SAP supports climate and nature projects on its way to net-zero.

Pledge by SAP SE

This pledge will take place from 2020 to 2030

Pledge overview

SAP is committed to help plant 25 million trees by 2030 while continuing to innovate and decarbonize its value chain to achieve net-zero emissions in 2030.

For more than a decade, sustainability has been an integral part of SAP’s purpose to help the world run better and improving people’s lives. This includes a strong focus on climate action, circular economy, social responsibility, and holistic steering and reporting.

SAP is firstly committed to significantly reduce its carbon footprint and support customers to do the same. As a cloud company and market leader in enterprise application software, SAP is uniquely qualified to help customers manage, optimize, and make decisions based on their sustainability performance and data. SAP will also continue to increase its positive impact beyond its own decarbonization efforts to help the world keep their climate targets in reach and generate benefits for people, climate, and biodiversity.

Therefore, SAP finances ecosystem restoration through nature investments, donations and sponsorships and teams up with its stakeholders to foster a low-carbon, circular, and more equitable economy. This includes supporting trusted partners and communities to reforest a diversity of trees and protect existing forests. It acknowledges that economies and societies depend on nature – for food, water, medicine, a stable climate, and sustainable economic growth.

Actions in this pledge

Restoring and growing trees and forest landscapes - 25 million trees

• Assisted natural regeneration
• Reforestation
• Agroforestry
• Mangrove restoration
• Watershed protection and erosion control
• Urban tree planting

SAP has supported and reserved funds for planting trees since 2012, counting towards SAP’s 2030 pledge. We will continue to work with trusted partners who implement, monitor, and share results of SAP-supported reforestation activities. SAP has also visited selected sites. Long-term commitments help to ensure that we meet our goal.

Our ecologically and socially responsible approach

SAP will continue to carefully select its planting partners based on their ecological and social implementation approaches.

We ensure that carbon credits from reforestation and agroforestry projects are verified by well-known standards and reviewed for high quality by independent parties. For other projects, SAP has developed internal quality criteria to assess the sustainability of implementation practices.

Our results tracking

Ecological metrics

SAP works with multiple organizations that monitor and report different metrics. Common metrics include for example: number of trees planted, hectares restored, planting density, number of tree species planted, estimated carbon impact, tree survival rate, and more.

Social metrics

SAP works with multiple organizations that monitor and report different metrics. Quantitative metrics include for example: employment days created, men/women ratio of employees, and more.

Our system of accreditation

Progress on SAP’s pledge will be published in SAP’s annual Integrated Report which is externally audited.

Our partners

American Forests, BirdLife International, , Livelihoods Carbon Funds, ReForest Now, The Carbon Community, and many more.

Our locations

As a global company, we work with partners and finance reforestation projects worldwide. In the past years, we have supported projects in over 25 countries including Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Madagascar, Nicaragua, Philippines, UK, USA and more. 

Our implementation progress

Pledge implementation progress reporting is managed in collaboration with IUCN’s Restoration Barometer, and is required annually from the year following pledge publication.

SAP pledge implementation progress report 2022 (with partial supporting documentation)

SAP pledge implementation progress dashboard 2023 (with supporting documentation)