Occupational Accidents Footprint: New Concept Linked to Chain of Custody in Sustainable Forest Management

Abstract

The study, due to inconveniences in previous methods, proposes the new concept of “occupational accidents footprint”, and its implemen- tation and traceability in the chain of custody (CoC) related with sustainable forest management (SFM), through specially elaborated labor accident indicators. Data from primary sources related to fatal cases, non fatal accidents and lost time on forest operations accidents of 24 countries, plus production associated to those works, was compiled; and then, pro- cessed to get results in terms of fatal cases/million m3, total work accidents/million m3 and total lost time/million m3. Results show that is feasible to apply the concept of occupational accidents footprint to measure aggregated value to forest products certification of the CoC. In Production vs Fatality the cleanest occu- pational accidents footprint in the forests belongs to Germany, Belgium, Finland and Australia; for Production vs Accidents the best behaviors are for Sweden, USA, New Zealand and Belgium; while in Production vs Lost Time Finland, Belgium and Austria are leaders. Due to the convenience to make evident the labor accidents impact on forest products aggregated value, it is proposed the implementa- tion of new safety indicators associated to the occupational accidents footprint, in order to be useful in the certification of CoC in SFM.