Russian Natural Resources’ Sphere: Development Trends and Desirable Strategies

Abstract—

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.

Russia inherited a resource-intensive economy with a structure skewed towards heavy industry, which determines the high anthropogenic pressure on nature. Since 1992, a large-scale social transformation has been taking place, which has significantly changed the economic appearance of the country, which, naturally, has also affected the natural resource sector. This section examines some of the environmental consequences of the radical break in the foundations of economic life and its territorial organization, associated with the formation of the post-Soviet economic system.

TRAJECTORY OF UNSUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Among the new factors that now form the territorial organization of society, the literature mentions the environmental factor “as a limiter of traditional and organizer of new forms of economic activity” (Geografiya …, 2004, p. 488). This position for all intents and purposes does not apply to Russian realities. As M.P. Ratanova and V.R. Bityukova justly note (2004, p. 595), post-Soviet Russia is characterized by the lifting of environmental barriers, which creates conditions for maintaining obsolete technologies, “contributing to the location of hazardous industries in places unsuitable for them.”

The environmental factor in Russia in some cases indeed organizes the economy, but for the most part, it is a tool for competition and the redistribution of property, and not at all in the interests of nature protection. The fact that Russian environmental requirements are higher than in other countries was well felt during implementation of the Sakhalin-2 project by Royal Dutch Shell Corporation, Mitsui, and Mitsubishi. Only after Gazprom joined this project were its environmental problems successfully “resolved.”

The market, especially the Russian one, which is just emerging, does not work in the environmental sphere (just like in the fight against crime, drugs, and, in general, in the social sphere). Examples of this kind are as follows. Moscow is implementing a program to move industry out of the city to reduce the load on nature. In practice, industrial zones the territory of which is of commercial interest are exempted from enterprises (and by no means the most harmful). This will not result in significant improvement in the ecological situation. So-called greening in Moscow is financed under “environmental protection,” an activity carried out by structures pursuing economic, not environmental goals. Enormous funds are spent on it, but it does yield no improvement in the state of the natural environment.

A purely “market” economic mechanism with weakened environmental monitoring leads to deterioration in the environmental performance of production. Thus, it is more profitable for territorial power-generating companies to produce electricity at their own, albeit outdated, power plants than to buy it from wholesale companies. Therefore, the oldest power plants are loaded with more work than new economically and environmentally more advanced ones (Ekonomicheskaya …, 2013, p. 272).

The specific Russian market sometimes gives rise to very bizarre forms, e.g., a special kind of “green racket,” when regional authorities create protected natural areas of local importance, which now or in the future will be the subject of bargaining for territory with the federal center (the laying roads during construction). Hundreds of such protected areas have been created in some regions (Tishkov, 2005). In addition to the exotic “green racket,” sometimes the traditional racket acquires an ecological ring, which was experienced, e.g., by JSC Tolyattiazot, when automatic machine operators rushed to the most dangerous types of production all respects: explosion- and fire-hazardous, involving high-pressure units.2

During the years of perestroika and reforms, the impact on nature (water consumption, sewerage, atmospheric emissions from stationary sources) has decreased more than the volume of industrial production (Fig. 1).3 As well, the volumes of commissioning of treatment plants and other environmental protection equipment have been greatly reduced, but the number and areas of specially protected areas have increased markedly. At the same time, the cost of their upkeep in comparable prices has decreased significantly. In other words, more and more landscapes are being protected, but the quality of their preservation is apparently worse. (Note that the expansion of areas and increase in the number of protected areas, even with declining funding, makes profound ecological sense).

Fig. 1.

Dynamics of environmental and economic indicators in Russia for 1990–2017 (1990 = 100%).

Until 1999, in the reforming Russia, the rate of decline in industrial production far outstripped the rate of reduction of its pressure on the natural environment. Production, per unit of output, became dirtier. This was the result of significant transformation of the industrial structure and its environmental degradation. The share of environmentally aggressive industries (fuel industry, electric power industry, ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy, chemical and petrochemical industries) increased (in current prices) from 30.2% in 1990 to 57.4% in 2004.4 In comparable prices, the changes are smaller, but also significant, from 30.2 to 48.3%. For 1990–2004, weighting of the industrial structures of the regions occurred everywhere, except for Samara and Leningrad oblasts. A certain correlation was revealed: the higher the share of aggressive industries in the region, the more significantly it increased over the post-Soviet period. An important factor in the growth of the specific (per unit of production) impact on nature in the 1990s was incomplete, i.e., economically and environmentally inefficient utilization of production capacities associated with a landslide drop in production in many industries.

We expected that with the resumption of industrial growth, the pressure on nature would increase even more, since environmental activities are significantly degrading (Klyuev, 2004). However, there the trend changes, and the revival of production was accompanied by a decrease in the specific pollution of nature (Fig. 2). This was partly because, since 1999, relatively low-waste industries, such as the food and machine building industries, have increased production faster. However, apparently this is not the only reason. Among other possible causes, we note the following: an increase in the utilization of production capacities, which determined their environmentally more optimal functioning; gasification of electric power industry; change in the composition of users of natural resources covered by statistical observation due to liquidation, reorganization, mergers, acquisitions, bankruptcies of economic entities; a general decline in accounting and reporting discipline; a certain way out of the shadow of the shadow economy. In general, the discrepancy between the indices of production and environmental impacts is not completely clear and requires detailed study.

Fig. 2.

Indices of industry and environmental impact in Russia (1990 = 100%).

Industrial decline, on the one hand, and the rapid motorization of the population, on the other, have led to a change in the ratio of atmospheric emissions from stationary sources and vehicles. In Moscow for 1990–2017, the share of transport emissions increased from 75 to 94%; in Kaliningrad, from 20 to 75%.5 Moreover, these are mainly emissions from personal transport, i.e., the contribution of not the production, but consumer sector. Accounting for total (industrial plus transport) emissions significantly transforms the hierarchy of leading cities in terms of air pollution. Whereas in the list of leading cities, in terms of industrial emissions, Moscow and St. Petersburg rank between 20 and 30, in terms of total emissions, they are among the top three. Metropolitan centers also head the list of cities with the largest volumes of polluted wastewater discharge, surpassing by many times (a factor of 4–7) other major water polluters. For wastewater discharge, in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the share of housing and communal services dominates, while the share of industry is decreasing. In the composition of polluted waste waters of the capital, the share of industrial effluents is less than 10%; the majority comprises household effluents. Surface sewage is also very significant: storm, melt, washwater. Thus, not the industrial, but tertiary economy leaves an increasingly significant ecological footprint in the largest Russian cities. Universal motorization has dispersed transport pollution in cities. Whereas earlier air pollution was concentrated near places of employment, they are now spreading to places of residence and recreation of people (Koldobskaya, 2014).

The increase in the share of road transport emissions is directly related to the magnitude, nature, and spatial organization of loads on natural complexes. As is known, most solid substances of atmospheric emissions are precipitated the local zone (30–80 km from the source), while the majority of gaseous substances is included in long-range transport (Vasilenko et al., 1985). Now in Russia, solid substances make up only 9–10% of gross atmospheric emissions (vehicles produce very little solid emissions, albeit they are toxic). Therefore, first, the load on urban geosystems is currently increasing; the main recipient of the impact is the urban population, in particular, in residential areas adjacent to highways. Second, the contribution of Russian cities to global air pollution is increasing: more than 90% of emissions are already involved in interregional and global fluxes, and this share is growing.

MODERN TRENDS IN NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

A distinctive geographical feature of the Russian natural resource complex has been and remains the almost complete territorial mismatch between population placements and resources (with the exception of soil and climatic resources). Siberia and the Far East, where 20% of the population lives, accounts for 70% of the natural resource potential, excluding agricultural resources (Privalovskaya and Runova, 1980). This determines the main problem of developing the country’s mineral treasures: cost-intensive mining in conditions of ice isotherms, the lack of roads and other infrastructure and labor resources, and cost-intensive transportation of mined raw materials to consumers. And these difficulties worsen over time.

The depletion of large deposits and the deterioration of the qualitative structure of reserves have exacerbated the long-standing problem of the mining industry: the loss of useful components during production. Meanwhile, the oil recovery coefficient in Russia is declining and now stands at 0.35; i.e., 65% of oil remains at depth and the cost of its production will increase many times, or be completely lost forever. In the 1980s, the USSR occupied a leading position in novel methods for enhanced oil recovery. However, while the oil recovery coefficient was slowly but steadily increasing in the United States, it was decreasing in Russia (Laverov, 2006). In the post-Soviet period, the policy of oil companies is aimed at selective extraction of the most productive reserves, which leads to their significant loss. At the same time, research in the field of efficient oil production technologies has practically ceased in Russia, and the production of the corresponding equipment has also been curtailed.

The problem of the integrated use of mineral raw materials and waste disposal is not weakening, but even worsening. For example, today in Russia, oil fields burn from 20 to 50 bln m³ of associated petroleum gases per year (Aldoshin, 2012). This is not only loss of valuable chemical raw materials, but also significant atmospheric emissions of a wide range of pollutants.

After a significant decline in the 1990s, by the 2010s, the extraction of nonrenewable mineral resources in Russia had almost reached the Soviet level (Fig. 3) and in some respects surpassed it. An exception is extraction of nonmetallic building materials, which has decreased by almost two times. The reason is a strong reduction in industrial, transport, and housing construction, because the building materials industry works for the domestic market. In contrast, the extraction of fuel and energy resources, ferrous and nonferrous metal ores, and chemical raw materials is largely export-oriented, which determines Russia’s position as the world’s raw material larder, its gas station, and boiler room.

Fig. 3.

Dynamics of extraction of mineral resources in Russia for 1990–2017 (1990 = 100%).

During the years of restoration of capitalism in Russia, the export orientation of the extractive industry has significantly increased (see Table 1). Mineral raw materials are inexpensive on the global market. The efficiency of foreign trade increases as extracted resources are processed, and Russia exports raw materials for the most part in their original state. In addition, it is economically profitable to export surpluses, things not required by the national economy. However, mineral fertilizers exported from Russia, e.g., are by no means superfluous to it. Their use per 1 ha of Russian arable land in agricultural enterprises decreased from 88 kg in 1990 to 55 kg in 2017 (in 1999 it dropped to 15 kg). This predetermines not only future low yields, but also soil degradation.

Table 1.  .

Extraction and export of oil, natural gas, coal, and iron ore in Russia

Indicator	1993	2000	2005	2011	2017
Oil, mln t
Extraction	354	324	470	512	546
Export	80	145	253	244	253
Share of exports in extraction, %	22.6	44.7	53.8	47.7	46.3
Natural gas, bln m3
Mining	618	584	641	671	691
Export	96	194	207	187	210
Share of exports in extraction, %	15.5	33.2	32.3	27.9	30.4
Coal, mln t
Extraction	306	258	299	335	410
Export	20	44	80	111	181
Share of exports in extraction, %	6.5	17.1	26.8	33.1	44.1
Iron ore, mln t
Extraction	76	87	95	104	95
Export	10	19	18	28	21
Share of exports in extraction, %	13.2	21.8	18.9	26.9	22.1

Compiled from: Russian Statistical Yearbook. 1994, Moscow: Goskomstat Rossii, 1994; Russian Statistical Yearbook 2003–2018, Federal State Statistics Service, http://www.gks.ru/bgd/regl/b18_13/Main.htm (accessed June 11, 2019).

Sometimes export needs are met on a priority basis. Russia is the world’s largest exporter of natural gas, and the level of gasification, e.g., in Sakhalin oblast (gas producing region) is 14.2% (in Russia as a whole 66.3%, 2016); in rural areas this figure is much lower. Leading the world in oil and natural gas production, Russia continues to lag behind in its petrochemical industries. It accounts for only 2% of the world’s plastics production; domestic needs are met by imports, including from China, which is a net importer of oil and gas raw materials. The vast majority (up to 90%) of aluminum, copper, nickel, and zinc produced in the country are exported abroad, while domestic consumption of nonferrous metallurgy products has fallen sharply. Meanwhile, non-ferrous metallurgy is ennobling the economy and makes its structure more progressive. The USSR consumed over 10% of world aluminum; modern Russia consumes ten times less; copper 8 times less; nickel, 12 times less (Kashin, 2009). In the USSR, 8000 t of rare earth elements were produced per year; in modern Russia, 2000–3000 t (Savel’eva, 2011). Meanwhile, rare earth metals are used in solar energy, optoelectronics, the laser industry, computer production, i.e., in industries that spur scientific and technological progress, including in the environmental sphere.

When natural resources fare exported from the country, in fact, the assimilation potential of natural landscapes is also exported, i.e., their ability to withstand economic impacts. The low payments by domestic exporters for energy, land, minerals, and environmental pollution means appropriation and duty-free export of the country’s environmental resources. At the same time, the country imports products from the upper tiers of technological chains, the production of which is less harmful to the natural environment.

Against increasing exploitation of the Russian subsoil, the renewable resource sectors of the economy have reduced production over the post-Soviet period (Fig. 4). Only after 2014 did the production of certain types of agricultural products show a significant increase. It is appropriate to recall that sustainable development implies the gradual replacement of nonrenewable natural resources with renewable ones. Clearly, this task cannot be solved overnight. It is difficult, however, to count on its solution if one initially moves in the opposite direction.

Fig. 4.

Dynamics of production in Russia of products based on renewable resources for 1990–2017 (1990 = 100%).

Forty-five percent of the world’s peat resources are concentrated in Russia; they increase annually by 260–280 mln t, and only 1% of the increase is extracted (Bessmertnykh and Zaichenko, 2012). The involvement of peat resources in exploitation is important, given, in particular, the level of undeveloped Russian territory, 70% of which is not covered by a centralized power supply. Therefore, in Russia it is very promising to create autonomous energy sources using local fuel energy resources. Despite the importance of development of wind, solar, tidal, and geothermal energy, and small hydropower plants, Russia’s renewable energy should be built primarily on virtually inexhaustible biomass reserves, in particular, peat.

Russia—a major forest state—during the years of perestroika and reforms has halved its logging. True, during this period, illegal timber began to be harvested in large volumes. Its volumes, according to various estimates (Sheingauz, 2006; Tishkov, 2005), range from 15 to 100% in excess of legal logging. However, even taking into account the illegal timber market, the annual allowable cut (AAC) is greatly underutilized. During the years of perestroika and reforms, the main problem of the country’s forest complex has not been resolved, but even worsened: the export of mainly roundwood and the lack of deep wood processing, most of which remains in the forest. The export-raw material orientation of the country’s timber industry fosters mismanagement of cuttings: selection of the best trees from stands. In the post-Soviet years, negative selection, leading to deterioration in the quality and sanitary conditions of forests and a decrease in biodiversity, has intensified, since large-scale illegal logging is carried out without any forestry regulations (Sheingauz, 2006).

ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE TRANSFORMATION OF AGRICULTURAL NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Agriculture based on renewable resources (with their rational use) is developing in Russia in a very peculiar way and, unfortunately, not environmentally friendly. Let us consider in more detail the consequences of transformations in the agrarian sector.

For 1990–2017, the sown area of agricultural crops in the country decreased by 29 mln ha (approximately the area of Italy), i.e., by a third of all sown areas in 1990. This is, on the whole, an ecologically positive process, in particular in the steppe and forest-steppe regions of the country, which are certainly overplowed, but the natural flow reduces its potential economic and environmental efficiency.

First, the removal of agricultural land from circulation occurs on the periphery of regions and is accompanied by intensified land use in villages, suburbs, and even cities, i.e., where loads were previously exceeded. Such polarization of the biosphere is unsubstantiated from the socioecological standpoint for the simple reason that people live in cities and villages (for whom nature should be protected).

Second, lands removed from agricultural circulation should be put to use. They can and should perform other socioeconomic and environmental functions: natural fodder lands and recreational and protected areas. Currently, unused agrocenoses are covered with small forests and thickets of weeds and act as breeding grounds for pests and diseases of agricultural crops, and also near cities are actively used as landfills.

Third, the removal of land from circulation should be accompanied by an increase in the efficiency of use and improvement in the ecological state of the remaining agrocenoses, but this is by no means observed. Due to lack of funds, agrotechnical, agrochemical, ameliorative, phytosanitary, and antierosion measures to preserve and improve soil fertility are not carried out.

Lastly, and most importantly, large-scale desolation of agricultural lands, which are losing their economic value and aesthetic appeal, along with depopulation of rural areas, pose a real threat to the Russia’s rural cultural landscapes that have formed over the centuries and are national treasures.

The maximum relative reduction in sown areas is noted in peripheral areas of extreme farming: Magadan oblast, the Tyva Republic, and Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. Naturally, these regions do not determine the country’s food security. Relative reductions are small in southwestern Russia, as well as in Tatarstan. However, the absolute values of land removal from economic circulation represent a more important indicator. The greatest losses of sown areas are in the southern steppe regions, many of which are the breadbaskets of the country (Fig. 5): Saratov, Orenburg, Volgograd, and other oblasts.

Fig. 5.

Reduction of sown areas of agricultural crops by Russian regions¹⁶ for 1990–2017.

The load on nature also decreased due to a strong reduction in the number of farm animals. In the number of pigs, today’s Russia (2017) corresponds to its 1957 level. The current number of cattle is only 55% of the number in 1916, and 100 years ago there were twice as many sheep and goats. As a result, the agrarian profile of regions changed, namely, a shift towards crop production. In the 1980s, it prevailed in only a few southwestern regions; now it predominates in almost half the country’s regions. On a large scale, the boundaries of predominance of crop production in agriculture advanced from the arid steppes to the taiga (Klyuev, 2017).

The ratio of crop production and animal husbandry, in addition to economic, has important ecological significance. It determines the type and intensity of agrarian pressures on nature, the proportions between the types of agricultural land (arable land, hayfields, pastures) and thus the appearance of modern rural landscapes. Thus, the forest–meadow–field landscape, traditional for Russia’s Non-Chernozem zone, in some places has transformed into a meadow–forest landscape. As a result of a change in agricultural specialization, the pressure on pasture landscapes has decreased. This is particularly important for regions prone to aridization: the republics of Kalmykia, Dagestan, and Tyva; Astrakhan and Rostov oblasts; and Altai krai.

As a result of overgrazing, by the mid-1980s, the productivity of pastures in the lower Volga region and in the east of the North Caucasus was greatly reduced, and areas of sandy soils and the frequency of dust storms increased. In the Chornye Zemli area in Kalmykia, the situation was characterized as precatastrophic. Ecological assistance to landscapes was provided by socioeconomic and climatic changes. The abrupt decrease in the number of livestock as a result of post-Soviet crises and reforms, as well as a significant decrease in the aridity of the region’s climate, contributed to restoration of the vegetation cover in the man-made desert. Debilitating loads on pastures are still observed, but locally, near populated areas, which, however, creates prerequisites for new frontal desertification.

According to (Chibilev, 2004), in southern Orenburg oblast, the load of livestock on steppe pastures decreased by seven to eight times. Thus, steppe felt began to form almost everywhere. However, this, combined with the spread of tall-weedy wildland, sharply increased fire hazard. Every year, burning steppes cover up to a third of the territory in Orenburg oblast and the Trans-Volga areas of Saratov and Volgograd oblasts. Geoecologists should pay serious attention to this factor.

The modern use of pastures is also characterized by polarized pressures on landscapes. Overgrazing, overconsolidation, soil erosion on pastures closest to population centers, overgrowth of remote lands with coarse-grassed forbs, their overgrowth, or transformation into bouldery wastelands (in the mountains) is observed in a wide range of natural and economic conditions: in Yakutia (Fedorov, 2002), the Caucasus, Altai, Primorye (Gracheva, 2002), and Tyva (Sambuu, 2000). During the 1990s, the area of grassy fodder lands in the country decreased by 15–16 mln ha (Tishkov, 2005, p. 154).

The reduction in the number of farm animals has other positive environmental consequences. The need for a fodder base decreases when growing fodder crops with a significant proportion of tilled crops that impoverish the soil and cause erosion. The amount of large-tonnage waste from livestock complexes is also reduced. True, due to the lack of equipment and the high cost of fuel and lubricants, these wastes are disposed of in agricultural fields even worse than during the pre-reform period. The reduction in livestock occurred in agricultural enterprises, while personal farms mainly retained their livestock. As a result, there was a shift in animal husbandry to personal farmsteads. Livestock-breeding loads on landscapes have not only been reduced; they have been territorially redistributed and are now concentrated in villages, suburbs, and cities.

As a result of the collapse of domestic animal husbandry, food imports increased sharply (Table 2).6 A kind of food production chain is emerging that is economically and environmentally unprofitable for Russia: the export of mineral fertilizers (simple nutrients)—production of meat and milk (complex nutrients) abroad—their import to Russia. The formation of such a chain can hardly be considered a rational inclusion in the international division of labor. The current food dependence is not just humiliating for a once great agricultural power, it is a real threat to national security. It is also important that the quality of domestic food is often still better than foreign food in terms of sanitary and environmental safety (Dumnov, 2002).

Table 2.  .

Food imports by Russia, thous. t

Foodstuff	Year					Change for 1993–2017, times
	1993	2000	2005	2010	2017
Meat fresh and frozen (excluding poultry)	85.1	517	1340	1614	646	7.6
Poultry meat fresh and frozen	73.9	694	1329	688	229	3.1
Fish fresh and frozen	43.5	327	787	791	429	9.8
Condensed milk and cream	14.6	76.6	146	238	243	16.6
Butter and other milk fats	70.1	70.8	133	134	100	1.4

Compiled from: Russian Statistical Yearbook 1994, Moscow: Goskomstat Rossii, 1994; Russian Statistical Yearbook, 2003–2018, Federal State Statistics Service, http://www.gks.ru/bgd/regl/b18_13/Main.htm (accessed June 11, 2019).

The main grain-producing regions are increasing exports of grain crops (Russia’s grain export increased from 15 000 t in 1993 to 43.2 mln t in 2017) and sunflower seeds; the acreage of these crops is also increasing, which leads to environmentally undesirable consequences. In Chernozem regions, the share of tilled crops and clear fallows, which trigger erosion, is growing, and the share of soil-improving perennial grasses and legumes is decreasing. Thus, in Tambov oblast in the post-Soviet years, the share of tilled crops increased to 36.5%, and the share of perennial grasses decreased by eight times, to 2.3% (ten times lower than the norm for biological farming) (Kosolapov et al., 2015). In Kursk oblast during this period, the share of grain crops, which are characterized by low soil-protective capacity, has increased, while the share of perennial grasses has decreased three times. In Samara, Saratov, and Tambov oblasts, the sown areas of soil-destroying sunflower increased by three to four times, and its share in crops significantly exceeds phytosanitary standards. Farms are particularly unecological in this respect. For example, in Rostov oblast, almost half of farmers’ crops are sunflower, while the norm is 15%. Monocultures are called agricultural AIDS; they destroy soil immunity and lead to the development of specific pests and crop disease.

The intensification of crop exports (the “raw material” sector of agriculture) against a landslide decline in animal husbandry (the “manufacturing” sector of agriculture) indicates consolidation of the country’s raw material specialization, which puts out products with a low share of added value.

A serious threat to agricultural landscapes is a sharp decline in the use of fertilizers.7 The use of organic fertilizers decreased from 3.5 in 1990 to 1.5 t/ha in 2017. Due to the drastic reduction in the number of livestock, there are simply no animals to generate them. A small number of livestock disrupts the harmony between animal husbandry, which produces waste, and crop production, which consumes it. By the early 1990s, a nutrient reserve had been created on Russian arable soils, but now the balance is hopelessly negative. In Russia as a whole, compensation for the removal of nutrients from soil with crops through the application of fertilizers amounted to: nitrogen 15%, phosphorus 15%, potassium 5% (Izmeneniya …, 2007). Dehumification and a decrease in soil fertility, in turn, lead to a decrease in soil tolerance to anthropogenic stress. The progressive degradation of soils is also associated with a sharp, landslide decrease in the volume of liming of acidic soils (in 1990–2017, a 23.5-fold reduction), their gypsuming (31.8-fold), and cultural and technical work on farmland.

Modern agriculture is based on controlled bilateral (drainage plus irrigation) regulation of hydrological, thermal, and other soil regimes. In the United States, 60% of lands are covered by such systems; in Germany, 50%; in Russia only 5% (Dobrovol’skii and Zaidel’man, 2004, p. 50).8 During the postreform period, the areas of reclaimed lands decreased by more than 20%; a third of these lands are in poor condition, and only a quarter are in good condition, while in Bryansk, Ryazan, Sverdlovsk, and Chelyabinsk oblasts, there were no “good” lands at all in 2016, and in the other half of European Russian regions, they accounted for less than 10% of all reclaimed land.9 Clearly, only a small part of previously reclaimed lands remains improved and valuable to the economy, and the rest, rather, the opposite.

Previously reclaimed, but now abandoned peat bogs (e.g., in Meshchera) have lost their useful properties, their fertility has decreased, they have undergone secondary swamping, and have been overgrown with vegetation that is difficult to wade through. In other words, having lost their former, agricultural functions, they have not acquired new, useful functions for humans. It is no coincidence that the destructive natural fires of summer 2010 affected regions with large areas of abandoned arable land and previously reclaimed lands in poor condition. As a result, productive lands lose their economic value, while the lands remaining in circulation are exploited in conditions of a primitive, unregulated soil regime. This is one of the signs of primitivization of domestic agriculture.

Other evidence of this is the redistribution of production between different categories of farms. Whereas in 1990 homesteads produced 26.6% of agricultural products, in 2017, it was 32.5% (and in 1998, even 58.9%). Field surveys (Klyuev, 2007) showed that peasant land use in private homesteads is not as environmentally friendly as it might seem at first glance. In the structure of their sown areas, two-thirds are potato crops, which hinders environmentally rational crop rotation. Technologies for the use of fertilizers and pesticides are violated, which worsens the phytosanitary state of agroecosystems. In the postreform period, private homesteads ensured the survival of a significant part of the country’s population. However, being the most effective from the standpoint of survival, peasant farmsteads are unpromising for agricultural development. These farms are dominated by primitive plant-growing and animal husbandry technologies and hard physical labor; for the most part, they are small-scale or not at all marketable.

In Russia, homesteads, as is known, are located not only in rural areas, but also in cities. The lands of private farms occupy, e.g., up to 30% of the urban areas of Kursk and Rostov-on-Don and 60% of Novocherkassk. Note that the last two are on the list of the most polluted cities in the country, which, of course, cannot but affect the quality of products obtained from such lands. For example, in vegetables grown on plots in Tolyatti, the heavy metal content is higher than on background plots: cadmium, 2–9 times; chromium, 2–5 times; nickel, copper, and lead, 1.5–2 times (Ekogeokhimiya …, 1995, p. 277).

In addition to urban lands, suburb lands are subjected to significant anthropogenic impacts. In the post-Soviet years, the nearest suburbs became a place of intensive dacha development and cottage construction. They are often localized in water protection and forest park areas. The element of predatory uncontrolled development is not subject to any, even minimal, environmental requirements. For example, in June 2004 alone, more than 2000 facilities were identified that were illegally erected in water protection zones of Moscow oblast.10 About 1400 ha of forest fund lands belonging to forests of the first group were self-acquired. Forest glades, arable land, quarries, collective farm gardens, sporting grounds, land under power lines, and even cemeteries are being seized (Koroleva et al., 2004). In areas with mass cottage and dacha development, uncontrolled drilling of artesian wells poses a serious threat to groundwater quality. As a result, the quality of drinking water reservoirs and the sanitary condition of suburban areas are deteriorating, the possibilities of mass public recreation are being reduced, and suburban ecological safety nets are being destroyed. From the ecological standpoint, the significant territorial expansion of cities, a new powerful wave of suburbanization, is an extremely undesirable process. It is useful, e.g., to recall that in order to ensure a favorable ecological situation in a city, it is not the size of its green zone and forests that is important, but the forest cover of a vast territory (Ekologi-cheskie …, 1998, p. 157).

In postreform agriculture, at first glance, there is a paradoxical effect from the discrepancy of the indices of agricultural production, on the one hand, and the indices of the resources used (sown areas, livestock, use of organic and mineral fertilizers, machinery, electricity, etc.) with the other (Fig. 6). Less and less resources are spent per unit of production. At first glance, this is the intensification of production, and it is indeed observed on individual farms from the use of new equipment, technologies, productive varieties of plants and livestock breeds, etc. Thus, milk yield per cow for 1990–2017 increased from 2731 to 4368 kg, but the number of cows has decreased by almost half.

Fig. 6.

Indices of agricultural indicators in Russia for 1990–2017, % (1990 = 100%).16

However, in the country as a whole, the increase in production is achieved mainly due to increased exploitation of land resources, which is fraught with diminishing soil fertility and degradation. As a result of mediocre agrarian reform, domestic peasants are trying to squeeze everything possible out of the land, which, of course, cannot but undermine the country’s ecological potential. As a positive result of agrarian reforms, some researchers (Nefedova, 2003) have noted an increase in crop yields. However, the increase in productivity11 is achieved, in particular, due to the concentration of agriculture on the best lands, while less productive lands are taken out of economic circulation. In conditions of uncompensated (fertilizing) agriculture, this is fraught with rapid transformation of the best lands into badlands; in the future, the transfer of agriculture to less fertile lands, their subsequent degradation, etc., is inevitable. And the re-engagement of abandoned lands into circulation will require costs comparable to their initial development, since not only, say, agro-soddy-podzolic, but also more fertile agro-gray soils degrade according to the humid type after abandonment. In the forest zone in wild landscapes, there is active soil fertility loss: podzolization, solodization, eluvial-gleying, etc.

The marked discrepancy between the production index and resource index, the paradoxical discrepancy between the declining flow of material resources and increasing output of agricultural products (the input–output paradox) will be called the ecological resource “dissonance” in order to focus on the main factor of such a discrepancy, tightening of exploitation of land resources, which act as the most important component of the ecosphere.

Let us consider this peculiar ecological resource dissonance in the regional context (Fig. 7). The generalized, integral indices of used resources for 1990–2014 were preliminarily calculated (I_i) by the following formula:

1

Fig. 7.

Change in loads on agricultural landscapes over 1990–2014 by Russian regions.

where I_s is the index of sown areas; I_f is the index of application of mineral fertilizers; I_l is the livestock index in conventional units. In other words, the integral index was defined as the arithmetic mean of three particular indices of the resources used, which, in our opinion, determine the productivity of agricultural production to a decisive extent.

Kostroma, Smolensk, Ivanovo, Tver, and Kaluga oblasts are characterized by the minimum integral index values. In Kostroma oblast, the sown area decreased by 3.4 times, the use of mineral fertilizers (per 1 ha) decreased by 12.5, and the number of cattle, by 6 times. At the other extreme are republics of Karachay-Cherkessia and Dagestan, where this index exceeds 100%, which indicates an increase in the factors of production involved in turnover. For example, the number of sheep in Dagestan increased 1.5 times; in Karachay-Cherkessia, 1.7 times. In the central Chernozem oblasts, from the middle of the “zero” years, previously abandoned arable land is again involved in circulation, and in Kursk oblast, e.g., the amount of sown area in 2015 in a number of districts already exceeds the Soviet period.

The pattern is well pronounced: the higher the production index, the greater the difference between the indices (Table 3). The more successfully—from a purely production standpoint—regional agriculture develops, the higher the resource environmental dissonance. In this sense, two groups of regions are distinguished, differing by diametrically opposite ecological trajectories (Fig. 8).

Table 3.  .

Regions leading in dynamics of agricultural production in 1990–2014

Regions leading in all three parameters are highlighted. * Share (%) of volume of agricultural production of RSFSR in 1990.

Fig. 8.

Difference between indices of agricultural production and resources used for some Russian regions for 1990–2014. Note: Volume of spheres is proportional to volume of agricultural production in 2014. Axes reflect average Russian values of indices.

(1) Regions where there is a large discrepancy between indices and a strong decline in production (Tver and Nizhny Novgorod oblasts, Perm krai, etc.) are areas of accelerated primitivization of agriculture. They increase the dependence of the agricultural sector on natural regimes and trends, and above all, on the climate. In addition, changes in regional climatic characteristics can be expected in these regions. A.N. Krenke (1989) showed that the formation of natural-economic zones has strongly disturbed natural-climatic zoning. The renaturalization of landscapes (due to the reduction and primitivization of agricultural activity) leads to renaturalization of regional (zonal) climatic characteristics. Now, in areas with strong reduced agricultural activity, one can expect certain shifts in changes in the regional climate (which are superimposed here on changes in the global climate).

(2) In regions where a large difference in indices is accompanied by an increase in production (Belgorod, Tambov, Lipetsk, and Kursk oblasts, etc.), there is an increase in the impact on landscapes. Excessive exploitation of the agrolandscapes of the Central Chernozem region and adjacent oblasts threatens their accelerated environmental degradation.

Under the conditions of the Russian state’s systematic evasion of social functions, its poor population survives due to the excessive exploitation of biological resources (Tishkov and Klyuev, 2010): soil fertility, poaching, illegal logging, self-harvesting of firewood, self-acquisition of land, etc. At the same time, the nonenvironmental behavior of the population is explained not so much by their illiteracy as by economic hopelessness. At the other social pole, the wealthy minority of our society survives (or “thrives”?) via exploitation of the resources of the lithosphere also excessive, sometimes predatory exploitation. In general, the influence of natural and geographical factors in the life of society is increasing.

Thus, the most important feature of the transformation of agricultural natural resource management in postreform Russia is the change in the nature of agroecological problems. In the late Soviet period, environmental problems were caused by intensification of agriculture: the use of fertilizers and plant protection products, loads of heavy agricultural equipment, and large-tonnage waste from livestock complexes. Nowadays, problems characteristic of agriculturally backward countries are coming to the fore, associated with diminishing soil fertility, soil degradation, abandonment of arable land, simplification of agrocenoses, monocultures, a low level of agricultural technology, primitive technologies of agriculture and animal husbandry.

TRENDS IN THE TERRITORIAL ORGANIZATION OF NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

A distinctive feature of the modern period is the predominant “compression” of the Russian resource space, the concentration of natural resource management in central places, and economic desolation of the periphery. These trends are manifested at different territorial levels and in different sectors of natural resource management: in the mining, forestry, and fishing industries, agriculture, transport, and construction.

The level of concentration of natural resource management in the regional context is increasing. At the end of the 2000s, the top ten regions accounted for about 49% of industrial production, 45% of atmospheric emissions, 49% of polluted wastewater discharge, 59% of water use for industrial needs, 82% of disturbed lands, and 85% of solid waste. There is a concentration of mining, and, consequently, major changes in natural components and complexes associated with it, in a limited number of regions. Whereas the top five regions in 1990 accounted for 37.2% of extraction,12 in 2005, it was already 54.3%. And the share of the top ten regions during this period increased, respectively, from 52.5 to 66.5%. This concentration of the extractive industry, due to economic considerations, is negatively assessed from an environmental standpoint. The concentration of negative impacts on the environment is more pronounced than the concentration of industrial production. More than half the polluted wastewater in the country comes from only 70 cities, 12% of which is the Moscow River basin. It is these cities, in particular, those located in the Moscow metropolitan region, that deserve priority attention on the part of water authorities.

Whereas in 1990 the two capital regions accounted for 10% of housing construction in Russia, in 2017, it was already almost a 25%, and in 2004, nearly a third. Within Moscow oblast, the current leader in construction, 55% of housing under construction is concentrated in a 10-km zone around the Moscow Ring Road. This kind of concentration of the population can be ecologically interpreted as “dead-to-dead.”

In the main areas of logging, distant cutting areas are abandoned, and logging is concentrated near transport routes. Accordingly, the favorable environmental consequences brought by the reduction in logging have mainly affected remote forests, which were already little disturbed. In forest-depleted areas, where forests are severely disturbed, an increase in logging is observed. In mountainous regions, in particular in the North Caucasus, there is intensive felling of mid- and low-mountain forests and shrubs for firewood, as a result of which mudflow source zones have increased. Nontimber forest resources are also selectively developed.

During the post-Soviet period, the share of the Northern and Northwestern economic regions in the timber, woodworking, and pulp and paper industries has increased significantly, while the share of Eastern Siberia and the Far East has dropped. Since the main forest resources are concentrated in the east of the country, the forest industry has moved away from its raw material base. The region’s share in the country’s timber harvesting is much larger than its share in timber reserves in the Irkutsk, Vologda, Arkhangelsk, Kirov oblasts and Republic of Karelia (Fig. 9), which indirectly indicates a strong overexploitation of forests in these regions. There is also a shift in logging to areas adjacent to state borders.

Fig. 9.

Stock and export of timber by Russian regions.

Changes in the load on nature are a consequence of changes in the placement of industrial production. Let us consider how it has changed in the course of the country’s reforms. By 2017, only 46 regions exceeded the pre-reform level of industrial production (Fig. 10). It should be noted that the country’s main “currency shops,” the Khanty-Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets autonomous okrugs, are by no means leaders in terms of industrial indices. Their indices for 1990–2017 account for 87.7 and 105.2%, respectively (in Russia as a whole, 93.7%). Meanwhile, the share of these regions in the country’s industry over the specified period increased greatly from 1.7 to 4.7% in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug (in 2012 it reached 7.6%) and from 1.0 to 2.9% in Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. The relative prosperity of these okrugs is determined by global prices for oil and gas resources. However, this is not ecological well-being. Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug leads the country in terms of disturbed lands and (along with Krasnoyarsk krai) atmospheric emissions. In the size of disturbed lands, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug is also in the top three “antileaders.” Thus, the leading consumers of the specific resource “environmental quality” are the regions that are the main providers of export earnings to the Russian budget.

Fig. 10.

Indices of industrial production by Russian regions, %, 2017 to 1990.

Russian regions are highly unequal in the industrial aspect. For example, industry in Sverdlovsk oblast is incomparable to the industry of Kalmykia. For Kalmykia and its landscapes, of course, it is extremely important that the industrial load has been reduced by four times. However, on a national scale, it is 0.01%. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the most important industrial losses in absolute terms, i.e., compared to the country as a whole (Fig. 11). Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk oblasts have made a significant contribution to the deindustrialization of the country. There is significant industrial growth in the metropolitan areas, which develop in antiphase to both capitals. The main shifts—the largest increments and, conversely, the loss of industrial potential—occur in European Russia and the Urals. As a rough approximation, Figs. 10 and 11 illustrate the regional dynamics of industrial impacts on nature in the post-Soviet period.

Fig. 11.

Regions that changed volume of industrial production most in 1990–2017, % of volume of industrial production of RSFSR in 1990.

In the course of the country’s reforms, the population, and hence the demographic pressure on the environment, is shifting to the Center (exclusively to the Moscow metropolitan region) and the North Caucasus. Roughly speaking, if we exclude the capital (extrazonal in all respects) and the Tyumen oil and gas autonomous okrugs, we can say that the population is shifting to the zone with the optimal ratio of heat and moisture and maximum biological productivity of landscapes. This movement outwardly looks like attraction of the population to ecologically favorable places, but it is determined by economic and natural-resource factors, and not by natural and environmental factors. The North Caucasus seems like a paradoxical region. Production here is relatively reduced, and the population is growing strongly. Perhaps the discrepancy between economic and demographic dynamics is an indicator of the high share of the shadow economy sector here. Water consumption, at least in the North Caucasus, increased in the 1990s. Whereas for 1991–2002 water removal from the Volga River basin decreased by 22 and from the Ural River basin by 30%, from the Terek River basin, it increased by 8%, and from the Kuban River basin, even by 82% (calculated according from (Kudinov, 2005, p. 535; Radkovich, 2003, p. 138)).

The inventory of implemented investment projects in post-Soviet Russia (Klyuev, 2018) revealed an exceptionally high territorial differentiation of industrial construction, expressed as its concentration in a small number of industrial areas and its overconcentration in metropolitan regions (Fig. 12). Very little new industrial development covers the European North, where only two areas of the extractive industry stand out: in the Bolshezemelskaya tundra and in western Murmansk oblast. Two new mining enterprises—the development of diamond deposits in Arkhangelsk oblast and extraction of bauxite in the Komi Republic—“are lost” on the small-scale map.

Fig. 12.

Objects of new industrial and transport construction on Russian territory in post-Soviet period. I, number of objects. II, objects: A, built; B, under construction; 1, industrial enterprise; 2, gas pipeline; 3, oil pipeline; 4, petroleum product pipeline; 5, railway; 6, power lines. III, branches of economy: 1, mining; 2, electric power industry; 3, metallurgy; 4, oil refining industry; 5, chemical and petrochemical industry; 6, machinery industry and metalworking; 7, forest; woodworking and pulp and paper industry; 8, building materials industry; 9, food industry; 10, light industry; 11, ports and terminals. Note: map made by A.N. Vasiltsova.

To the north and east of the main settlement zone, the absolute predominance of the extractive industry is distinctly visible. Many separate centers of industrial activity are visible in Tyumen’s okrugs, while the oil production area is expanding in different directions and gas production is moving north, to the Yamal and Gydan peninsulas (South Tambeyskoe, Salmanovskoe fields). In the 21st century, the development of oil and gas provinces in Eastern Siberia and the Far East began: the Vankorskoe, Talakanskoe, Verkhnechonskoe, and Chayandinskoe fields; the Kovykta and other fields are being prepared for exploitation. A whole cluster of oil and gas production capacities appeared on the Sakhalin shelf. Energy resources are extracted in even more remote areas and more severe natural conditions than in the Soviet period. Whereas in the 1970s, the remoteness of the routes of main pipelines in Siberia from the nearest settlements reached 1000 km, it is now up to 2000 km.

Against the rare new industrial facilities in southern Siberia, the Kuzbass stands out with a high concentration of new coal mines, sections, processing plants, and their capacities. This increases the already considerable load on the natural environment of the region, which accounts for almost 40% of the material extracted from the country’s lithosphere.

A huge blank spot on the map of Russia’s industrial development extends in Asian Russia east of 80°E and north of 60°N, most of the sparse map markings here are new gold, silver, nonferrous metals, and diamond mining enterprises. At first glance, the number of new enterprises in individual resource regions is large, but the territory hosting them is vast. Whereas in the two metropolitan regions (Moscow and Moscow oblast, St. Petersburg and Leningrad oblast), which occupy a total of 0.8% of Russia’s territory, more than 20% of new industrial facilities appeared, in the Tyumen oil and gas producing autonomous okrugs (7.6% of the territory), there are less than 6%.

Natural resource management is concentrated on relatively well (by Russian standards, of course) developed territories, where the load on nature was already high. This is evidenced by the distribution of industrial investments by Russian regions, which, in fact, serve as future anthropogenic loads (Table 4). In Asian Russia, Khanty-Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets autonomous okrugs stand out in terms of industrial investment, but the “density” of development (the amount of investment per unit of territory) is low. According to this indicator, such regions as Moscow and Samara oblasts and the Republic of Tatarstan surpass Tyumen autonomous okrugs by three to four times. The correlation coefficient for the shares of regions in investments (1996–2017) and the country’s industrial output (2017) is +0.65, excluding Moscow and St. Petersburg, even +0.85.

Table 4.  .

Regions leading in industrial investment in 1996–2017

Region	Average share, % Russia’s
Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug	11.49
Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug	10.68
Krasnoyarsk krai	3.87
Republic of Tatarstan	3.55
Moscow	3.29
Sakhalin oblast	2.65
Samara oblast	2.47
Moscow oblast	2.47
Sverdlovsk oblast	2.31
Krasnodar krai	2.28

Compiled from: Regions of Russia: Socioeconomic indicators 2002–2018, Federal State Statistics Service, http://www.gks.ru/bgd/regl/b18_14p/Main.htm (accessed June 11, 2019).

A new industry has appeared on the industrial map of the country: the production of liquefied natural gas (LNG); since 2009 an LNG plant has been operating on Sakhalin (the town of Korsakov). In 2017, the first stage of the Yamal LNG project was commissioned (the settlement of Sabetta). On the Gyda Peninsula, on the other side of the Gulf of Ob from Yamal, the Arctic-LNG-2 complex is being created. A similar plant is being designed in Ust-Luga. LNG miniplants have appeared in Kingisepp, Vyborg, Pskov, and other places. Judging by the continuing trend towards Russia’s development as an energy export superpower, the LNG industry is very promising.

In the city of Pevek in Chukotka, the infrastructure of the world’s first floating nuclear power plant is being built. The development of oil and gas resources on the shelves of the Caspian, Baltic, Pechora, and Black seas has begun. It should be noted that the first Russian oil field being developed on the Arctic shelf (Prirazlomnoe in the Pechora Sea) has no analogs in terms of development complexity and environmental risk. Its development takes place under the combined influence of extreme natural factors: heavy drift ice, low water and air temperatures, strong undercurrents, frequent and severe storms, including ice storms, significant sea level fluctuations, and subaquatic permafrost.

The structure of new industrial construction is dominated by basic, environmentally aggressive industries—mining, electric power, chemical industry, metallurgy, oil refining, which together make up almost two-thirds of new facilities. The share of machinery industry is small, and light industry is almost imperceptible. It can be stated that there are no signs of greening of the industrial structure. In the list of post-Soviet construction projects, there is little high-tech industry: aerospace, pharmaceutical, machine tool building, electronics, production of high-precision equipment, information and communication equipment, etc. The new “upper floors” of production chains are poorly represented. Despite the innovation breakthrough declared at the highest state level, there are no signs of large-scale industrial modernization.

Despite the sharp drop in domestic demand for aluminum due to the collapse of the Soviet aircraft industry and the lack of domestic raw materials (bauxite), the aluminum industry is growing, new plants have been launched: Khakassky, Boguchansky; construction of the Taishetsky plant is underway. They use cheap energy from Siberian hydroelectric power plants and export the lion’s share of their products. A well, almost half of Russian consumption of aluminum-containing products is imported. Note that among the cities with in particular polluted atmospheric air, there are many centers of the aluminum industry (Bratsk, Krasnoyarsk, Novokuznetsk, Irkutsk, Shelekhov) (see Table 5). This kind of international division of labor cannot be considered rational for Russia: there are no upper floors of production, finished products have to be imported, and harmful production emissions remain “to us and our grandchildren.”13

Table 5.  .

Cities of European Russia and Urals with highest level of air pollution in 1991–2017

City	Blacklisted by Roshydromet in 1991–2017, times
	chronically polluted cities	cities with extreme pollution	Total
Magnitogorsk	25	27	52
Yekaterinburg	19	22	41
Kurgan	18	21	39
Nizhny Tagil	15	17	32
Chelyabinsk	13	19	32
Arkhangelsk	7	19	26
Saratov	17	9	26
Moscow	16	9	25
Rostov-on-Don	16	9	25
Novorossiysk	11	13	24
Ufa	3	20	23
Cherepovets	8	15	23
Volga	14	7	21
Novodvinsk	6	15	21
St. Petersburg	3	18	21
Lipetsk	13	6	19
Pervouralsk	4	15	19
Permian	2	17	19
Solikamsk	6	11	17
Bereznyaki	3	13	16

Compiled from: State Report “On the State and Protection of the Environment in the Russian Federation.” 2004–2017, http://www.mnr.gov.ru/docs/ (accessed March 12, 2019); (Sokolovskii, 2005).

Adopted by the government of the Russian Federation in 2007, the General Scheme for Placement of Electric Power Facilities in Russia up to 2020 (though not implemented due to another crisis) provided for the release of natural gas to ensure export supplies and the reorientation of domestic energy to less environmentally friendly fuels. The share of gas was supposed to decrease from 68 to 50%, and coal, to increase from 25 to 46%.14 Much more environmentally friendly gas was reserved not “for our grandchildren,” but for export. In the 2000s, projects were developed for Far Eastern coal-fired power plants (in Amur and Sakhalin oblasts) to export electricity to China and Japan. After the commissioning of the East Siberia–Pacific Ocean oil pipeline, light oil grades went to the Asian market, and supplies of high-sulfur (and therefore less environmentally friendly) oil increased to refineries in central Russia. The given examples confirm V.N. Lazhentsev’s conclusion (2015): Russia’s disintegrated space is a consequence of state policy that gives priority to the foreign rather than the domestic market.

Focal development of resources becomes more and more deconcentrated. Now there are no such new giant deposits as the Samotlor, Urengoy, and Medvezhye. Whereas in the early 1970s the average value of reserves of discovered oil fields in Western Siberia was 77 mln t (in the RSFSR, 30 mln t), now it is only 1 mln t. These are signs of a late stage of the life cycle in the main “foreign exchange shop” of the country—the West Siberian oil and gas province. There are more and more intra- and interfield pipelines per unit of extracted resources: namely, they are the most environmentally hazardous links in the oil industry, spilling at least 1% of oil produced.

The vast majority of transport infrastructure objects shown on the map (see Fig. 12) are oriented towards the export of mineral resources. These are the Blue Stream, Nord Stream, Yamal–Europe, and Bovanenkovo–Ukhta–Torzhok gas pipelines; the Turkish Stream and Power of Siberia gas pipelines under construction; Sakhalin pipelines; oil pipelines East Siberia–Pacific Ocean, Tengiz–Novorossiysk, South Khylchuyu–Varandey, Baltic pipeline systems (Kirishi–Primorsk and Unecha–Ust-Luga); oil product pipeline Kstovo–Yaroslavl–Kirishi–Primorsk, etc.

The active construction of export pipelines is accompanied by construction of new ports and terminals on almost all Russian seas, in particular, on the Baltic and Azov and Black seas coasts. For 1990–2017 in Russia, the volume of transport work decreased: the freight turnover of railway transport decreased by 2%, and its passenger turnover, by 55%, while the freight turnover of road transport decreased by 16%. Against this background, the capacity of Russian seaports increased six times. The volume of cargo transshipped in seaports for 2000–2015 increased from 82.9 to 676.7 mln t (including 539.1 mln t of export cargo); the number of cargo berths increased from 322 to 887. Thus, the cargo turnover of the port of Ust-Luga increased from 400 000 t in 2003 to 78 mln t in 2015 (Lachininskii and Semenova, 2015). It can be said that Peter the Great’s “window to Europe,” territorially narrowed to a “window leaf” as a result of the geopolitical catastrophe of the early 1990s, has now widened into a “gate” in terms of throughput.

The transport arrangement of postreform Russia is determined almost exclusively by foreign economic and foreign policy factors, ensuring the export of natural resources and its protection from geopolitical risks (pipelines bypassing Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, etc.). Of course, export pipelines, according to their intended purpose, also meet the needs of transit Russian regions along the way. For example, in the post-Soviet period, the large-scale transition of the energy sector of European Russia to natural gas was carried out. However, significantly fewer pipelines have been built that purposefully provide gas domestic consumers, and they are less extensive: Dzhugba–Sochi, Barnaul–Biysk–Gorno-Altaisk, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky–Sobolevo, Zapadno-Ozernenskoe–Anadyr, Sakhalin–Khabarovsk–Vladivostok.

The expansion and modernization of the Trans-Siberian and Baikal–Amur Mainline, as well as a few railway lines built in the post-Soviet period, are oriented towards the export of natural resources: Ob–Bovanenkovo–Kara (for the development of gas fields, the construction and operation of an LNG plant in Yamal and the new port of Sabetta); Timan Station–Chinyavoryk Station (for the export of bauxite to Ural aluminum plants for the subsequent export of aluminum); Elga–Ulak and Kyzyl–Kuragino (under construction), for the export of coking coal, respectively, from Yakutia and Tyva to Asian countries. The raw material export model of the Russian economy is being consolidated in new investments. Only the Amur–Yakutsk railway line, the Millerovo–Zhuravka railway line bypassing Ukraine, and the Crimean Bridge are aimed more at development of the territory and strengthening its connectivity, rather than serving export needs. Not a single high-speed railway has been built in the largest country in terms of territory, which is by no means a compact configuration (in China, over 3000 km; in foreign Europe, more than 4000 km). For decades, e.g., the current project of the White Sea–Komi Republic–Urals road has not been realized.

In the last decade, export flows of energy resources have partially turned to the East, which is mainly due to the geopolitical factor. Thus, while the idea of diversifying the sectoral structure of the country’s economy remains a beautiful declaration, the diversification of export raw material flows is being successfully implemented.

Influenced by the geopolitical factor, Russia’s export terminals are concentrated in the waters of inland seas: the Baltic, Black, and Azov. However, the narrow Baltic and Black seas straits can potentially become “barriers” for the transportation of strategically important foreign trade cargo. Meanwhile, the Baltic Sea is shallow, characterized by poor water exchange with the World Ocean. This determines the high vulnerability of the sea to ever-increasing anthropogenic impacts. In addition, it has long been intensively developed (and therefore polluted) by Russia’s Baltic neighbors. This determines the seriousness of water and environmental problems, the most important of which is eutrophication of Gulf of Finland waters due to the high nutrient load, and the transport and pipeline “boom” of recent decades creates a potential oil pollution hazard in the Baltic. Open transshipment of coal in the port of Ust-Luga leads to significant dusting of the atmosphere.15

On the Black Sea coast, the growing transport load falls on the country’s scarce recreational resources of beach holidays near warm seas. Thus, both geopolitical and environmental factors require the search for new outlets to the World Ocean. Since Russia’s main sea facades face the Arctic and Pacific oceans, the importance of their transport development is obvious, which will reliably ensure the country’s independence in terms of space.

“Russia’s entire history is connected with the development of vast land. …This is its function, or, if you like, mission” (Sysoeva, 2007, p. 38). Therefore, the development of new mineral wealth corresponds to the main “highway” of the country’s development, but with an important caveat. The key innovation of the modern world has become an environmental imperative. The unique diversity of Russian landscapes should be carefully developed with careful consideration of the spatiotemporal features of their resistance to technogenic impact. Development is by no means the expansion of mining industries, leaving behind a technogenic desert. Ecological development involves the arrangement of the territory, the organization of tourist and recreational zones on it, protected areas of various levels of protection, organic agriculture, progressive means of transport and communication, traditional crafts of small peoples, etc.

So far, unfortunately, the principles of sustainable development have not entered domestic environmental management practice. At first glance, new mining enterprises should be distinguished by a high degree of environmental friendliness. However, this is not always the case. For example, new areas of oil production in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug are not covered by a network of enterprises for the utilization of associated petroleum gas. At newly commissioned oil fields, the degree of gas utilization is approaching zero. Only in old, well-equipped fields can it be 60–90% (Atlas …, 2004, p. 89).

In our opinion, the Russian oil and gas fields of the Arctic shelf should be considered a resource for future generations. Their frontal development in the next 10–20 years is inexpedient due to a number of reasons, including those related to climate transformation. Its changes are manifested, in particular, in the increased frequency of extreme hazardous phenomena, fraught with accidents with environmental consequences. Thus, in recent years, along with a decrease in the ice cover of the Arctic seas, an increase in the frequency of storm winds, high waves, low temperatures, ice deposits, heavy fogs, one-time precipitation, and other dangerous phenomena has been observed (Prostranstvennye …, 2012, p. 133). Severe, but stable natural conditions require large expenditures, but not associated with low-predictable consequences. At the same time, for geopolitical purposes, an “effective presence” on the territory is required: infrastructural support of navigation in Arctic regions and intensification of the information stage of their development (geological survey, monitoring, etc.). And the colossal capital investments required for new offshore projects should be directed towards increasing the oil and gas resource recovery factor at already developed fields, increasing the depth of oil refining, utilizing associated gases, etc.

The unmanageable territorial concentration of various loads on nature in compact areas of large settlements and their immediate surroundings, along the main highways and railways, is the most striking modern trend in the spatial organization of natural resource management. In peripheral areas, the load is significantly reduced; there are signs of desolation and even naturalization.

We are talking about the economic, not physical periphery. For example, in Kursk oblast in the postreform period, agriculture has developed (more precisely, it is better preserved, less degraded) not in the central, Kursk district, but in the fertile southwestern periphery of the oblast, as well as in areas where large environmentally hazardous enterprises are localized: an iron ore plant and a nuclear power plant. There was no strong decline in industry here, and the population of the relatively economically prosperous cities of Zheleznogorsk and Kurchatov maintains high solvent demand. And in the northwest of the region, almost half the area has been removed from agricultural use. New 20- to 30-year-old birch-aspen groves appeared here. There is a positive dynamic in the number and diversity of avifauna, ichthyofauna. The number of wolves has also increased. There are no more deaths of fish as a result of discharge of pollution by industrial enterprises. Now the leadership of environmental legislation violations has passed to poachers. It can be said that here, too, there are signs of postindustrial development: after all, instead of production, man in the form of poacher has become the main enemy of nature. And the statistical portrait of the modern poacher has changed: now he is more educated, and as a rule, he has no prior convictions In reality, of course, “socially forced poaching” is not a postindustrial symptom, but a regression towards a preagrarian, appropriating economy, albeit, on a new technical basis: for catching fish, in addition to net and gaff guns, electric current, explosives, and chemicals are used.

The territorial organization of the economy requires environmental justification and regulation. Some authors propose, e.g., to concentrate agricultural activities in central locations: “Most likely, transformation of Russia’s forest and partly forest–steppe zones into an archipelago of small developed areas around cities among a sea of forests and, partly, steppes is inevitable” (Ioffe and Nefedova, 2002). However, environmental requirements dictate a completely opposite strategy for the territorial development of agriculture. “Chemical-technogenic farming systems must be developed in the peripheral zone. In the suburban zone, the intensity of the load on the land should weaken as a result of the development of landscape-adaptive agriculture—an increase in the proportion of perennial grasses, the grassing of certain areas of arable land, and the exclusion of pesticides and fertilizers” (Pokrovskii, 2002, p. 70).

Of course, given the real diversity of natural and economic conditions in Russia, both territorial models of agricultural development can be used, and above all, various combinations thereof. We emphasize, however, that the strategy of concentrating agricultural functions in a limited area of the “best lands” has not only environmental, but also geopolitical flaws. When using such a strategy, further shrinkage of the Russian developed space, secondary economic desertification, and even naturalization of the territory are inevitable. This seems to be an obvious “plus” from a purely environmental standpoint. However, it is impossible not to take into account that Russia’s vast, far from exploited (i.e., not their) natural resources, including its territory, are unlikely to remain beyond the view of other countries given their (resources) acute shortage in the world. Therefore, the problem of the formation of blank spots on the economic map of the country requires careful study from both general socioeconomic and geopolitical positions.

Issues of territorial organization of the use of natural resources, which are important for any country, are of particular importance for Russia, given the space factor. However, during perestroika and reforms, the generally good Soviet system of territorial design was destroyed, which covered the entire spatial vertical—from Integrated Scientific and Technical Programs, schemes for the development and placement of productive forces, resettlement of the country’s population to schemes and projects of district planning, master plans for cities and other populated areas. These documents also contained environmental sections. In the late 1970s, special territorial integrated schemes for nature protection began to be developed. The lack of socioeconomic development in the 1990s led to a loss of interest in planning, including territorial. With the introduction of the new Urban Planning Code, the Russian Government is trying to revive territorial planning. Serious problems in this area are associated with a certain loss during the “unplanned” years of the relevant institutions, qualified specialists, and the research and design culture as a whole.

POSSIBLE STRATEGY: DEVELOPMENT OF WATER-INTENSIVE INDUSTRIES

Studies show that environmental degradation continues in the Russia’s economic complex. Russia’s entry into the global market for water-intensive products can be considered an alternative to the current nonenvironmentally resource-intensive trajectory of the country’s direction (Danilov-Danilyan, 2007).

It seems that in the second and third quarters of the 21st century, fresh water will be an acutely scarce natural resource. This shortage will also become the main resource factor determining the transformation of the structure of the real sector of the global economy. Fresh water is a very specific resource in all respects, and the problems associated with it deserve detailed consideration.

Global water demand has been growing at a high rate for over 100 years and will continue for several decades to come. At the same time, the volume of economically accessible freshwater resources is decreasing as a result of negative anthropogenic impacts on the natural systems of its reproduction. According to the extrapolation forecast, approximately between 2025 and 2035, the volume of fresh water consumed will be equal to its resources (in this case, not directly water consumption is extrapolated, but the factors determining it: population size, level of final consumption and quality of life, sectoral structure, etc.). Obviously, such a forecast is an indicator of an acute crisis. However, not all water resources that can be classified as economically accessible will be used even in 2035, for the reason that they are located in countries that have water: Brazil, Russia, and Canada. The problem of their involvement in the economy in territories without a developed infrastructure is very complex, so that some of these resources do not promise significant economic gains even with expected shifts in global market prices. It follows that the global water crisis may come even earlier than expected according to the extrapolation forecast.

Bringing new water resources into operation is on average more expensive as their consumption increases. Water transportation costs for industrial and agricultural uses (in km³, i.e. bln t) experience a sharp jump when crossing basin boundaries. We emphasize that we are talking about industrial and agricultural Fresh water use, not about bottled drinking water, which accounts for a negligible part of total water consumption. A few examples give an idea of the scale of water needs of various industries. Production of 1 t of nitric acid requires 80–180 m³ of fresh water; cotton fabric, 300–1100 m³; synthetic fiber, 1000 m³; pulp, 200–400 m³; rubber, 2500 m³; synthetic fabrics, 2000–3000 m³. Enormous volumes of water are consumed by power plants for cooling power units, and a significant part of it (up to one-third) is irretrievably lost. Thus, the operation of a TPP with a capacity of 1 mln kW requires 1–1.6 km³ water per year, and the operation of an NPP with the same capacity, 1.6–3 km³. The lower limits of these intervals correspond to the state of the art. To grow 1 t of wheat, 1000 m³ of water is required.

The statement about a sharp jump in the cost of transporting water when crossing basin boundaries is true for large-scale water use typical of industry and agriculture (problems of drinking water supply are of a different nature). The jump in transport costs is one of the two main reasons why water cannot be traded like oil. Another reason is the colossal difference in the physical volumes of water and oil consumption (hundreds of times). Of the water sold, the dominant part involves intrabasin redistribution, and this will continue in the future. By itself, the water market will never play the same role for water use as the oil market has for energy consumption; these are incomparable things. In order to solve the water supply problem, modern civilization needs to follow completely different paths. Mitigation of water scarcity in countries where it is already taking place and will increasingly intensify is possible due to the large-scale use of water-conservation technologies and abandonment of the production of water-intensive products, replacing them with imports. In the water-intensive product sector, only countries with water resources in excess of their domestic needs can act as sellers on the global market. Russia is one of these very few countries.

We emphasize that the market for water-intensive products is a market for products, not raw materials. For the effective participation of the country as a seller in this market, natural resource reserves alone are not enough: production using it is also necessary. The resource used—fresh water—is renewable and inexhaustible (naturally, in compliance with water protection rules, compliance with hydrological and environmental standards of operation). In addition, this is a resource, in principle, not replaceable by any other; its substitutes, even theoretically, can compete with it only up to a certain naturally conditioned limit.

The restructuring of the global economy under the threat of a global water crisis creates exceptionally favorable conditions for water-rich countries, since an increase in demand and prices for water-intensive products is inevitable. Its exporters will be in a position similar to that ensuring the prosperity of the current oil exporters. It will be possible to take advantage of the opportunity only with serious preparation for the development of export water-intensive industries.

Russia’s interests in this case fully coincide with the interests of the world community. Many countries will demand water-intensive products, and it is beneficial for Russia to satisfy such demand, because this is a matter not only of the economic efficiency of developing the Russian economy, but also of security and the stability of Russia’s position in the world.

In order for the problem of water shortage in the global economy not to become threatening, but, on the contrary, to determine a new source of prosperity for Russia, we must treat it with all due attention, responsibility, and forethought.

CONCLUSIONS

During the years of restructuring, crises, and reforms, the problem of information support for the country’s natural resource complex has become more acute. The development of mineral wealth is still mainly based on reserves explored by Soviet geologists, which threatens a possible raw material crisis. Environmental monitoring programs have been drastically reduced. Establishing order in the “accounting” of natural values is an important task of public administration, and geographers can and should make a significant contribution to its solution. The knowledge gained by Earth sciences is of strategic importance for the sustainable development of the country. Their level of support can serve as an indicator of the compliance of state policy with Russian national interests. It is urgently necessary to intensify the scientific study of Russia’s territory, the most environmentally friendly and geopolitically necessary form of its development.

In the post-Soviet years, the role of the natural resource complex in the Russian economy has increased, and the importance of industries based on mineral resources in its composition has increased. At the same time, gaps are growing between the extraction of mineral raw materials and their processing and between extraction and domestic consumption. The export orientation of the natural resource sector is increasing.

The main slogan Russia’s foreign economic strategy should be to minimize the delivery of any raw materials abroad. Russia’s mineral resource wealth is a powerful lever that should be used not to “patch holes” in the economy, but to boost the economy, radically upgrade the technical base, and introduce resource-saving and environmental technologies that meet the challenges of an innovative breakthrough and modern environmental challenges.

The analysis made it possible to identify current trends in domestic environmental management: strengthening of interregional differences in environmental parameters; polarization of natural resource management and its fragmentation; naturalization and renaturalization of the periphery; uncontrolled concentration of various loads on nature in the compact areas of large cities and their immediate surroundings and along the main transport routes; significant ecological transformation of suburban areas; the pipeline–port boom, causing the movement of transport environmental threats to sea areas and their approach to Russian borders; specific pseudointensification of agriculture due to the harsher exploitation of land and labor resources. In large cities, the leadership in terms of air pollution is shifting from industry to motor transport. 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 in a number of parameters. Whereas, earlier, pollution and, in general, disturbance of the natural environment were caused by production, it is now increasingly caused by consumption by the population.

Under the conditions of systematic evasion of the Russian state from performance of social functions, Russia’s poor population survives due to the excessive exploitation of biological resources: soil fertility, poaching, illegal logging, self-harvesting of firewood, self-occupation of land, etc. At the other social pole, Russia’s rich minority society “thrives” largely due to exploitation of the resources of the lithosphere, also excessive, sometimes predatory. In general, the influence of natural and geographical factors in the life of society is increasing.

In the export-oriented mineral resource complex, there is an expansion of the resource space: 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 to compact areas near central areas and main transport routes, oriented towards the use of the “best lands.”

Uncompensated (fertilizing) agriculture and diminishing soil fertility are accompanied by concentration of agriculture on the best lands and the removal of less productive lands from economic circulation. Exhaustive use of the best lands is fraught with their rapid transformation into badlands, in the future, the transfer of agriculture to less fertile lands, their subsequent degradation, etc. is inevitable.

It is fundamentally important to undertake efforts to revive industries based on renewable resources that suffered greatly during the crisis and reforms: agriculture, forestry, water, fisheries, etc. In addition to economic and environmental effects, their restoration and development will also bring geopolitical results. It is these economic sectors that primarily make up the infrastructure of the country.

Along with the sectoral structure, it is very important to improve the territorial structure of natural resource management. In particular, to unload the extreme anthropogenic pressure on nature in the main settlement zone, V.N. Lazhentsev’s idea (2015) about the need to shift industry to the Near North of European Russia is noteworthy. It is very important to reduce the agricultural load on forest–steppe and steppe landscapes and direct efforts towards restoring the agricultural sector of the Non-Chernozem zone.

During the post-Soviet years, in fact, there was no shift of productive forces to the East, which is necessary to ensure the geopolitical stability of the country and equalize the industrial load on the natural environment across the territory. The growing concentration of the economy in a few areas of economic activity, oriented mainly towards the outside, is Russia’s main vector of territorial development. A similar vector that has taken shape in the market crisis conditions is negative both from the environmental and geopolitical standpoint.

The growing attention of the outside world to the “unfair” disproportion between Russia’s vast underdeveloped territory rich in natural resources and its relatively sparse population is a real threat to Russia’s national security. As a result, attention should be focused on the rational use of space and the development of an environmental and economic strategy that meets the challenges of our time.

The slogan of Russia’s modernization was proclaimed at the highest administrative level. At the same time, a number of experts focus on the modernization issues on Russia’s outstripping development based on a new technological order: biotechnology, nanotechnology, solar energy, etc. (Glaz’ev, 2012). This pertains to a kind of innovative leap from a resource-rich zone of the global economy to the technological avant-garde of the planet. In our opinion, this prescription is more suitable for countries that are smaller, more compact, and more homogeneous than Russia.

It is important to understand that purely innovative development still has a “point,” not frontal nature. This is also evidenced by the foreign experience of modernization: new knowledge-intensive sectors can be a key factor in the modernization of only a small region, not the entire economy (Kondrat’ev, 2013). And as “locomotives of growth” emerge, striking contrasts will deepen between these islands of the knowledge economy and economy of survival in the vast territory of the destitute and degrading periphery. Under postreform Russia conditions, there are no mechanisms to support the periphery, and the above-mentioned locomotives mainly reproduce growth within their own city limits. “Point” development is a real threat to disintegration of the country.

The development of high technologies, with which it is now customary to associate the future of the Russian economy, will certainly not be realized “on all fronts.” There are very good reasons for this: the current (deplorable) state of Russia’s high-tech industries, their unilateral orientation (mainly to meet the needs of the military-industrial complex), poor infrastructure (the level of which is very important for the organization of high-tech industries), fierce competition in the global market for high-tech products, the undoubted willingness of strong players in this market to employ tools to block Russia, Russia’s share in global product being too low to counter such blocking, etc.

The development of high technologies should be concentrated on the most relevant areas: in order to modernize the primary and industrial sectors, ensure their efficiency and environmental friendliness, and the social attractiveness of working in them. The following should be acknowledged: Russia will remain a resource power for a long time to come. In the foreseeable future, Russia’s raw material resources will be in great demand in the global economy. This certainly applies to water resources, as well as land suitable for agriculture. Russia has very significant areas of such lands, the actualization of the growth of their value is absolutely real for solving the social problems of Russian agriculture.

The global economy’s interest in raw materials does not have to be satisfied by the export of raw materials: it should be replaced by the export of resource-intensive products’ i.e., the main source of export should not be the primary (like now), but the industrial sector. Such substitution will significantly improve the structure of the real sector of the Russian economy. Some experts see danger in the orientation towards the development of exports of resource-intensive products: this will lead to an increase in the load on the environment and deterioration of the ecological situation in the country. There is indeed such a danger, but only if this export is developed on the old technical basis, if Russia continues to ignore environmental standards and strive to extract maximum profit as soon as possible, neglecting the long-term interests of the country. This danger will not occur if Russia focuses on a high technical level in the development of relevant industries that corresponds to long-term national interests; a more serious danger is the lack of a response to the demands of the global economy.

Russia’s path of innovation development does not mean a reduction in the use of natural resources. They need to be processed more rationally and more deeply, and used mainly within the country, sending products of deep processing for export. Today and in the near future, the transition from a resource-export to a resource-innovation trajectory of economic development is urgent (Sever …, 2005). Therefore, it is necessary to deal specifically with the technologies of the raw materials sector, natural resource management, processing of mineral raw materials and natural resources in general, nature-saving technologies and equipment, and, last but not least, the rationalization of the territorial organization of natural resource management. From this, in particular, follows the priority in domestic Earth sciences, including geography and geoecology.

FUNDING

The study was carried out in accordance with Fundamental Research Programs of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences and under the state task of the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences AAAA-A19-119022190170-1 (FMGE-2019-0008).

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.