Project Description
“Arctic Transportation Futures” is a one-day transdisciplinary workshop addressing the prospects of new and existing transport routes to, from and within the circumpolar North. These prospects suffer from a high level of uncertainty in recent years, due to climate change, geopolitical tensions, and economic downturns. At the local level, some of them are perceived as running counter to community interests. By integrating local and global perspectives—including voices from diverse Arctic communities and researchers across disciplines—the workshop offers an innovative approach. It recognizes that, unlike in the past, incorporating local input is now a necessary precondition for successful new transport initiatives. Still, these initiatives rarely can be materialized without the political and economic backing of national and global players.
The workshop will be held at the University of Vienna in September 2025 in conjunction with the conference “Beyond Infrastructure: (Un-)built Environments in the Anthropocene”. The aim is to foster synergies with the conference, as well as with the ERC Advanced Grant project InfraNorth. Given the limited amount of available IASC funding, the majority of participants will be online, especialy those from overseas. Still, the intention is to have a mix of local participants from Arctic communities, as well as political, economic and academic stakeholders across various disciplines dealing with the issues at hand from regional, national and global perspectives. We plan to have different parts of the Arctic (except for Russia) represented, and we will strive for participation from groups often underrepresented in such conversations: young, female, and Indigenous persons.
The results of the workshop will be made available for the final stages of the ICARP IV process, both in academic and non-academic formats. We aim to initiate and foster dialogue between local and global stakeholders in a process reaching far beyond September 2025. At its core, it’s about finding solutions that integrate and satisfy local and global perspectives.
Date and Location
25 September 2025 | Vienna, Austria
IASC Working Groups funding the project
- Cryosphere WG
- Social & Human WG
Project Lead
Peter Schweitzer (University of Vienna, Austria)
Year funded by IASC
2025