March 16, 2022: Article by Peter Schweitzer & Olga Povoroznyuk in “Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning”

The town of Tiksi came into being in the 1930s, when the Soviet Union intensified its efforts to industrialize the Arctic. A critical element of that policy was to make the Northern Sea Route a viable Arctic shipping lane and Tiksi, located where the Lena River meets the Arctic Ocean, became an important transportation hub on that route. Post-Soviet transformations led to a rapid decline in population numbers and economic significance of the town, while climate change opened up new opportunities for shipping and mammoth tusk collecting. Today, the situation seems to have stabilized but the promises of a bright future pronounced in strategic papers by the government are yet to be realized. The article explores the socio-economic, infrastructural and environmental changes of recent decades in order to explore future development prospects for Tiksi. The infrastructural legacies of the Soviet past, combined with the environmental conditions of the region, result in the intertwined material dependencies of built and natural environments. Still, these material dependencies are neither straitjackets nor unchangeable. It is the interplay between global climate change, national policies, and local initiative that will challenge the material dependencies of the past and present.

Published in Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, March 16, 2022

Article as PDF

Painted history of the Northern Sea Route, Tiksi. Photo by Olga Povoroznyuk (2019).

Oct 8, 2024: Polar Journal Features Research by Olga Povoroznyuk

In a recent article published by the online information platform Polar Journal, titled “In shrinking Soviet towns, Northern Sea Route is keeping hope alive,” journalist Ole Ellekrog talked with Olga Povoroznyuk, InfraNorth’s research coordinator and lead of the Russian Arctic study region, about the difficulty of conducting anthropological research on Russia today and how InfraNorth […]

Sep 30, 2024: Article by Alexis Sancho-Reinoso and Tim Heleniak in “Island Studies Journal”

Island Studies Journal has recently published several early-access papers prior to assignment to an issue, including the article “Turning the Faroes into One City. Demographic and Spatial Impacts of 60 Years of Transport Infrastructure Expansion,” by Alexis Sancho-Reinoso and Timothy Heleniak. Over the last six decades, the Faroe Islands, an 18-island archipelago in the North […]

Photo by Alexandra Meyer.

Sep 30, 2024: Call for Abstracts on “The Challenges of Arctic Infrastructure” for the ICARP IV Summit

The call for abstracts for the 4th International Conference on Arctic Research Planning (ICARP IV) taking place on 25-28 March 2025 in Boulder, Colorado (USA) as part of the Arctic Science Summit Week (ASSW) is now open until 30 September 2024. InfraNorth team members Peter Schweitzer, Olga Povoroznyuk, and Alexandra Meyer, together with Vera Kuklina (George Washington University) […]

Sep 2024: Article in “Études Inuit Studies” by Sophie Elixhauser

The latest issue of Études Inuit Studies (Vol. 47, No. 1-2, September 2024) features the article “Making and Unmaking Airports in Tunu (East Greenland): The Socio-Material Dynamics of Hope and Connectivity” by Sophie Elixhauser. Like many airports throughout the Arctic, Kulusuk Airport, the entrance to the sparsely populated East Coast of Greenland, is built on […]