Iceland review - 2016, Page 60

OPINION
PUTTING A PRICE
ON NATURE
In the early seventies, when I was
growing up in Reykjavík, the
Icelandic economy was mainly pow-
ered by fish exports. In 1971 fish still
constituted 84 percent of exports, alumi-
num provided seven percent, and other
industrial goods around five percent.
Agriculture accounted for three percent,
including the salted mutton we persuad-
ed the Norwegians to buy. There was a
desperate need to diversify the economy
and create jobs. This process had started
in 1969 when the power of Þjórsá river
was harnessed for the country’s first
The Icelandic economy is based on natural resources. Why then
have we only recently started to demand that businesses pay for
access to these resources? Halldór Lárusson discusses.
aluminum smelter. Iceland has been suc-
cessful in diversifying its economy away
from dependence on fish, which in 2014
made up only 42 percent of the value of
exports. What hasn’t changed, though,
is our dependence on natural resources.
Iceland is blessed with a broad base
of natural resources. The glacial rivers,
fishing grounds and, to a lesser extent,
land for food production have created a
solid base for an economy that pushed
this country out of poverty during the
second half of the 20th century. With our
latest economic boom underway, we now
realize that what many saw as the empty
wasteland of our central highlands may
be our most valuable resource. Tourism,
which to a large extent relies on selling
the idea of visitors experiencing wilder-
ness untouched by man, has become our
biggest earner of foreign currency.
VALUING OUR NATURAL
RESOURCES
For a modern developed country we are
not very good at valuing our resources. A
poor country sees its resources as means
PHOTOS BY PÁLL STEFÁNSSON.
58 ICELAND REVIEW