Issues of sustainable development began to concern mankind starting from the 20th century, when mass industrialization and the depletion of natural resource potential contributed to the formulation of environmental issues at one of the leading places in scientific discourse. However, what if the goals of sustainable development would not be achieved to 2030? What other way we can identify for humanity to survive? So, the study is about the problems of studying the understanding of the term “sustainable development”, considering the evolution of the formation of the concept of sustainable development and analyzing the modern goals of sustainable development for attainability. From an analysis of domestic and foreign experience, possible scenarios of the development of mankind are identified (such as 1. Creating an environmental framework, 2. Implementation of sustainable nature management practices in the conditions of natural and man-made objects, 3. Implementation of “geoengineering projects”, 4. Construction of autonomous ecosystems, 5. Space exploration in search of a new planet for life, provided that the goals of sustainable development would not be achieved. It has been established that today probability of achieving all the sustainable development goals by 2030 is too small, and the indicated scenarios require, firstly, the development of science and technology, and secondly, a competent assessment of the value of nature and solving the issue of specifying property rights for natural goods.
There is an attempt to predict the most probable actions of the Russian government in area of mineral resources use in case of development world economic conjuncture negative scenario. Conclusions are based on the retrospective analysis of the Russian resources policy in the condi- tions of crisis 2008-2009. Problems and the basic directions of Russian resources policy to minimize negative influence of crises on national economic system are defined in the article.
