What makes communities energy-resilient during war?
Drawing on data from 145 Ukrainian municipalities during Russia’s full-scale invasion, Albina Dioba and Manuele Citi examine how structural conditions and participatory governance relate to the continuity of essential energy-dependent public services under extreme disruption.
Is it infrastructure or participatory governance that makes communities energy-resilient during war? Perhaps both?
New research by Albina Dioba and Manuele Citi from the Centre for Sustainability, published in Energy Research & Social Science, highlights why structural vulnerability must be central to energy resilience planning.
Their key findings suggest that municipal relocation is a critical vulnerability indicator. It emerged as the strongest and most robust predictor of lower community-level energy resilience.
The study, furthermore, found that participatory governance cannot substitute for structural preparedness. Governance capacities showed no statistically significant independent associations with resilience beyond structural determinants.
Finally, they found that displacement can constrain collective action. The relationship between social cohesion and resilience varied with municipal relocation, suggesting that disrupted territorial and institutional networks may limit the contribution of community mobilisation.
So, what does this mean for policy? Their findings highlight the need to prioritise displaced and structurally vulnerable municipalities in energy preparedness and reconstruction strategies. This means combining targeted investment in backup and decentralised energy infrastructure with the restoration of critical public services, institutional capacity and community networks. Rather than applying uniform resilience measures, policymakers should provide differentiated, place-based support that responds to the vulnerabilities of displacement-affected communities.
Energy resilience is not only about restoring infrastructure. It is also about restoring the institutional and social foundations that enable communities to adapt and recover.
Read their article here.