Overview of the year 2014 in #sustainability, #CSR, #environment and #OSH based on the blog

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This blog is about occupational safety and corporate environment and, for the own development of these disciplines, also extends its scope to sustainability and social responsibility of the organizations.

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For me, the blog is basically a way of learning and organization of work. This brings as a collateral effect that many of the published posts are about relevant news, events, occurrences, milestones happened in the respective field.

Checking the released entries of the blog is, therefore, a method to collect the most important facts happened throughout the year.

This is the 2014 overview on sustainability, CSR, environment and OSH.

[Note: the respective references and links are at the end of the post]
  • in January 2014, Radio Vatican announced that pope Francis I -one of the personalities of the year- started to draft an encyclical on global ecology. It may be titled “Human ecology” or so [1];
  • in March, the Keeling curve reached for the first time in 2014, the 400 ppm level. This is two months earlier than 2013 [2];
  • in April, the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU OSHA), launched officially the last edition of its 2014-2015 “Healthy Workplaces” campaign, dedicated to the stress management and psychosocial risks at work [3];
  • in June, the European Commission presented the new Strategic Framework on Health and Safety at Work 2014–2020 [4]
  • in August, the EU-OSHA Agency launched “OSHwiki“, the platform of shared knowledge on occupational safety and health [5];
  • in August, it was also held the XX Congress on Safety and Health at Work, whose motto “sharing a vision of sustainable prevention” means the institutionalization of a concept which may become key for OSH in the next years: “sustainable prevention”[6].

2014 was also a year in which a number of trends appeared or consolidated. but without any specific date. These are some of them:

  • as the climate change becomes more and more evident and related natural disasters occur, new development models get more and more importance, i.e. the “cradle to cradle” model, established in 2002 by Michael Braungart and William MacDonough [7];
  • 2014 was the year of the MOOCs (massive open online course) explosion [8]. This year, I completed two of them;
  • specialization in any profession in general and, merely, in the field of OSH, which released itself from the legal straitjacket. An EU OSHA´s study on the “potential topics for a next large-scale foresight study”, published in September, is a proof of this [9];
  • during the year, one of the most developed branches of the specializations of the paragraph above, was the healthy workplaces: those gathering business interests and personal development leading to the concept of cognitive health [10];
  • at the same time and from the management point of view, it emerges powerfully the concept of occupational safety and health management incorporated to the sustainability and social responsibility strategies of the organizations [11];
  • among all the emerging occupational risks, a new and other old risk factors stand out, but both have a lot in common… nanomaterials and asbestos [12];
  • going to the technological field, it start to appear wearable devices applied to occupational safety and health [13].

Finally, despite that it didn´t happen completely in 2014, last month of November ended a special cycle for occupational safety and health practitioners, namely for Europeans: over the course of the year, three major world´s events on safety and health were celebrated [14]: the EU-OSHA´s Healthy Workplaces Summit, on 11-12 November 2013 in Bilbao; the ORP2014 Congress, 21-23 May 2014 in Zaragoza; the XX World Congress on Safety and Health at Work, 24-27 August 2014 in Frankfurt.

References:
[1] ARAGON VALLEY. 1 feb 2014. Pope Francis to issue the major statement on environment ever. http://www.aragonvalley.com/en/pope-francis-issue-major-statement-environment-ever/. Consulted 31 dec 2014.
[2] ARAGON VALLEY. 27 mar 2014. The Keeling Curve´s top higher and higher: 400 ppm reached two months earlier than last year. http://www.aragonvalley.com/en/keeling-curves-top-higher-400-ppm-reached-two-months-earlier/. Consulted 31 dec 2014.
[3] ARAGON VALLEY. 8 apr 2014. Stress and psychosocial risks in the new 2014-15 EU-OSHA´s Healthy Workplaces Campaign. http://www.aragonvalley.com/en/stress-psychosocial-risks-2014-15-eu-osha-healthy-workplaces-campaign/. Consulted 31 dec 2014.
[4] EUROPEAN COMMISSION.  6 jun 2014. Health and safety at work: Strategic Framework sets out EU objectives for 2014-2020http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-641_en.htm. Consulted 31 dec 2014.
[5] ARAGON VALLEY. 1 oct 2014. OSHwiki, the platform of shared knowledge on occupational safety and health. http://www.aragonvalley.com/en/oshwiki-platform-shared-knowledge-occupational-safety-health/. Consulted 31 dec 2014.
[6] ARAGON VALLEY. 25 ago 2014. La era de la prevención sostenible. http://www.aragonvalley.com/prevencion-sostenible/. Consultado 31 dec 2014.
[7] ARAGON VALLEY. 26 apr 2014. New development models based on nature. http://www.aragonvalley.com/en/new-development-models-based-on-nature/. Consulted 31 dec 2014. 
[8] ARAGON VALLEY. 17 may 2014. Quality universal education, maybe the greatest success of the Internet. http://www.aragonvalley.com/en/quality-universal-education/. Consulted 31 dec 2014. 
[9] ARAGON VALLEY. 19 sept 2014. The professional specialization in occupational safety and health in the coming years. http://www.aragonvalley.com/en/professional-specialization-occupational-safety-health/. Consulted 31 dec 2014.
[10] ARAGON VALLEY. 4 jan 2014. 2014: Work and personal development. http://www.aragonvalley.com/en/2014-work-and-personal-development/. Consulted 31 dec 2014.
[11] ARAGON VALLEY. 21 oct 2014. A revolution in occupational safety and health, my last post on Prevención Integral. http://www.aragonvalley.com/en/revolution-occupational-safety-health/. Consultado 31 dec 2014. 
[12] ARAGON VALLEY. 14 mar 2014. Asbestos, nanotechnology and a “world without end”. http://www.aragonvalley.com/en/asbestos-nanotechnology-and-a-world-without-end/. Consulted 31 dec 2014.
[13] ARAGON VALLEY. 1 aug 2014. New wearable devices applied in psychosocial risks identification and assessment procedures. http://www.aragonvalley.com/en/new-wearable-devices-psychosocial-risks-identification-assessment-procedures/. Consulted 31 dec 2014.
[14] ARAGON VALLEY. 15 dic 2014. The three most important events on safety and health in the world. http://www.aragonvalley.com/en/most-important-events-safety-health-world/. 31 dec 2014.