Dear Mr. Secretary-General,

I am pleased to confirm that Asian Bamboo reaffirms its ongoing commitment to the United Nations Global Compact, its initiatives and its Ten Principles in the areas of Human Rights, Labour, Environment and Anti-Corruption.
Asian Bamboo is a relatively small company with limited resources. Therefore we will focus on one particular area each year. Our main focus last year was on the information disclosure regarding our environmental performance, through our participation in the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). The two CDP questionnaires that we responded to covered three main areas:
- the climate change and water management systems in our organisation,
- the exposure of our business to physical, regulatory and other risks and opportunities related to climate change and water issues,
- the impact of our company on the environment (our carbon and water footprint).
In 2013, Asian Bamboo will focus on the implementation of a set of carbon and water use reduction measures throughout its operations, on a new round of CDP disclosure, as well as the preparation of a revised Human rights and Labour rights Policy (‘H&L Policy’) to be implemented in 2014.

Sincerely,

Zuojun Lin

Chief Executive Officer

In the areas of human rights, labour environment and anti corruption we maintained our high standards and enforced our company policies which have been in place for some time.

We currently do not have any method of measuring our performance in the areas of human rights, labour environment and anti-corruption, but we are pleased to note that there haven’t been any issues in any of the areas in 2012. In the years ahead we will work on developing ways of better measuring our performance in these areas.

Our focus in 2012 was on the environment through our participation in the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), an independent not-for-profit organisation who works to accelerate solutions to climate change and other environmental issues. By responding to two CDP questionnaires, we assessed and publicly disclosed comprehensive data on our environmental management system, our environmental footprint and our exposure to risks and opportunities related to climate change and water.

CDP requests information from companies on behalf of institutional investors, aiming to increase transparency around climate-related investment risk and commercial opportunity, and to drive investments towards a low carbon economy. At the same time, CDP helps companies measure their carbon footprint, cut costs, anticipate risks and pursue opportunities related to climate change. CDP also has a water disclosure program, which aims to drive global movement towards sustainable corporate water management.

The CDP water questionnaire is sent to the world’s largest companies from industry sectors that are water-intensive or are particularly exposed to water-related risk in their supply chains. Although we are not currently one of these companies, we decided to respond to the CDP Water Disclosure information request as well, on a voluntary basis.
Both publicly disclosed emission and water data are made available for use by a wide audience including institutional investors, corporations, policymakers and their advisors, public sector organisations, government bodies, academics and the general public. Our 2012 CDP responses are available to view and download on the CDP website at https://www.cdproject.net/en-US/Results/Pages/Responses.aspx?Search=True&Keyword=asian+bamboo.

Our CDP data collection process engaged employees from the group to the subsidiary level of our organisation. Our CSR manager, based in Germany, mainly collaborated with employees from our headquarters in Fuzhou, who gathered information on transport, fuel, electricity and water consumption, and provided her with centralised accounting data. For a more detailed analysis, our CSR manager also visited several of our subsidiaries and conducted interviews with managers from each subsidiary, during a two week field trip in the Fujian province. The topics covered during these interviews were related to aspects such as business travel, product transportation, water use and recycling, physical risks related to climate change and water (changes in precipitation patterns, detrimental impacts from extreme weather events, etc.).
Once the data collection was completed, our GHG emissions were calculated using the carbon accounting methodology provided by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (A Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard), as well as a set of Excel-based calculation tools provided by the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.
Apart from the carbon accounting, the emission disclosure required an assessment of risks (physical, regulatory, etc.) and opportunities related to climate change, which was made using information from scientific articles, IPCC reports and other studies. The main findings from our carbon disclosure was that while our company is not yet the subject of regulatory risks (stricter regulation on air pollution, carbon taxes, higher efficiency standards, etc.), there are physical risks already emerging, such as extreme weather events (typhoons). We also found opportunities related to climate change, such as the high potential of bamboo as a raw material for more sustainable products (eg. textiles, furniture, biofuels).
The water disclosure also required a risk assessment, which was conducted similarly, using scientific studies, reports, but also visual resources. For instance, as regards water availability in China, we used interactive tools and maps, looking at various aspects, such as the total actual renewable water resources per inhabitant (FAO, Aquastat), the water withdrawal as a percentage of total available water (UNEP, Vital Water Graphics), or the average annual and monthly water scarcity (WWF & DEG Water Risk Filter) in China in general, and in the Fujian Province in particular. Our main finding from the water disclosure was that while water scarcity is a real issue in other parts of China (eg. Beijing, Henan), Fujian Province and thus our business operations are not affected by water scarcity at the moment. Our main water-related opportunity can be tapped by increasing the recycling rate in our shoot processing factories, which would reduce both our water withdrawals and discharges.

As for the result of the CDP, we discovered potential areas of improvement, and we will focus on improving these areas. In 2013 we will disclose again information on our environmental performance with CDP, and we will start implementing accessible emission reductions measures in our operations, such as using energy efficient appliances, ensuring that office equipment is off when not in use, purchasing 100% recycled paper for office use, using alternatives to business travel, and teleworking, and ensuring employee transport by shuttle bus. We also seek to reduce our water withdrawals and discharges, by considerably increasing the water recycling rate at shoot processing facilities, and reducing water leakages.

We are very pleased with our participation in the CDP as one of the first Chinese companies ever. Our CDP disclosure score earned us an award as the best first time disclosure by a German company (the parent company, Asian Bamboo AG, is incorporated in Germany and is therefore a German company while the operations all take place in China). This score reflects the completeness and quality of our response, and hence its usefulness to the potential data users (investors, etc.). This score is not a metric of our company's environmental performance.