The Global Emerging Market in Transition: Articles, Forecasts, and Studies

Regionalism as the Key Trend in Scientific and Technological Progress

REGIONALISM AS THE KEY TREND IN SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS The scientific and technological revolution of our time has led to radical structural shifts in the world economy and its industrialization , and to a growth of GNP in individual countries and groups of countries that could not be provided for by the available raw material and power resources in those parts of the developed world that were already at a high level of economic maturity. The radically new economic and technological level of development of the production forces called for a new territorial division of social labor. There began a large-scale transfer of natural resources from areas undergoing industrialization , leading to a new form of interaction between scientific progress and technology, society, and the natural environment. Mankind is now faced with problems whose traditional solution in these areas has proved ineffective and, more often than not, unrealizable . The extraction of hydrocarbon raw materials in the deserts of the Arabian peninsula and Central Asia and from the shelf of the world’s oceans, the development of deposits of nonferrous metals, diamonds, and coal in the North, the forests in the tropical zone and the arctic taiga, and the development of fallow and virgin lands in the zone of experimental agriculture has required new machinery and technologies, suitable for areas with extremes in natural and climatic conditions. The fact that these processes are occurring in the newly developing territories, with their insufficient transportation systems, poorly studied geological features, low population density , and shortage of skilled workers, has led to the development of a specific approach, namely, the regionalization of the scientific and technological solutions implemented there. The extent of the extracting and primary processing industries operating in these areas has essentially changed the nature of applied In Economic Problems of Regional Scientific-Technical Complexes (Moscow: Institute of the Economy of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1983), pp. 41–66. 442 the emerging market of russia technologies. The gigantic growth of mining operations, ore concentration , and metallurgy has brought about regionalization of technologies . Those developed for these areas are usually ineffective when applied in the ‘‘old’’ areas. For instance, coal deposits in the eastern part of Russia—in the Kansko-Achinsky and Ekibastuz basins—are worked on the basis of radically new line technologies that ensure labor productivity that is 25 to 35 times above the average for the industry. However, if the rotary extraction complexes, with an hourly yield of 12,500 tons (a freight-train load), were to be used at any mine in the European part of the country or abroad, they would not be working at their full capacity. Thus, geological conditions in the area—the reserves of natural resources, especially mineral, timber, and power resources— have a decided impact on the regionalization of scientific and technological progress. In areas of new development, the processes for regenerating an environment affected by technological developments take a different turn. Thus, while the technical division of labor brought about technologization , regionalization is the result of its territorial division. Today, scientific economics deals primarily with the applied aspect of regionalization. Particular consideration is given to problems of regional land use, the designing of machinery for use in the northern areas, and the creating of technology for implementation in permafrost conditions. These problems are still insufficiently developed for other areas with extreme natural conditions. It must be noted, however, that regionalization first surfaced in the development of science, not technology, and was connected with the step-by-step procedures in developing new areas. Industrialization there was preceded by pioneering expeditions by specialists in geography, botany, zoology, geology, and engineering surveying. Studies carried out in these areas provided new data and registered phenomena that did not fit into the existing theoretical patterns and were regarded initially as exceptions. A study of these ‘‘anomalies’’ has begun, but it has not been concentrated enough. The industrial development of natural resources in new areas has begun to outstrip scientific attention to regional problems, which has been lagging for some time. The economic issues that came up in industry could not, in many cases, be solved by the existing technology, which had been oriented regionalization as the key trend 443 toward use in areas with moderate natural and climatic conditions. Thus, for a long time the demands that society put to science remained unrealized. But gradually scientific knowledge has begun to make headway in the study...