371
Arctic Yearbook 2014
attractiveness of nature, that is a local natural resource such as mining, might turn out to be a new
monoculture in a community in economic transition from one industry to another (Kauppila et al.
2009: 432–433; Schmallegger & Carson 2010: 202). Hence, potential alternative sources of
employment were treated as big ‘industries’, which by tradition had to be massive projects instead of
more realistic small-scale projects that would lead to economic diversification. The alternative
industry, in this case tourism, was treated like the mining industry, which is dependent on public
subsidies. Hence, its economic sustainability and market potential were not taken into account,
which resembles the ‘staples trap’ (Schmallegger & Carson 2010).
Since the official announcement of the failure of Russian Lapland project in Revda, news has
followed that the project is being developed with small steps by supporting the growth of SMEs (“V
Zapolyar’e…” 2012). This would follow the international experience of more successful small scale
economic diversification instead of economically questionable massive projects, which often result
in failures. Therefore, the program of Minregion brought at least a small initiative to self-evaluation
of existing prospects for economic diversification, which in future might bring small scale positive
changes to communities such as Revda.
Conclusions and Discussion
Table 2 below summarizes the main impacts of path-dependency, the resource curse and
paternalistic expectations on efforts at economic diversification in the case study’s mining
communities of the Murmansk region.
Table 2: Summary of the results
Kirovsk
Revda
Path-Dependency:
Resource Path
Diversified path from the
beginning (both mining and
nature tourism potential are
utilized)
Currently only the mining option
utilized out of all the natural
resource potential of the district
Resource curse and
economic
diversification
Financial level (partial
dependence on the resource
firm and public authorities in
the economic diversification
projects)
Financial level (great dependence on
public authorities); Mental level
(resource fatalism)
Expectations of
subsidies and
paternalism from
public authorities to
local industries
Middle: Participation needed
and expected from the local
resource firm to support the
tourism industry. The
construction of tourism
infrastructure is also
dependent on investments
from the regional
High: State subsidies are expected to
the main resource firm Lovozerskii
GOK due to its economic problems.
Public investments were expected to
be the main source of money for the
construction of tourism
infrastructure. The expectations of
subsidies on the main industry have
Resource-Based Development & the Challenge of Economic Diversification