In early January 2026, the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) published its 2025 Corporate “A List,” naming 877 companies worldwide that achieved the highest levels of environmental disclosure and performance out of nearly 20,000 scored. Among the top scorers, South African-headquartered Sappi Limited stood out with an ‘A’ rating for forests, reflecting exceptional transparency and progress in sustainable land management and supply chain traceability. The broader CDP results also signal a slow but important shift in how African companies are beginning to engage with international demands for credible and actionable sustainability data.
Sappi, a global producer of woodfibre-based products, earned its Forests ‘A’ score by demonstrating comprehensive governance, mature disclosure systems and measurable action on avoiding deforestation across its operations. The company also received strong results for Climate Change (A-) and Water Security (B). For corporate sustainability practitioners and investors, CDP’s scores have become a critical test of whether a company’s data can inform real-world decisions on procurement, capital allocation and regulatory compliance. Sappi’s performance confirms its readiness to meet these increasingly stringent expectations.
The CDP scoring cycle in 2025 saw more than 22,100 companies disclose environmental data through the organisation’s framework, representing significant global market capitalisation. Only about 4 percent of assessed companies secured a place on the A List, underscoring the rigor of CDP’s evaluation process. Among those achieving top marks, 23 earned the rare “Triple A” for excellence across climate change, forests and water security.
For Africa, the inclusion of Sappi and emerging reports of other regional entities engaging with CDP reflects a gradual strengthening of environmental transparency. While Africa’s representation on the global A List remains limited compared to Europe and Asia, where countries like France, Japan and Türkiye boast the highest proportions of A-rated companies, the Southern African context is beginning to attract attention through individual corporate commitments.
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This progress emerges against a backdrop in which CDP disclosure has grown across South African firms in recent years. Separate analyses show that the number of South African companies publicly reporting through CDP has increased significantly since the late 2010s, and nearly half of Johannesburg Stock Exchange top-100 firms disclosed environmental data in 2023. These trends signal rising corporate interest in aligning with global sustainability norms, even as supply chain engagement with smaller partners remains a challenge.
Sappi’s sustainability strategy illustrates how a large African multinational navigates this landscape. Its forestry operations span internal landholdings in South Africa and extend to partnerships with local landowners, underpinned by 100 percent chain-of-custody certification across its pulp and paper operations. These practices not only support deforestation-free supply chains but also resonate with investors and buyers demanding credible environmental metrics. Sappi has also integrated climate change mitigation and water stewardship into its capital planning, seeking to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, increase use of renewable energy and improve freshwater management.
The broader CDP results further reveal how corporate disclosure is evolving. Global gains in A-level scores for climate, forests and water point to more companies making deeper commitments to environmental transparency. The number of firms achieving top scores for climate action jumped substantially in 2025, indicating that clearer measurement and reporting are increasingly linked with access to capital and competitiveness in global markets.
For many African companies, achieving CDP’s highest standards remains a work in progress. Barriers include limited internal capacity to quantify and manage emissions across complex supply chains, and the absence of harmonized reporting infrastructure. Investors and procurement partners increasingly reference CDP data when making decisions, exerting pressure on firms to improve their environmental disclosure practices or risk exclusion from tender processes and financial markets.
As global investors with more than $127 trillion in assets under management call for better disclosure and reliable environmental data, the room for African corporates to move from occasional disclosure to sustained leadership is growing, but uneven. Sappi’s ascent on the CDP A List thus serves both as recognition of genuine sustainability performance and as a benchmark for peers across the continent.
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