Lebanon’s prolonged economic collapse has fundamentally altered the functioning of its water and energy service systems, exposing deep spatial inequalities and accelerating shifts in resource provisioning. Drawing on municipal-level data from 150 municipalities across nine governorates for pre-crisis (2019) and crisis period (2023) conditions, this study examines how the crisis reshaped domestic, industrial, and total water supply; energy use for water extraction and distribution; and the adoption of decentralized renewable technologies. Through an integrated statistical analysis, we identify marked regional disparities, with Akkar experiencing the steepest declines in water supply and Baalbek-Hermel retaining comparatively higher domestic availability. A small set of municipalities, including Tripoli and Qaa, consistently emerge as extreme outliers, underscoring the need for highly localized rather than uniform national interventions. The results also reveal a rapid transition toward decentralized resilience: solar photovoltaic systems and solar water heaters have become increasingly central to sustaining water services amid grid failure and rising diesel costs. Demographic dynamics play differentiated roles, with Lebanese population pressures closely linked to industrial water demand, while refugee presence correlates with domestic supply patterns shaped by humanitarian support. By linking these crisis-period transformations to SDG 6 (clean water) and SDG 7 (clean energy), the study contributes rare empirical evidence on how economic freefall restructures water and energy systems and identifies concrete entry points for adaptive, spatially differentiated governance.
ElMerehbi et al. (2026) studied this question.