Diversification after resource crises; the case of tourism in the French archipelago of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon

• Main Authors: Le Floc H, Pascal, Wilson, James, Nassiri, Abdelhak
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Canadian Regional Science Association / Association canadienne des sciences régionales. 2017
• Subjects: Canada; Newfoundland
• Online Access: https://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00637/74887/75285.pdf; https://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00637/74887/

We use historical economic data of the Islands of St Pierre and Miquelon (SPM), a terri-tory of France situated 25 km south of Newfoundland (Canada), to explore different narratives of modern growth theory applied to small island economies when major changes in resource endowment occurs. The economy of SPM was less diversified than other territories because of privileged historical access to fisheries resources that un-derpinned the main sectors of the economy. That access was rapidly reduced because of changes brought about by the extension of the EEZ by Canada, and other fisheries management changes over time. The collapse of the northern cod stocks led to the cod fishing moratorium, imposed by Canada in 1992. This last major change, a crisis for SPM, provides the backdrop to explore the responses by the government of France and the population of SPM in the wake of the moratorium. Public investments were made in tourism to reorient SPM towards a more diversified economy. However, available data show an unresponsive tourist sector despite substantial amounts of public investment in infrastructure aimed at, among other things, improving tourism. These observations lend weight to various narratives of the eviction associated with public spending aimed for a long time at the fisheries sector, which made diversification difficult. The only sec-tor that seems to show evidence of diversification is the artisanal fishery. However, there is little evidence that this diversification was generalized to tourism despite im-portant public investment.