Advancing Re-and Co-use in Arctic Industrial Development (ARCAID)

The Arctic supplies many of the critical minerals that modern economies depend on for defense, advanced technology, clean energy, and manufacturing. As global demand rises and northern ice retreats, mining interest is expanding rapidly in Greenland, Finland, and Sweden. Yet mining in the Arctic often overlaps with reindeer herding, fishing, tourism, forestry, and the lands and livelihoods of Indigenous communities. Together, these activities produce combined environmental, social, and economic effects, known as cumulative impacts, that build up across landscapes over decades. This project will develop a new framework for assessing cumulative impacts while exploring how existing industrial sites and infrastructure can be shared among multiple users or repurposed for new economic activities, rather than abandoned after a mine closes. To do so, the research team will build a digital assessment and negotiation platform based on a method called Value Efficiency Analysis, which helps communities, companies, governments, and other interested parties identify what they care about most, communicate their differences, and search for solutions that minimize conflict. The platform and methods will be co-developed and tested in three case study locations: Narsaq in southern Greenland, Sodankylä in Finnish Lapland, and Gällivare in northern Sweden. Each site illustrates how mining intersects with long-standing local industries, Indigenous land use, and the global push to secure critical mineral supplies. The research will also advance scholarship on sustainability science, the changing nature of social and economic values, and the emerging fields of political geology and mineral diplomacy. The project will benefit policymakers, regulatory agencies, mining companies, Arctic municipalities, Indigenous communities, and other groups affected by resource development. By providing tools to identify points of conflict and opportunity early in the planning process, the approach can shorten permitting timelines, reduce unforeseen legal and political costs, support meaningful community engagement, and strengthen long-term economic security in affected regions. The work is especially timely given the rising geopolitical interest in the Arctic and securing critical mineral supply chains among nations. Project deliverables will include a publicly accessible digital platform, peer-reviewed publications, short educational videos, and two short online courses offered at Michigan Technological University and the University of Delaware. These materials will train graduate and undergraduate students in interdisciplinary methods that bridge engineering, economics, law, and the social sciences. By integrating local and Indigenous knowledge with rigorous scientific analysis, the project will help guide more sustainable, equitable, and economically efficient mineral development in one of the most strategically important regions of the world. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. NSF Award ID: 2529953 | Program: 0100CYXXDB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT | Principal Investigator: Roman Sidortsov | Institution: Michigan Technological University, HOUGHTON, MI | Award Amount: $1,300,516 View on NSF Award Search: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2529953 View on Research.gov: https://www.research.gov/awardapi-service/v1/awards/2529953.html