Mykola Sychevskiy

The close relationship between industrial development and environmental pollution is considered the main problem of negative climate changes and the deterioration of life quality leading to an increase in mortality. In this regard, the protection of environmental human rights is of great importance. The paper aims to assess the trends of industrial influence on the human environment and the level of protection of environmental human rights in different countries through reviewing and analysis of the set of relevant studies. The paper brings novelty exploring an array of objectives for protecting human environmental rights in the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals, implementation of a circular and resource-efficient economy, together with the Industry 4.0 technologies for industrialized countries, including Ukraine. Most studies consider contradictions between the economic and environmental goals of both businesses and the state the main obstacle for the ecologization of industrial production. The economic feasibility of introducing more resource-efficient business models has been proved. The impact of Ukrainian industrial companies on the environment and the state of human environmental rights protection is studied. The results of the study allow stating that the resource and energy inefficiency of industrial technology in the country, as well as the weakness of state institutions in the implementation of reforms for sustainable development, is a fundamental threat to human rights and a healthy life.

The methodological approach for assessing the formation of food demand in unforeseen situations using digital Internet-technologies and the assessment itself, is substantiated in the paper (in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020). Comparison and theoretical generalization, as well as statistical test-assessment of hypotheses and structural regularities based on the data of Google Trends Internet platform, is used to analyze consumer preferences and intensity of demand changes for meat, milk, sugar, bread, and flour during the pandemic and quarantine, both in developed and developing countries. It is discovered that the biggest changes can be observed in the developed countries: consumer preferences shifted from rather expensive food products (milk and meat) to much cheaper ones (flour and bread). It is asserted that a decrease in consumer demand for basic food products will have a negative impact on the global economy. In 2020, a considerable decrease in GDP is expected for the developed countries; in the developing countries, GDP decline will not be as large, but prices are expected to rise much more noticeably. The following anti-crisis measures are proposed: support of the most vulnerable population and increase of food accessibility; temporary reduction of the VAT and other taxes influencing the price of food; reduction of central banks’ lending rates, etc. With the correct measures applied, the stabilization of consumer demand for food and gradual growth of the global economy is expected by the end of 2021.

The global food market is in constant transformation. Cyclical fluctuations and force majeure (financial crises, epidemics, military actions) affect the volumes of production, consumption, exports and imports of food products. Therefore, the study of the dynamic stability of the growth of world food markets is especially relevant. The purpose of the study is to assess the dynamic stability of economic growth in the world food markets: cheese, butter and sugar. The study used general scientific and special methods: dialectical and logical to summarize the scientific foundations for ensuring the sustainable development of world food markets; regression analysis – to determine the direction of market development; variational analysis – to determine the sustainability of market development. The advantage of the approach proposed in the paper is the assessment of the direction of development by the regression coefficients and the amplitude of fluctuations by the average percentage of deviations from the trend, which allows more correct interpretation of the results than when using only the coefficient of variation, which takes into account changes around the average value. It is established that the world markets for cheese, butter and sugar from 2011 to 2020 are characterized by dynamically stable growth in production, consumption, exports and imports. However, the markets of individual countries have developed unevenly: cheese production is most attractive and less risky in the EU, Brazil and South Korea; butter production in the EU and India; sugar production – in the USA, India, Algeria. Forecast calculations confirm the likelihood of growth in these markets.

The research aims to identify industrial and other economic sectors’ contribution to the regional divergence in Eastern European countries, particularly Poland and Ukraine. The ambiguity of the results of previous studies on the factors of regional convergence indicates the need for further research, considering the peculiarities of distinct economies’ development. The countries selected for analysis – Ukraine and Poland – had similar starting conditions for market transformation, have a common border, and a comparable population. The analysis of regional inequality in Ukraine revealed a tendency of asymmetric regions’ growth in 2010–2017. In Poland, divergent trends in regional development in 2009–2017 were significantly less pronounced. The statistical method to identify the impact of the industrial, agricultural, and service sectors on regional σ-convergence based on coefficients of variation measuring the differences in regional economies’ sectoral structure was used. The analysis demonstrated that, in general, the uneven structure of regional economies does not significantly impact any of the analyzed countries, which confirmed the results of some other studies. Simultaneously, it highlighted that the industrial sector had the greatest impact on regional divergence in Poland. Despite the dominant role of services in regional divergence in Ukraine, most researchers emphasize the importance of the industrial sector for regional development. To consider this factor in the regional divergence of Ukrainian regions, some regional policy implications were considered.