Full bibliography

The grand challenge of preparing for climate impacts through climate adaptation relies on intermediaries, including local NGOs, consulting firms, and government agencies. Climate adaptation elicits evaluative tensions coming from what we call the dual organizational complexity. The dual organizational complexity includes evaluation ambiguity in (1) the interconnectedness and co-evolutionary dynamics of locally bounded social and ecological systems and (2) an increasingly complex network of interconnected organizations, including a diverse set of public, private, and semi-private actors who provide funding, market power, and expertise. We find that intermediaries address evaluative tensions through organizational scaffolding or building socio-material infrastructures that can support resilience and increase evaluative and adaptive capacity for future projects, albeit imperfectly. Importantly, we argue that climate adaptation needs facilitators with the capacity to connect very localized bottom-up needs to top-down resources in a continuous cycle of resource allocation, communication, and accountability, especially in the face of the increasing organizational complexity involved.