Principle – Society accepts responsibilities for resource management.

Criterion – Forest-based health issues are recognized.

Indicator – Forestry employers follow ILO working and safety conditions and take responsibility for the forest-related health risks of workers.

Box B: Definition:

The forest manager takes responsibility for the safety of the workers by creating a safe work environment, especially from the standpoint of injury prevention. ILO working and safety conditions are the minimum standards used by the company (adapted from: CIFOR Resource Book, p. 125) but where the provincial or federal legislation is more rigorous (see below) these will represent the minimum standards.

In the US, the Williams-Steiger Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSHA) covers workplace safety. Specific logging regulations can be found in 29 CFR 1910.266 and subsequent revisions. This is mandated and required.

In Canada, occupational health and safety issues are the jurisdiction of the provinces, in British Columbia, the Workers Compensation Board (WCB) addresses forest related health risks to workers. All provinces have mandatory health and safety acts.

In Mexico, occupational health and safety for federal agency employees is covered by Instituto De Servicios Y Seguridad Social Para Los Trabajadores del Estado (ISSSTE) and for private companies by Instituto Mexicano Del Seguro Social (IMSS). Both are required.

Box D: Applicability to Different Landowners:

Health and safety responsibilities are mandated by law to be applicable to all landowners.

Box E: Overlap:

CIFOR – BAG: 3.2.1 1.2.3

Notes: Since occupational health and safety regulations are mandatory in each country they can be examined at every scale. However, compliance checking with these regulations is typically done by tenure so this is the best scale to examine this at.

Notes: Compliance with occupational health and safety standards is descriptive of current conditions in the forest-related industry.

Box I: Underlying Concepts:

CIFOR notes that "[h]ealth and safety are important parts of human well being; and they also contribute to productivity in forest management. As such they are important elements of sustainability. Forest managers’ responsibility for health and safety derives from the requirement that workers expose themselves to danger in pursuit of the goals of the managers; and also because worker productivity is increased with improved health and safety, so managers benefit as well. Finally, there is an increasing sense that everyone should be concerned about health and safety as an ethical human issue (CIFOR, 1998)."

There is substantial documentation that logging is still one of the most hazardous industries in the United States (US Department of Labor, 1984; Leigh, 1988; Myers and Fosbroke, 1994) and presumably in the rest of North America. In the U.S., 1989 work-related fatality statistics noted a death rate of 34 times (193 deaths per 100,000) total private sector fatality rate of 5.6 deaths per 100,000 workers (Jenkins et al., 1993). As a result, the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration developed a set of industry specific standards for safety.

Box J: Relevance to Sustainable/Unsustainable Management:

This indicator is relevant because health is identified as a human dimension of sustainability, and work injuries diminish health (Colfer, Prabhu and Wollenberg 1995). It is also indirectly relevant because it reveals something of the value that the company places on the well-being of the workers. This likely relates generally to the level of respect the company holds for local workers; the greater the respect, the greater likelihood of more positive relations between the company and the locals, and increased sustainability of management because of an integration of different stakeholders’ needs (CIFOR Resource Book, p. 126).

This indicator is also related to sustainable development because occupational health and safety concerns effect forest management in as much as certain forest harvesting or silviculture activities are either not allowed or are modified to meet occupational health and safety concerns. The practice of leaving snags or wildlife trees in forest blocks is one area of concern to many health and safety regulators. Concerns for example raised by the BC Workers Compensation Board (WCB) regarding wildlife trees have led to modified standards for snags to be retained and the alternative practice of high stumping or artificial snag creation, practices though to be safer on workers but producing different habitat structure than the former. In the U.S., similar concerns have resulted in modified practices for snags, skid trail and road construction and location and the sequence of harvesting (Myers and Fosbroke, 1995).

Box K: Measurement Methods:

This indicator is easily measured as each occupational health and safety act requires monitoring. In the North American jurisdictions, local standards for occupational health and safety supersede those of the ILO. For employers covered under the OSHA or equivalent legislation, monitoring and compliance reports are available for the relevant jurisdictions to track this indicator.

Box L: Data Required:

• Occupational health and safety regulations by jurisdiction (e.g., country or province).
• Compliance reports by tenure holder.

Box M: Data Used for the North American Test:

Data used to test this indicator came from an available safety and health report for the Boise National Forest (USDA-FS. 1995. 1995 Safety and Health Report for the Boise National Forest). Similar reports are available for other workplaces covered by OSHA and for each year. For current data within the year, interviews could be conducted with the appointed safety and health specialists.

Box N: Example Results:

Safety and Health on the Boise National Forest

The Safety and Health Specialist for the Boise National Forest is responsible for preparing annual reports covering U.S. Forest Service employees. The 1995 report covers approximately 478 employees and notes that within the 1995 fiscal year, there were no fatalities with sixteen cases of lost time accidents reported and twelve cases remitted to the Office of Workmans Compensation for remuneration to the USFS (total number of injuries were not reported but presumed to be greater than 16 as not all would result in lost time). The primary source of injury was animal, plant, insect or human communicable disease and the second principle source the condition of the walking or working surface.

Boise National Forest 1995 Personal Injuries by Source

When examining injury by cause, the predominant mechanism was an injury caused by exertion, straining, lifting or stress with the second most common mechanism falling, slipping or tipping.

Boise National Forest 1995 Personal Injuries by Type

Box O: Assessing the Practicality:

This indicator can be easily measured from pre-existing compliance reports and easily tracked over time.

Box P: Assessing the Information Value:

This indicator provides mostly data and not information. If measurement of this indicator demonstrated a problem, follow up research would be needed to examine the overall issue of worker safety.

Box Q: Overall assessment:

Accepted.

This is a relevant and straightforward indicator to measure. Given the high standards and compliance requirements in North America, we suspect that this indicator will have less variability across the system but it is still an important concept to measure.

Box R: Did you rewrite or revise to a new indicator. If so what?

No

Box S: References:

• CIFOR. 1998. Criteria and Indicator Resource Book. CIFOR. Bogor, Indonesia.
• Colfer, C. J. P., Prabhu, R. and E. Wollenberg. 1995. Principles, Criteria and Indicators: Applying Ockham’s Razor to the People-Forestry Link. Working Paper No. 8, CIFOR, Indonesia.
• Colfer, C. J. P., Wadley, R. L, Harwell, E., and R. Prabhu. 1997. Intergenerational Access to Resources: Developing Criteria and Indicators. Working Paper No. 18, CIFOR, Bogor, Indonesia.
• ILO. 1991. Proceedings of Indonesia/ILO Workshop on Occupational Safety and Health and Working Conditions as a Basis for Operational Efficiency and Sustainability of Tropical Forest Management. ILO, Geneva.
• ILO. URL: HTTP:// WWW.IRL.ORG.
• Jenkins, E.L., et al., 1993. Fatal injuries to workers in the United States, 1980-1989: A decade of surveillance—national profile. Publication No. 93-108. Morgantown, WV: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
• Leigh, J.P. 1988. Odds Ratios of Work-Related deaths in United States Workers. British Journal of Industrial Medicine. Vol. 45:158-166.
• Myers, J.R., and D.E. Fosbroke. 1994. Logging fatalities in the United States by region, cause of death, and other factors –1980 through 1988. Journal of Safety Research. Vol. 25(2):97-105.
• Myers, J.R., and D.E. Fosbroke. 1995. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration Logging Standard: What It Means for Forest Managers. Journal of Forestry. Vol. 89(10):34-37.
• OSHA Logging Regulations. 29 CFR 1910.266.
• U.S. Department of Labor. 1984. Injuries in the Logging Industry. Bull. 2203. Washington, DC: Bureau of Labor Statistics.
• USDA-FS. 1995. 1995 Safety and Health Report for the Boise National Forest.
• Williams-Steiger Occupational Safety and Health Act (1970).

Please record your notes on evaluating the indicator here.

Occupational Health and Safety:

Each workplace has an individual responsible for ensuring that reporting for, and compliance with, occupational health and safety (OHSA) requirements is conducted. Employee safety reports are compiled and available for each of these organizations.

Given the hazardous nature of the field, OSHA has produced specific requirements for safety compliance for logging activities.

A safety and health report, prepared by R. Daniel Dolata for the Boise National Forest for 1995 was obtained and summary statistics included in this report were included here as example results for this indicator.

Informal Ethnographic Interviews: