| Summary: | The difficulty of solving the issue of rural depopulation and the accessibility of these same rural areas has long been interlinked. In Arctic and sub-arctic communities, where weather is more extreme and the smaller populations more dispersed, the issue is more pronounced. Such a situation can be found in the Westfjords of Iceland, where lack of year-round access affects the lives and livelihoods of residents and businesses alike. The lifeline of these communities was once the coastal shipping routes that ferried passengers and cargo to and from the region to the capital, Reykjavík. This thesis examines the feasibility of bringing back the connection by sea, in the modernised form of a cleaner energy fast ferry serving the region on a daily basis, as a method of strengthening the resilience of access to the Westfjords. It uses a mixed-methods approach including a cost-benefit analysis, an environmental scoping assessment, a survey to elicit willingness to pay from local residents and tourists, and incorporating the views of experts through interviews. The results show that while there is certainly a high level of demand for the theoretical service, and there are no major technical impediments, the economics do not strongly support its introduction at this stage. Only one out of six scenarios produced a positive Net Present Value. An argument can be made that the service may create its own demand over time, or economic advantages in other areas but this is unproven. Only a government subsidy is likely to make the service profitable. What is certain is that there is a lot of unhappiness with the current transport situation in these rural communities, especially from those businesses that rely on a daily connection to the capital, and solutions that go beyond what currently exists are badly needed to develop the Westfjords into a self-sustaining region. Það fylgja því miklir erfiðleikar að fólksfækkun í dreifbýli og aðgengi þessara dreifbýlissvæða haldist í hendur. Þetta þykir meira áberandi í samfélögum á ...
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