Season 4, Episode 130 : Niels Wielaard

Will Richardson 00:11
Welcome to the Green Element Podcast. Neil, Neil Wielaard. I said your name right, I hope!

Niels Wielaard 00:17
Pretty good!

Will Richardson 00:18
And you're, you're from a company called Satelligence and you help organisations become more environmental. I mean, can you tell us a bit more about who you are and where you're based? And what sort of work you're in, please?

Niels Wielaard 00:35
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 are 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 stop deforestation, the extinction of species biodiversity, and great greenhouse gas emissions. And we do that by leveraging the power of satellite imagery, machine learning and human intelligence to create information about where the forest is disappearing so that our clients which includes growers and traders in agricultural commodities, but also consumer good brands, like the Unilever's and mobile users, of this worlds, 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.

Will Richardson 02:26
Where did this come from? I mean, what's your background to end up, you know, running a company like this because it's, it's really interesting.

Niels Wielaard 02:35
Yeah, I had always been fascinated with nature from a young age. so, my father also being a biologist, and my grandparents living in Indonesia. 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 yeah, 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.

Will Richardson 03:46
Brilliant. Brilliant. And so, what would you say your purpose was? And who do you tend to work with?

Niels Wielaard 03:57
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 can you do if you have a huge supply chain with many suppliers, many ingredients were to start. Technology was not ready at the time. You still had to buys satellite imagery. Currently, that's freely available. And also the computing power has increased ram tremendously to make sense of all this information. And at the same time, I think also the environmental constraints with consumers, consumer, good brands, and others, has really changed. I think, with the current pandemic, what we see is that people feel 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 what are actually the challenges? And grappling with that?

Will Richardson 05:57
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, almost everyone has woken up to climate change. Is that the same in Hollands and where you're based?

Niels Wielaard 06:19
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 and of the need to know. And so that also changed our sector, our business, agricultural commodity-producing in general. I think that's very, very fascinating.

Will Richardson 07:10
Yeah. And it's, I mean, how long have you been doing working in sustainability and the environment?

Niels Wielaard 07:19
I've been working in the environment in tropical regions is the 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 major 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 owned at farmer's own debt, who is behind it. That kind of information like before, three, four 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 for 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 this before in the early days, no one knew how this 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 does work and what doesn't, and not being stuck in the deck as a deck for the sake of deck. I think that's where we had to work.

Will Richardson 09:06
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 that's pretty cool.

Niels Wielaard 09:26
Yes, it is. And it's nice that it all comes together. Yeah. Yeah. You couldn't have predicted that, I think.

Will Richardson 09:40
No, true. So, can you tell us a bit about how you engage your staff, suppliers, customers with your mission and purpose?

Niels Wielaard 09:53
That's also something that I think in more broadly in society the awareness of sustainability has grown so much that when we talk about our stuff, 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 making the planet a better place by focusing on more sustainable agricultural commodity production, especially even at the very tech people. So I think that the people that join our company are already in their DNA have an urge is very keen to contribute to a better planet, even though they're working only on very technical issues. Yeah, and it's something in recruiting that we see that really helped us also in acquiring talent. And we yeah, 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 in most depth people who are working on code, they're behind their laptop, typing code and creating fantastic algorithms stuff of what it's being used for. So that's one. And I think, for our clients. Yeah, they come along, we have been working with a lot of the front runners who realise that in the long run for the sustainability, the durability of their business, they are dependent on nature for their agricultural supplies. So it's in their best interest to have a healthy planet. And most of the bigger brands 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, 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, 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 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 other companies are doing it. I think that's the main thing.

Will Richardson 13:32
I think I mean, that thing that said, 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 us. 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.

Niels Wielaard 14:15
Exactly. I think that's very encouraging and also leading the way, that's the future. Before in the old days that yeah, the commands we often had this oh, it's too hard! We don't know enough. There's nothing much we can do. We can't do this alone. And that is that has changed, like I just mentioned before that in traceability. The sectors know a lot more right now than five years ago. So we have much better traceability in these supply chains. So it's not too hard anymore. It's still a big challenge, but you can, indeed.

Will Richardson 14:59
And talent, and talent. You brought up talent and how you recruit. And that's where seeing big, big driver for organisations to become more sustainable for recruitment and for talent, and retention as well, because more and more people are wanting to work for organisations, and will only work for organisations that have a purpose that they believe in. And it's, it's actually self-destructive to not be sustainable down. If you look at talent alone.

Niels Wielaard 15:41
Yeah, and it's totally our experience with clients totally confirms this.

Will Richardson 15:50
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?

Niels Wielaard 16:02
I think the biggest struggle was demonstrating things work. And yeah, giving a more positive attitude. I think environmental risk emphasis has long been on doom and gloom and blaming culture. And even though 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 a 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 frontrunner, but being also very committed, how can we keep it simple and help them adopt approaches? I think that's our biggest struggle.

Will Richardson 17:58
Okay. And if you could offer one piece of advice to our listeners to help them with their purpose, what would that be?

Niels Wielaard 18:08
I think that would probably be honest about you, 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 are doing that? And then how and want to make sure it is yeah, integrated in your thinking and doing. And that debts may sound very simple. It's a big challenge.

Will Richardson 18:46
And 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're being you've got to be held accountable to yourself, as it were, make sure that you're still doing what you said you were initially going to be doing.

Niels Wielaard 19:15
Yeah, and I also think, because, with current technologies, traceability, environmental monitoring, companies, and our 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 there are ways to be honest about that. And I think consumers are increasingly required this so.

Will Richardson 20:00
And if we could talk about carbon footprinting and so have you carbon footprinted your organisation? And would you say it's been a benefit?

Niels Wielaard 20:14
In our case, we had a look at it. But 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 from mostly from home even before the pandemic. So we think that is the distributed approach. With working from home there 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 we will have to be working with local experts and local colleagues to understand the local situation much better. But also in terms of travel. It's much more localised. And so reducing our flights is one, if we look at our missions, and yeah, we try to make sure we're working with our local experts who can act locally. That is part of our strategy. And if we fly intercontinental, that we how you call it, sorry. Yeah, so that if we have to fly inter continentally, 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 on preventing deforestation and fires, but also looking at how can we re-green the planet by investing in planting trees. For example, in 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, from the atmosphere in these farms, and that's also of benefits 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 oh, there have to be new technological ways to get carbon out of the atmosphere. And now what can we do? Can we store on the ground and nail those things? And oh, 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, where trees are effective. There's all these billion trees initiatives, and it would be a wrong idea if we would plant trees everywhere. That's not the solution. We should have planted specific areas and it is also something that we work so well, can you plant? And if you planned it to motor with the satellites, if it's really growing our Arctic companies investing really regreening the planet. So that's where the technology can help.

Will Richardson 24:28
And on, I guess on that note, if you're helping organisations understand where to plant trees, do social, you know local social issues come into play when advising organisations? 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 realise that actually, there's a lot of social injustice that's going on. Does that is that taken into the equation?

Niels Wielaard 25:15
I said, that's a very fair and important point. It's 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 context. In 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, clients, and service providers, we didn't know where to start. How do you measure these?

Will Richardson 25:59
Yeah. Yeah.

Niels Wielaard 26:01
It's very fascinating that last year, we started the cooperation with the company Hula. Hula is a tech company.

Will Richardson 26:09
Yeah, I do know them, yeah.

Niels Wielaard 26:10
Yeah. The interesting thing is, if our environmental risk and the social risks 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, labour 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 a huge, huge potential even more than it's 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, and have been expelled from areas of forest in Africa, to make way for tree planting unjustly. So there's been a lot of criticism about it. In the same way as for yeah, we have to protect some areas from deforestation. So the military comes in with guns and chases people away, who will then search for livelihood everywhere in another place, and ankles environmental impact in another place. Yeah, remediation effort, rehabilitation efforts, livelihood alternatives, many of the companies are really carefully thinking this through, for example, we are working with Cocoa company called Touton. They're doing cocoa but also other commodities. And yet 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 now, yeah, I think those are, yeah, very interesting developments.

Will Richardson 28:25
Yeah, I think I mean, 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 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.

Niels Wielaard 29:15
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

Will Richardson 29:21
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 organisation, 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.

Niels Wielaard 29:54
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 Bungie, one of the top five global traders in agricultural commodities. We started working with them five, six years ago, even before I founded the company, actually. And then they said I, we really needed need to do something about deforestation, detect deforestation. So then we use the satellite imagery to detect where deforestation was happening, but then we find out okay, it also not necessarily associated with the bond, it can be in the wider region where area are active. But if they clean up their supply chain, still, deforestation is continuing. Aren't they also monitor fire can 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 figure it out, then we'll make mistakes. Yes, definitely. It doesn't matter. No, you'll learn from it, and then it will expand. And then actually, what Bungie 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 his satellite information and our own information on traceability wherever our plantations are and combining this and then going to suppliers when we detect something, which is probably deforestation, okay, you pull them on the phone and you say, look, we've detected this, can you explain this? Yeah, well, we're clear. Yes. Okay. And that's not the way can you, we need to agree to stop this. And then we monitor with the satellite, we proved that they indeed stopped, and 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.

Will Richardson 32:47
Okay, brilliant. Now, I've got a question that is not really related to sustainability, to be honest with you. Just because I'm interested, they say, you don't own the satellites that you're doing. How does that a and do say, I'm commercial? I can't talk about that. But I'm just curious. But 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.

Niels Wielaard 33:16
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 image areas of the planet. So what happens is that happened is that years ago, we all had to buy those images, but some real democratisation of data has taken 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 move toward the whole world because you cannot afford it. But if it's free, and processing is also affordable, yeah, then you can monitor food supply chains, like companies like Manolis, they source from 10s of companies around the world with 1000s of suppliers and meals, etc. that couldn't be done before. And now thanks to the satellite programmes that government agencies have launched that is possible. And the past five years, I have 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 and all kinds of different satellites and yeah, we think that is a good thing. But also potential risk. Because now there's so much data, you also need to be able to convert that to into information, into actionable insights. So yeah, the bottom line being if you want, you can download this type of public imagery yourself.

Will Richardson 35:20
Wow. I didn't know.

Niels Wielaard 35:21
Yeah. If you want 100 types of more detail or different types of information content, you can also buy imagery from commercial suppliers. That's the state of business at the moment.

Will Richardson 35:33
I have now got images of loads of our listeners googling, you know, googling, I will look at my house now. I want to I want,

Niels Wielaard 35:40
Exactly, yeah. I also think that Google has been kind of a huge boost for the awareness about satellite information because they also use this free information. And they'd buy loads of very high detail imagery, which you can see your house. Exactly, yeah.

Will Richardson 36:01
I've always assumed that they, yeah, I guess I've never actually thought about where they get that information from. Yeah, of course, of course, to do anyway.

Niels Wielaard 36:11
The public archives. They even had, they once bought a company that built satellites, but they sold it off again.

Will Richardson 36:21
And I think that's why I thought they own their own satellites, to be honest with you. But yeah, it makes sense. Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for being on, Niels. It's been, it's been absolutely fascinating talking to you. And yeah, thank you very much.

Niels Wielaard 36:34
Yeah, thanks a lot. It was a real pleasure. Thanks for having us.