Newsbyte: SAP Invests in Livelihoods Funds to Fight Climate Change and Poverty

WALLDORF, Germany, Jan. 24, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- SAP NEWSBYTE — SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced it will join the Livelihoods Fund with an investment of EUR 3 million. The Livelihoods Fund is a carbon investment fund organized as an investment company, with the goal to create social value for rural communities and contribute to their food security through the restoration of their ecosystems. Put in simple words, the fund plants trees, which fights climate change and poverty.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110126/AQ34470LOGO)

"This investment supports our vision of helping the world run better by improving people's lives," said Peter Graf, chief sustainability officer, SAP. "It confirms our sustainability commitment of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions to the level of year-2000 by the year 2020, representing a decrease of more than 50 percent. To date, we have achieved a reduction of 18 percent and avoided cost in excess of more than EUR 220 million over the last four years."

SAP's carbon reduction strategy is based on three pillars:

• Accelerate the profitable reduction of energy consumption by SAP
• Enhance the purchase of green electricity (currently at 67 percent globally)
• Offset part of its emissions in an innovative way

"SAP is executing across all three pillars to achieve our target reduction," said Peter Rasper, executive vice president of Global Finance Infrastructure, SAP, and SAP representative on the board of directors of Livelihoods Fund. "Through our partnership with the Livelihoods Fund, SAP will not only purchase carbon credits and offset emissions, but we will produce carbon credits. This provides an innovative, affordable and partnership-oriented way to reduce our emissions that will once again underline our leadership in the sustainability space."

Piloted by Danone in 2008, Livelihoods Fund supports projects that link carbon sequestration, restore biodiversity and fight poverty. This platform allows common investment business partners to pool their resources and skills together, to support their shared vision for social responsibility. Livelihoods Fund has so far invested in several large-scale projects in Africa and Asia. A prominent example is the restoration of 10,000 hectares of mangroves in Senegal by 450 villages reconstituting their food ecosystem of fish breeding and crop protection. Another example is the plantation of 6,000 hectares of agroforestry with 20,000 small farmers in India, which will provide a mix of fruits, timber and cash crops under shade. While improving the livelihoods of impoverished people, these two projects will also sequestrate 1.5 million tons of CO₂ over 20 years.

"SAP's decision to invest in Livelihoods is a confirmation of the company's leadership on sustainability," said Bernard Giraud, co-founder of Livelihoods Fund and president of Livelihoods Venture, the Fund Advisor. "We welcome SAP's engagement on reducing its carbon footprint while contributing to create social and environmental value through an innovative business model. And we expect that they will also bring a lot to the Livelihoods approach."

For more information, visit the SAP Newsroom. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews and @sustainableSAP.

Media Contact:
Evan Welsh, +1 (610) 203-9742, [email protected], EST

SOURCE SAP AG

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