Russian Natural Resources’ Sphere: Development Trends and Desirable Strategies

The latest trends in natural resource management in Russia and its territorial organization are presented. The role of economic sectors based on mineral resources is growing. Imbalances in the system of mining–processing–domestic consumption–export of mineral raw materials are increasing. In the export-oriented mineral resource complex, expansion of the resource space is observed: focal involvement in the exploitation of new resources of Eastern Siberia, the Far East, the North, and shelf areas. In contrast, the use of renewable resources (biological, forest, soil, agro-climatic, water), as well as nonmetallic building materials consumed within the country, is increasingly converging in compact areas near central places and main transport routes, oriented towards the use of the “best lands.” In the structure of regional natural resource management in post-Soviet Russia, the center of gravity is shifting from the production to the consumer sector. The phenomenon of ecological and resource dissonance in the agricultural sector has been revealed, which leads to the degradation of agricultural landscapes. It has been established that the more successfully regional agriculture develops, the higher the resource–environmental dissonance. Actual changes in the natural resource complex do not meet the criteria of “sustainable development.” Based on the inventory of implemented investment projects, a small-scale map has been compiled that reflects the main features of the industrial and transport development of post-Soviet Russia. Exceptionally high territorial differentiation of industrial construction has been revealed, which is expressed primarily in its superconcentration in the Moscow region, as well as in the Northwest. When analyzing the structure of new industrial construction, no signs of its greening were revealed. Two-thirds of the new facilities are attributed to the basic, environmentally aggressive industries. The paper considers Russia’s entry into the global market of water-intensive products as alternative to the country’s natural resource-intensive trajectory.