Sustainable Development: Bonding Inertia of a Resource Based Economic Specialization

¹ Tomsk State University, Institute of Economics and management, 634050 Lenin Avenue, 36, Tomsk, Russia
² Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, 117997 Stremyanny lane 36, Moscow, Russia

^* Corresponding author:riv58@yandex.ru

Abstract

This article is focused on the issues of interdependence between resources and economic development. The inability to form universal approaches to ensuring sustainable development is caused by constant change of public development conditions and substantial differences between territories. The objective of this research is to reveal distinctive tendencies in the performance of Russia’s economic system in view of exploring possibilities of achieving sustainable development in regions with a large number of monotowns. The hypothesis of the research is a thesis that sustainable development of the Russian economy at all levels is affected by the growth holding inertia caused by its resource based specialization. It was confirmed that among factors affecting sustainable development of the Russian economy are its specialization in natural resources, fragmented material production, lack of a national science-based engineering core and a non-developed internal market, priority support by the government of large private companies both in industry and finance and reliance on foreign investments. The analysis of sustainable development of Kemerovo Oblast confirmed the first part of the conclusions made by Thanh Le and Cuong Le Van – the use of nonrenewable resources limits economic growth. It is currently impossible to verify the second part of their conclusions as applied to Kemerovo Oblast. The main condition – rational economic structure – is out of the picture. The process of sustainable development is affected by dominating resource based industrial specialization and as a result by high dependence of socio-economic development and regional budgets on world commodity prices.