ИСТИНА

Murmansk region is one of the regions within the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation; and is one of the most heavily industrialized territories. Among other Arctic territories of Russia, region holds the first place by the number of single-industry cities. At present 23% of the region’s population (over 150000 people) live and work in single-industry cities and set up the greatest industrial potential for further socioeconomic and sustainable development of this area. The most part of regions’ single-industry cities has a mining profile allocating the several “Industry Giants”. This is the part of the regional perspective while Murmansk region is also perceived by the federal government as the model territory for the current socio-economic and more innovative way of development. Moreover it plays an international role as well by being the part of the Barents Euro-Arctic region. In this multi-scale sense, the Murmansk region is the interesting territory for prediction of the strategies for future development. The resource role of the Arctic is strong and doubtless. Resource stocks are expansive due to the new exploration possibilities opened by the human-driven climate and environmental change. But resource markets and political situations dictate their own demands through all the entire historic period from Soviet times to nowadays. These demands place some new economic realities to the industries allocated in the region to which they should be adaptive and resilient. The rapidly changing resource, political and military role of the Arctic and its economy nowadays brings in new challenges and benefits to the sustainable development of the region. An ineffective governmental strategy for social services, human capacity building, socially-oriented regional budget and world/domestic demand for particular resource are major milestones for sustainable development of the region and its mining communities. How all these points should properly be addressed among all the regional stakeholders and what is the consensus?