Our community involvement in host countries, which we are working to make more professional, takes the form of partnerships, with a focus on dialogue with local authorities and neighbors.

A formal community involvement process

In 2004, Total published the Local Community Guide for subsidiary managers. It describes the six action principles of our community initiatives:

• Analyzing and understanding the local context in host countries.
• Fostering dialogue with stakeholders.
• Enhancing the positive impact of our activities and minimizing their negative impact.
• Fostering economic and social development, with an emphasis on partnership.
• Developing local skills and expertise to independently manage and sustain the development initiatives we support.
• Assessing our community initiatives and reporting to our stakeholders.

The introduction of the Local Community Guide is part of the process of making our community involvement more professional, as was the 2005 rollout of Stakeholder Relationship Management+, the operational version of the guide. The SRM+ method is used to accurately identity local stakeholders and their expectations and underpins the introduction of community initiatives tailored to the local environment. At year-end 2006, SRM+ had been deployed at 47 sites.

We also assess our community projects in order to make our community involvement process more professional.

In 2006, E&P worked on a set of multiple indicators that can be used as part of large industrial developments to more accurately assess how well community initiatives contribute to human development and to make our management of these projects more professional. This resource will build on the existing community reporting process by introducing additional indicators to assess Total's performance.

Dialogue and Cooperation

Partnership in non-OECD countries
Projects are selected and implemented by local institutions and representatives of local civil society. This clear separation of roles:

• Enhances the credibility of local socioeconomic and health programs.
• Reduces dependence on our presence, by emphasizing self-reliance over support.
• Guarantees the success of projects, which require familiarity with local cultures that we do not necessarily have.

Dialogue with neighbors
In OECD countries in particular, our neighbors often have concerns about the impact of our operations on safety, health and the environment. We foster dialogue to address these concerns. In addition to SRM+, we rely on processes that are tailored to the country or business, such as:

• Community Advisory Panels in the United States, voluntary initiatives developed under the impetus of the American Chemical Council.
• Local Information and Dialogue Committees in France, in application of the Act of July 30, 2003 on preventing technological risks.
• Common Ground®, created in 2002 in the Chemicals business to strengthen dialogue between facilities and their environment.

Site visits are another way of increasing acceptance of our activities. In 2006, 13,800 people visited our 13 operated refineries

In addition, Total signed a partnership agreement with France's Eco-Maires association in 2005 covering four pilot projects on:

• Local dialogue.
• Management of decommissioned assets.
• Information on industrial disamenities.
• Emergency preparedness.

The projects provided the basis for a guidebook to promote the sharing of the best practices tested at the four sites.