The study presents the impact of eco-innovation and policy conducive to the implementation of the principles of sustainable development in agriculture on economic development. The starting point was the analysis of economic growth models and indicating in them the approach to innovation for the implementation of sustainable development. The specifics of eco-innovation in the agricultural sector and their typology have been presented. Due to the complexity of innovative processes and in particular the resulting effects, multi-component measures of innovation and eco-innovation have been discussed. In the last part, using the panel analysis, the effect of eco-innovation in agriculture on socio-economic development at the level of the entire economy has been demonstrated.

The transformation process towards a low-emission, green economy implies an increase in the demand for new professions and competences. Quality changes of jobs under the influence of the idea of sustainable development are both an opportunity and a challenge for both countries and individual regions. Green jobs are created as a result of the development of eco-innovation, new environmentally friendly technologies. The development of green jobs is particularly noticeable in the renewable energy sector. The article presents the results of empirical research in the field of analyzing the number of green jobs in the renewable energy sector in the Visegrad Group. In order to identify and determine the nature and changes in the impact of individual factors on the development of green jobs, panel regression was used – a model with fixed effects. The dependent variable was the relative number of green jobs per million inhabitants in 2000-2016.

The article addresses the issues of green ecological competitiveness in the global system and its selected aspects. The authors propose using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to assess the global ecological competitiveness of selected economies in their production areas, in terms of the environmental impact of their production processes, determined by the energy mix used in a particular national economy. To compare the environmental impacts of the production of a unified product in selected economies, i.e., France, India, USA and Japan, the ISO standard LCA using the ReCIPe Endpoint v1.13 and IPCC 2013 Global Warming Potential 100 methods and Sima Pro 8.5 software were used. The LCA for a 0.5 l plastic bottle was made. Data on the use of electricity for all stages of plastic processing in the bottle were made for energy mixes from France, India, Japan and USA and compared using Ecoinvent 3 database. Keywords: Global ecological competitiveness, green competitiveness, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), green economy, ecological competitiveness analysis.

The article presents the issues of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) use in contemporary ecological education, in relation to the problem of sustainable development. Based on the analysis of the literature, legal norms and strategic documents, the theoretical aspects of LCA as a tool used in numerous areas and environmental management processes were discussed and the significance of its use in the process of shaping ecological awareness of both the whole society and enterprises was demonstrated. The role of using computer programs based on LCA technology (such as SimaPro) in the teaching process at the higher education level was also emphasised.   Keywords: Environmental awareness, ecological education, sustainable development, LCA, life cycle assessment.

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