E130 - Niels Wielaard from Satelligence

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Welcome back to the Green Element Podcast, where we feature business leaders and innovators transforming their operations to be more environmentally and socially sustainable. I'm your host, Will Richardson, and I can't wait to meet our guest today and help you on your journey of sustainability. Welcome to the Green Element Podcast, Neil Veillard. Um, I said your name right, I hope? Pretty good for an Englishman. And you're from a company called Satelligence, and you help organizations become more environmental. I mean, could you tell us a bit more about who you are and where you're based and what sort of work you're in, please?

Sure, yeah. With my team at Satelligence, our headquarters is based in Utrecht in the Netherlands, but we also have people around the world in tropical forest regions, including in Ghana, Indonesia, Brazil, Bolivia, because there, that's where the action happens with regard to our work. So what do we do? We help our clients to mitigate environmental and social risk in agricultural commodity production. So when we talk about agricultural commodities, it's for example palm oil or cocoa or soy, which is an ingredient in many, many products. And we help our clients to stop deforestation, the extinction of species, biodiversity, and greenhouse gas emissions. And we do that by leveraging the power of satellite imagery, machine learning, and human intelligence. To create information about where forest is disappearing, so that our clients, which include growers and traders in agricultural commodities, but also consumer goods brands like the Unilevers and Mondelez of this world, increasingly also financial institutions who are funding, investing in all these companies, to help them stop deforestation from entering their supply chains. So take action to see where they can talk to their suppliers to stop deforestation or fires or greenhouse gas emissions.

And where did this come from? I mean, what's your background to end up, you know, running a company like this? Because it's really interesting.

Yeah, I, uh, I had always been fascinated with, uh, with nature, uh, from a young age on. My father also being a biologist and, um, my grandparents living in Indonesia. Um, so yeah, I was always fascinated by tropics and biology. And then I went on studying at Wageningen Agricultural University. And chose the forestry direction as well as the geographical information systems and remote sensing. And I think that when I did my master's thesis, the practical work I did in Indonesia in a region with a lot of palm plantations and forest remnants, and yeah, I got fascinated by all the challenges in preserving the landscape, but at the same time offering people livelihoods and opportunities for development. So I think that is where my journey in sustainability began.

Okay, brilliant, brilliant. And so what would you say your purpose was, and who do you tend to work with?

Yeah, purpose. I think this journey, because I started my work 20 years ago, and at that time thinking about sustainability and actually the practitioners in sustainability, that was kind of different at the time. It was really front runners embracing the concept, but they had to pioneer all kinds of approaches of what What can you do if you have a huge supply chain with many suppliers, many ingredients? Where to start? Technology was not ready at the time. You still had to buy satellite imagery. Currently, that's freely available. And also the computing power has increased tremendously to make sense of all this information. And at the same time, I think also the environmental conscience with consumers consumer goods brands and others has really changed. I think with the current pandemic, what we see is that people value nature and sustainable sourcing perhaps even more than before the pandemic. So the purpose of doing things right for saving the world, yeah, it's much stronger at the moment. But it took a while, I think, to get used to what kind of technologies can we use, what are actually the challenges, and grappling with that.

It's amazing what change has happened in the last year, isn't it? I mean, in the UK, it's almost like everyone has woken up, or almost everyone has woken up to climate change. Is that the same in Holland and where you're based?

Yes, it's the same in the Netherlands. And I think even in other places in the world, in Asia, we see it with regulation just recently, the EU, but also the UK government thinking about legislation to support sustainable sourcing of ingredients from abroad. That it should be possible to trace where it comes from, who's producing it, and under what circumstances. And we also see that the current generation of consumers is very much aware of the need to know. So that also changed our sector, our business, agricultural commodity producing in general. And I think that's very fascinating.

Yeah, and it's— I mean, how long have you been doing and working in sustainability and the environment?

I've been working in environment in tropical regions, agricultural commodity production for about 20 years. And yeah, I think in the beginning years we were figuring out, okay, satellite, what can we do with it? And what's really great is that nowadays it is clear traceability has made big improvements. For example, it is possible now that companies know where their suppliers are located. So farm boundary information, concessions, plantations are grown in concessions. companies own that, farmers own that, who is behind it, that kind of information, like before, 3, 4 years ago, that was not consistently available. And right now it is. And based on that kind of information, we can link it to what kind of dynamics do we see in the landscape from satellites. Can we associate deforestation or fires with specific suppliers or companies who are active in the landscape. And that is really something I think that the transformation that happened is before in the early days no one knew how this can be, could be tackled. But right now we have seen more and more examples of what is possible. And I think that that has also been kind of a challenge in our work in getting the message across what, what does work and what doesn't. And not being stuck in tech for the sake of tech. I think that's where we had to do quite some work.

It must be amazing to have seen such change over that 20 years, and almost you've been able to do, you know, with that change has come being able to do your job better. As well because of that change.

That's pretty cool. Yes, it is. And it's nice that it all comes together, I think. Also, yeah, you couldn't have predicted that, I think.

True, true. So can you tell us a bit about how you engage your staff, suppliers, customers with your mission and purpose.

That's also something that I think in a more broadly in society, the awareness of sustainability has grown so much that when we talk about our staff, actually when we recruit, we care about whether our future employees also care about contributing something to a more sustainable planet. And the fascinating thing is that the people that apply, whether they are engineers, data scientists, a lot of them are really attracted to the fact that we have a purpose of of making the planet a better place by focusing on more sustainable agricultural commodity production, especially even the very tech people. So I think that the people that join our company are already in their DNA have an urge, are very keen to contribute to a better planet, even though they're working on very technical issues. And that's something in recruiting that we see that really helped us also in acquiring talent. And we nurture that by communicating also the applications, which although they're very technical, they have to be practical in the end for our users. So how we actively contribute to engaging our staff is telling even most tech people who are working on code, they're behind their laptop typing code and creating fantastic algorithms and stuff of what it's being used for. That's one. I think for our clients, they come along. We have been working with a lot of the front-runners who realize that on the longer run for the sustainability, the durability of their business, they are dependent on nature for their agricultural supplies. it's in their interest, their best interest to have a healthy planet, and most of the bigger brands, they understand this. And so that whole transformation happening really helps, but I think there's also a large majority still out there thinking, okay, yeah, but those are big companies, how does this affect me and what can I really do? Isn't this too big a challenge for us to solve? And I think the key thing to engage clients is to have a consistent message from our point of view. So things can be done.

Yeah.

And what can you do to contribute? You can, as a company, cooperate with other companies because these challenges are so big. We see pre-competitive coalitions between many companies happen. There are a lot of initiatives, maybe there are sometimes too many initiatives and coalitions and etc., but on the other hand, that's a good thing. It shows that things can be done, and I think there's the biggest challenge for engaging clients, demonstrating what is possible and showing the right way and sharing experience how others Other companies are doing it. I think that's the main thing.

I think, I mean, I think that's it, isn't it? It's that collaboration that you don't necessarily see in other industries is absolutely rife in sustainability as a whole because it's not just saying, look, we're the most sustainable company, we're the most environmental company. It's, this is what we're doing. Would you like to copy us? Would you like to— we will help you with that. And I've seen competitors of each other helping each other from an environmental point of view because they've learned mistakes and they want to help them not allow their competitors to make the same mistakes.

Exactly, yeah. I think that's very encouraging and also leading the way that that's the future. Before, in the early days, it— yeah, the comments we often had is, it's too hard, we don't know enough, there's nothing much we can do, we can't do this alone. And that has changed, like I just mentioned before, that in traceability, the sectors know a lot more right now than 5 years ago. So we have much better visibility in these supply chains. So it's not too hard anymore. It's still a big challenge, but you can indeed go for it. And talent.

And talent. You brought up talent and how you recruit, and that's— we're seeing a big, big driver for organizations to become more sustainable for recruitment and for talent and retention as well, because more and more people are wanting to work for organizations and will only work for organizations that have a purpose that they believe in. And, um, it's, it's actually destruct— self-destructive to not be sustainable down if you look at talent alone.

Yeah, indeed, totally. Our experience with clients totally confirms this.

And when it comes to running an ethical and sustainable business, what would you say has been your biggest struggle so far, and can you tell us a bit about how you've overcome it?

I think the biggest struggle was demonstrating things work and, yeah, giving a more positive attitude. I think in environmental risk, emphasis has long been on doom and gloom and blaming culture. And even though a good cop, bad cop situation might have helped in accelerating transformation, I also think that it's important to highlight the positive. So what works? And I think demonstrating it works has been the biggest struggle, especially coming from a tech perspective. So it is not so easy to convey a complex approach as everyone is on a learning curve. To figure out how it can work, how we can work complex satellite data and turn them into insights. It sounds very easy, but creating insights from loads of data, and especially as more and more satellites are being launched, there are sensors on the ground, there are people with knowledge, how do you combine all that? And the more you know, the more overwhelming it can get to tackle all these issues. So I think, yeah, that has been the biggest struggle, the learning curve, how to keep it simple so that also for the majority not being such a front-runner, but being also very committed, how can we keep it simple and help them adopt approaches? I think that's our biggest struggle.

Okay, and if you could offer one piece of advice to our listeners to help them with their purpose, what would that be?

I think that would be probably be honest about what you really want and why. It's easy to ride the wave of sustainability and adopt something But I think, yeah, focus on why you're doing that and then how and what to make sure it is integrated in your thinking and doing. And that may sound very simple, it's a big challenge.

No, I think, yeah, I agree with both of what you've just said. It does sound simple, but it is also a challenge to keep with that as your organisation grows and changes. You've got different people coming in with different influences, and therefore you've got to be held accountable to yourself, as it were, and make sure that you're still doing what you said you were initially going to be doing.

Yeah, and I also think because with current technologies, traceability, environmental monitoring, companies and their suppliers are already pretty much under a magnifying glass. So ignoring— and yeah, that is not the right approach anymore. I think a lot of consumers also want honesty, accountability, as you mentioned. And yeah, there are ways to be honest about that. And I think consumers increasingly require this.

And if we could talk about carbon footprinting. And so have you carbon footprinted your organization? And would you say it's been a benefit?

In our case, we had a look at it, but we, yeah, we are actually an experienced company with a startup mentality, and we just, we started in 2016. And to be very honest, for now we have mostly focused on how we can help other companies with their net-zero approaches. And as far as our own practices are considered, we have no people, no colleagues with cars. Everyone goes to the office by bicycle. We have, yeah, no big infrastructure or whatever. Everyone works mostly from home, even before the pandemic. So we think that is the distributed approach with working from home that was already in our DNA because we are working in a lot of tropical regions and it's not the right thing to do that from Utrecht anyway. We believe that you have to be working with local experts and local colleagues who understand the local situation much better, but also in terms of travel, it's much more localized. And so reducing our flights is one, if we look at our emissions. And yeah, we try to make sure working with our local experts who can act locally That is part of our strategy. And if we fly intercontinentally, that we— how do you call it? What's the word? Compensate. Sorry.

Yeah.

So that if we have to fly intercontinentally, we can compensate our flights with sort of tree planting projects. So that is considering our own company. We see that many of our clients are also focusing more not only at preventing deforestation and fires, but also looking at how can we regreen the planet by investing in planting trees. For example, many areas where cocoa or other coffee, for example, commodities are being produced, if you have more natural trees, you can increase the carbon stock, so you can sequester carbon stock— carbon, sorry, from the atmosphere in these farms, and that's also of benefit to biodiversity, but at the same time also for local farmers who may get some additional income from carbon sequestration. I think this is a big thing at the moment. I'm always fascinated when I hear people talking about, ah yeah, there have to be new technological ways to get carbon out of the atmosphere, and what can we do, can we store underground, and all those things. And no, come on, nature, is some of the best machine there is. It already exists.

It's trees.

Grow trees, but be careful not to grow trees everywhere. So that's also something that we do help out with, finding the best locations of where trees are effective. There's all these billion trees initiatives and It would be the wrong idea if we would plant trees everywhere. That's not the solution. We should plant it in specific areas, and it's also something that we work on. So where can you plant? And if you plant it, to monitor with the satellites if it's really growing. Are the companies investing really regreening the planet? So that's where the technology can help.

And on, I guess, on that note, if you're helping organizations understand where to plant trees, Does social, you know, local social issues come into play when advising organizations? We are understanding that there's an awful lot of social injustice that is happening through a lot of these mechanisms that we have designed in predominantly the West. And we put these schemes into developing nations and realize that actually there's a lot of social injustice that's going on. Does that— is that taken into the equation?

Well, that's a very fair and important point. It is critical, actually, and that's also why I mentioned that we have staff from the countries themselves where we work. To be aware of these kinds of social contexts in the countries where we work. Social issues are very important, and it's also something— yeah, the transformation that we discussed earlier, it's very much also the case for social risk. People and clients and service providers We didn't know where to start. How do you measure this?

Yeah, yeah.

It's very fascinating that last year we started the cooperation with the company Ulula. Ulula is a tech company.

I know, yeah, I do know Ulula. Yeah, yeah.

And yeah, the interesting thing is if our environmental risk and the social risk come together to have a more holistic overview of what kind of risk are we looking at. If we talk about land grabbing or worker issues, labor issues, it's also, it's all something that has to be added to the equations. And we see in the past couple of months that this subject of how can we tackle social risk is getting huge, huge attention, even more than it already had. So we see that it's really something. And if we're talking about planting trees, yeah, there have been examples where, for example, people have been— local people have been expelled from areas of forest in Africa to make way for tree planting, and justly so. There has been a lot of criticism about it.

Yeah.

In the same way as, well, yeah, we have to protect some areas for deforestation. So the military comes in with guns and chases people away, who will then search for livelihood everywhere in another place and cause environmental impact in another place. Yeah, remediation efforts, rehabilitation efforts, livelihood alternatives. Many of the companies are really carefully thinking this through. For example, We're working with a cocoa company called Touton. They're doing cocoa, but also other commodities. And yeah, they are really considerate of, okay, if we work with local farmers and we have to prevent deforestation in protected areas, okay, what can we do to provide alternative income? And that also companies are thinking about such solutions and how they can do that together with local government. Again, local. So, no, yeah, I think those are very interesting developments.

Yeah, I think that we need to have the general population to be more educated in this area because I think it is almost more important in some ways than the environment. And the reason why I say that is because it's very easy to switch people off because if it's— we can live in a bubble in the Western world and the rest of the world will not be in that same bubble and we need to be all on the same page in order to reduce global warming.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

Is it— so is there any advice or learnings that you'd like to share with anyone listening to this podcast, you know, over the last number of years growing your organization, doing— is there anything that you've learned that works really well from a sustainability point of view? So maybe not necessarily just environment, but sustainability as a whole. So best practice within the workplace, etc.

What comes to mind first is Just do it, just start. If we, for example, look at our work on deforestation monitoring and using deforestation information from satellites for engagement with suppliers, like we've been working with Bunge, one of the top 5 global traders in agricultural commodities, we started working with them 5 6 years ago, even before I founded the company, actually.

Right.

And then they said, we really need to do something about deforestation. Can you detect deforestation? Okay, so then we used the satellite imagery to detect where deforestation was happening. But then we found out, okay, it's also not necessarily associated with palm. It can be in the wider region where they are active, but if they clean up their supply chain, still deforestation is continuing. Can you also monitor fire? Can you also monitor outside of our plantation areas? So starting from, can you detect deforestation? Things grew bigger and bigger and more and more effective. I think because they said, okay, let's start seeing how this can work. Don't be put off by complexity, just start somewhere. I think that is the main learning. Just go and figure it out.

Brilliant.

Will you make mistakes? Yes, definitely. But does it matter? No, you'll learn from it and then it will expand. And then actually with Bungee, it was very nice that They were so pleased with the approach that they also told other companies, hey, look, look what we are doing with this satellite information and our own information on traceability and where our plantations are and combining this and then going to suppliers when we detect something which is probably deforestation. Okay, you call them on the phone, you say, hey, look, we detect this, can you explain this? Yeah, yeah, well, we're clearing the area. Okay, that's not the way. Can you— we need to agree to stop this, and then we monitor with the satellite. We prove that they indeed stopped, so then they stay within the supply chain contract. And yeah, other companies also took up that same kind of approach, and I think that is, yeah, that's very inspiring how also companies like traders and growers can inspire others by simply showing, demonstrating that things work.

Okay, brilliant, brilliant. Now I've got a question that is not really related to sustainability, to be honest with you, just because I'm interested. So you don't own the satellites that you're— do you? How does that— and do say, I'm commercial, I can't talk about that. But I'm just curious, like, how do you get into this? Do you contact a satellite company and go, we would like your images? Or like, how does it work?

Yeah, it started out— I think the best source of imagery has always been there. It's the European Space Agency. It's NASA, it's the Japanese space agency JAXA. They've always been using taxpayers' money to create the most amazing satellites, send them into orbit, and beam back fascinating imagery of the planet. So what happens is that— happened is that years ago we all had to buy those images, but some real of data took place that the archives were opened up and that led to such innovation into processing and also enabling large-scale processing. If you have to buy satellite imagery, you will never monitor the whole world because you cannot afford it. But if it's free and processing is also affordable, yeah, then you can monitor full supply chains. Like companies like Mondelēz They source from tens of companies around the world with thousands of suppliers and mills, et cetera. That couldn't be done before. And now thanks to these satellite programs that government agencies have launched, that is possible. And the past 5 years, a bit more, but then it really got up to speed. We see also commercial providers of commercial imagery. So space is getting— it's becoming a crowded place with all kinds of different satellites. And yeah, we think that is a good thing, but also a potential risk because now there's so much data. You also need to be able to convert that into information, into actionable insights. So yeah, the bottom line being If you want, you can download this type of public imagery yourself.

Wow, I didn't know that.

Yeah, if you want other types of more detail or different type of information content, you can also buy imagery from commercial suppliers. That's the state of business at the moment.

I've now got images of loads of our listeners Googling, you know, Googling, I want to look at my house now. I want to—

Exactly. Yeah, I also think Google has been kind of a huge boost for the awareness about satellite information because they also use this free information and they buy loads of very high-detail imagery which you can see your house exactly.

I've always assumed that they— yeah, I guess I've never actually thought about where they get that information from. Oh yeah, of course, of course they do.

Anyway, the Public Archives, they even had— they once bought a company that built satellites, but they sold it off again.

Oh, okay, and I think that's why I thought they owned their own satellites, to be honest with you, but yeah, it makes sense. Brilliant, well, thank you so much for being on, Neil. It's been absolutely fascinating talking to you, and yeah, thank you very much.

Yeah, thanks a lot. It was a real pleasure. So thanks for having us.

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