and a commitment to long-term, sustained and resilient development. These efforts are not perceived to be fashionable and glamorous compared to visible projects that can be tangibly measured.

Advancing economies have demonstrated that unlocking the potential of capacity and building capable institutions brings systemic improvements over short term project gains.

This also builds resilience in times of crisis due to natural disasters, pandemics, or economic shocks and ensure individuals, communities, and institutions respond and recover; spur innovation to help individuals and organizations experiment, adapt, and scale solutions; enhance governance in institutions to manage resources, deliver services, that benefit citizens ensuring the transparent, accountable, and equitable functioning of society.

Communities and institutions would thereby solve their own problems, reduce reliance on external support making development more effective in the long term.

Capacity is needed for completing a project successfully, and capability to assure its long-term sustainability.

Here are three ways to enhance capacity as the pathway to resilient development and effectiveness:

Build intellectual capacity and capability by strengthening public and private institutions through a combination of financial, technical and learning support that will foster cultural and behavioral change to do things differently and evolve over the long term.

This means designing interventions not only in smart infrastructure design using innovative financing models but also strategic planning, project and data management, leadership training and monitoring and evaluation systems, that allow institutions to deliver relevant and high-quality services over time.

Investments that enable cultural shifts from learning from what works and what can be done differently can create positive domino effects in organizations and societies, enhancing individual and collective capacity and capabilities to deliver solutions in complex situations.

The city of Melaka in Malaysia pioneered the green city action planning process in 2014 using local government participatory processes. This spurred a multiplier effect with city governments continuing to engage and collaborate across sectoral ministries to deliver projects that improve environmental quality and strengthen economic competitiveness.

Foster learning partnerships that not only enhance capacity but also ensure long term capabilities. For example, educational institutions with strong research and teaching capacities generate new knowledge, ideas, and technologies that benefit the wider public.

When infused with experiential knowledge from the development community, these partnerships can become a powerful tool for grooming young learners to deliver interventions with lasting impacts. In the Pacific, the first structured diploma course on monitoring, evaluation and learning at the University of South Pacific has been accredited by the Pacific Board of Education Quality and launched.

Localize solutions and empower communities through investments that harness indigenous knowledge, combine awareness building, local knowhow, and technology. Further, improving governance to empower communities to take ownership of local issues to ensure solutions are rooted in local knowledge for lasting impacts.

In the state of Karnataka in India, a coastal protection and management project includes a specific component on capacity building for shoreline management. Unique community associations such as shoreline management organizations and dune care groups were formed and involved in project monitoring.

Funds were provided by the project and site-specific activities such as beach cleaning and beach festivals turned beneficiaries into project partners. Capacity and capabilities were enhanced both for communities as well as for the executing and implementing agencies.

Learning from the capacity building process to strengthen decision making and understand how economic institutions influence these efforts should be a mantra for development organizations as they prepare for an uncertain future.

As Nobel Laureate Daron Acemoglu, co-author of Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, writes: "Economic institutions shape economic incentives: the incentives to become educated, to save and invest, to innovate and adopt new technologies."