Arctic Connectivity Futures: A frugal approach

As the Arctic is heating up, so are efforts to strengthen arctic connectivity and enhance links between remote settlements and a global network of trade and sociality. With global interest in the Arctic on the rise, it becomes increasingly relevant to ensure that future plans for arctic infrastructures actually serve Arctic communities. Seeing the constitutive power of imagining the future, we are interested in fostering collaborative, post-colonial and everyday approaches to think about and co-design future Arctic connectivity.
This calls for interdisciplinary research strategies that are able to connect and integrate technical and SSH approaches that are usually studied separately. In this paper, we draw on examples from Greenland to propose a collaborative approach to connectivity centered on the principle of frugality: A careful balance of local needs to make the most of existing possibilities while providing valuable and flexible solutions. A turn to frugality in infrastructural planning requires deep knowledge of the local everyday as well as industrial practices and needs to provide valuable and flexible solutions which, in turn, nurture future infrastructure research and development.