Resilience from below: understanding socio-ecologic mobilisation in Georgia

Over the past decade, resilience-building has become a key objective of EU policy in its neighbourhood. Focusing on the Namakhvani hydro power project in Georgia, this article examines how resilience is shaped through interactions among grassroots activists, civil society organisations, state authorities, and external actors. Drawing on official documents, semi-structured interviews, and participant observation, we argue that resilience-building is primarily a contested bottom-up process structured by domestic power relations, while also becoming, to a lesser extent, a negotiated process in which external actors act as mediators.