Environmental Challenges to National Competitiveness and Stakeholders’ Response: A Case of the Russian Federation

The chapter explores mixed environmental effects on national competitiveness in emerging markets by focusing on the Russian Federation, the largest country in the world with an extraction-based economy characterized by an orientation toward hydrocarbon exports but limited by ineffective sustainability practices. We acknowledge the relatively greater role of “factor conditions” in the Russian Federation’s national competitiveness and discuss opportunities and threats that climate change and the evolution of the natural environment bring to the Russian Federation’s economic development. We conclude that the concept of sustainability is still poorly developed. At the same time though, we do acknowledge the visible shift in recent years among selected stakeholders’ approaches to environmental challenges as evidenced in the government’s new policies and large state-owned and state-controlled companies’ strategies that emphasize sustainability and response to climate change. Furthermore, we state that the role of a large group of medium and small businesses is indifferent to environmental challenges and the role of civil society while highlighting the current limited role of activist groups in sustainable development.