‘Road of life’: changing navigation seasons and the adaptation of island communities in the Russian Arctic

Abstract

Adaptation of remote island communities in the Russian European Arctic to dramatic socioeconomic changes has been intensified by the impacts of climate changes in navigation seasons. Both the stability and duration of winter and summer navigation seasons and the start of the rasputitsa season, a shoulder period between the first two, are becoming more unpredictable and jeopardizing local mobility options. The ability to commute between neighboring settlements is an important aspect of island communities' viability. Local mobility depends on well-functioning ice roads during wintertime, tugboats during the raputitsa season and on passenger vessels or smaller boats during summer navigation. To examine whether and how the island population of the Arkhangelsk region adapts to changing conditions and what factors shape adaptation options, we apply a community-based adaptation approach. The results from qualitative interviews with 32 residents and relevant stakeholders indicate that further development of the island communities will rely on sufficient mobility options. Incorporation of climate prognoses and local knowledge can improve the planning of mobility measures. Current and future community adaptation is challenged by out-migration, unpredictability in the rasputitsa season and lack of investment in island development.

The Arctic Highlights Our Failure to Act in a Rapidly Changing World

“…An example of a new adaptive strategy is vegetable farming [22], such as off-grid containerized agriculture [23]. However, many such approaches and innovations are fragmented, disconnected, and/or still in development stages and hence lose adaptive significance and do not increase overall resilience (e.g., [24]). The lack of strategic adaptation naturally leads to ad hoc self-adaptation of the Arctic system that has the potential to add additional challenges to our capacity to respond to the multi-dimensional and highly interconnected set of changes seen in the Arctic system.…”

The rapidly changing Arctic and its societal implications

“…These seasonally maintained roads provide low‐cost transport across the circumpolar north, and are particularly important for the transport of heavy equipment and fuel, and facilitate social and cultural interactions among remote communities (Argounova‐Low & Prisyazhnyi, 2016; Hori, Gough, et al, 2018). The construction and maintenance of winter roads are affected by temperature, snowfall, and wind conditions, with a number of studies where data exist documenting roads to be of poorer quality and open for a shorter period of time due to warming, including the northern Baltic (Kiani et al, 2018), James Bay (Hori, Cheng, et al, 2018), Arkhangelsk Oblast (Olsen et al, 2021), and Yakutia (Ksenofontov et al, 2017). Combined with the effects of permafrost thaw on railways and roads, disturbances to winter roads are making transportation more challenging, increasing costs and reducing predictability of access.…”

“…Barriers to adaptation in the Arctic parallel many of the challenges facing adaptation in diverse regions globally. This includes the existence of pressing socioeconomic problems, institutional and governmental barriers, limited knowledge of future climate risks and effectiveness of potential adaptations, uncertainty, demographic shifts, lack of financial resources, bias to mitigation in climate policy, and limited decision‐making power at local levels (Berman et al, 2020; Birchall & Bonnett, 2020; Labbe et al, 2017; Olsen et al, 2021). In Alaska, for example, the need to relocate high risk villages has been recognized by researchers, decision‐makers, and communities for sometime, and while progress is being made in some locations (Ristroph, 2017), institutional barriers have resulted in negligible progress overall (Albert et al, 2018).…”

“…Much of the shipping growth in the Arctic with sea ice decline is associated with oil and gas service vessels and tankers, marine cruises, and fisheries, bringing opportunities for economic development and diversification, varying by local context and geography (Olsen et al, 2019(Olsen et al, , 2021Petrick et al, 2017;Silber & Adams, 2019). Projections suggest, for example, that by 2040 the ice will have receded enough to make gas production feasible in the European offshore Arctic under most emission scenarios (Petrick et al, 2017), increased cruise ship tourism offers opportunities for community economic development if well managed (Dawson et al, 2016;Eduard, 2018;Halliday et al, 2018), and opportunities for commercial fisheries are expected to increase with Lam et al (2016) projecting that total fisheries revenue in the Arctic may increase by 39% by 2050 relative to 2000.…”

Three essays on economic consequences of new accounting regulation and bank accounting

“…Sheller has explained that mobility justice "spans micro, meso, and macro levels, ranging from inter-human bodily relations, to transportation and street design, to urban and regional problems, to extended infrastructural space, transnational migration, and planetary resource circulation" (2019, 9). For Sheller, mobility justice is intrinsically connected to the individual's right to remain in a place: if people become unable to circulate frequently within a city or between rural and urban areas, for instance because of a lack of financial capital or because of a degraded road, this may decrease their capacities to live in these areas (see Olsen, Nenasheva, and Hovelsrud 2020) and induce displacements. On this basis and in a context where many roads are threatened by climate change, it appears crucial to examine the interconnections between daily, circular or reversible mobilities and migration, and to adopt a systemic and multiscalar view on (im)mobilities.…”