Remoteness and mobility: transportation routes, technologies, and sustainability in arctic communities

Across the Arctic, sparse settlement patterns and lack of permanent roads have led to a reliance on aircraft for long-distance transportation. Air routes designed decades ago to access arctic communities for administrative purposes from remote temperate-zone political and financial capitals have imprinted themselves on local and regional economies and social relations. Commercial logistics of resource development as well as administrative logistics of implementing public programs for education, health care, and local services took advantage of the colonial- era air network and insured its continuity. Local residents follow the same routes as they fly between small rural communities where they maintain social and cultural ties, and urban areas offering better opportunities for higher education, health care, and wage employment. Small community residents continue to rely on small engine technologies for local transportation as they carry out traditional rural livelihoods. The extremely fuel-intensive nature of these modes of long-distance and local mobility creates severe challenges to community sustainability in an era of sustained high oil prices and concern over greenhouse gas emissions.