Fostering Sustainable Ecosystems - Sustainability Report 2023

74 Fostering Sustainable Ecosystems About the Report Leadership Messages About the Theme Corporate Overview Stakeholder Engagement and Materiality Assessment Our ESG priorities and Performance In Gabon, for our wood value chain, we ensure sustainable consideration before felling of the logs for production. Before our operations are launched, we develop a sustainable forest management plan (SFMP), in line with legal requirements of Gabon. The plan relies on a biodiversity study, a socioeconomic study and a tree inventory report. In addition, an ESIA is also required to go along with it. The SFMP, thus, defines the location of the sub-areas allocated to us by the government, the need for conservation and local communities’ protection, among other metrics. The SFMP serves as a tool to track and trace the number of timber species at the forest, minimum logging diameter, the duration of rotation, among others. Once the SFMP is inspected and green-flagged by government authorities, we begin our operations. Throughout our operations, we commit to deliver traceable and certified timber to our SEZ in Gabon. Towards this, since October 2018, GSEZ has benefited from the services of the independent Tracer-Nkok agency, the fruit of a partnership venture between FRM (Forest Resources Management) and the NGO Brainforest, which filters the logs entering the economic zone to ensure that 100% of the timber entering the Area is legal, traceable, and responsible. To ensure adoption of Arise IIP’s sustainability principles and monitor progress against the Supplier Code of Conduct, and targets set out, we conduct regular screening and monitoring of our suppliers. In the reporting period, 74% of all suppliers have been assessed for environmental and social criteria across our operations in Gabon, Benin, Togo and Chad. Supplier Environmental and Social Assessments Launch of AFIS platform

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