Untitled - May 26, 2026

00:00:00 Speaker: Welcome to Women in Sustainability, the podcast where we speak with some of the world's foremost female professionals from across the sustainability field. With me, your host, Emily Fripp. Today, I'm very happy to speak with Priscilla Mullin, who is currently serving as director of strategy for Mosaiques Europe branch and as senior advisor to both Inovasi Digital and Earth Qualizza. Earth Qualizza is a non-profit focused on sustainability and social equity in landscapes affected by deforestation. It monitors around thirty million hectares of land on a bi weekly basis, and has achieved a notable milestone by protecting two million hectares of forest from commodity driven deforestation in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. As Qualizza works alongside Innovative Digital, which provides digital tools for sustainability, monitoring and regulatory compliance, and Mosaiques, a European startup offering data engagement strategic guidance for companies navigating sustainability legislation. Priscilla is a double master's graduate who began her career in supply chain sustainability with Airbus. Over the past decade, she has worked with global leaders such as Wilmar International, Unilever, Mars and other multinational consumer goods companies. Her research on corporate intelligence has been instrumental in shaping the palm oil industry as it stands today, laying the groundwork for many of the standards that are now considered industry benchmarks. Multilingual and deeply field oriented, she has also conducted extensive on the ground assessments of human rights conditions for plantation workers across Borneo. Priscilla, it's brilliant to have you with me today, and thank you so much for joining. I know it's sort of in the evening in Indonesia, and it's always a great pleasure when we can talk to people who are all over the world and and getting, you know, the hands dirty there on the ground. It's it's just fantastic. So you grew up in France, I believe, and in rural France, but you've lived and worked all over the world and done many things. You're now in Indonesia. So tell me a little bit about your your background and growing up and how you've that sort of journey. I've used the J word already, but how that journey came about from being in rural France to where you are now. Well, thank you so much for having me in your podcast. First of all, I'm really excited to be here and to present my work and my career. And there are different aspects of what I'm used to, but we usually talk about the work that I actually do, like a day to day implementation of the work, but I think I've never shared before about more of the personal perspective of how this all came along. And, um, to be honest, I never thought I would have ever been where I am now because so I grew, I was born and raised in rural France in the south of France. So we have a beautiful weather. I'm still in the Mediterranean, parts of France, but I come from a working class family, and I'm one of the only rare person in my family that has studied, that has got the chance to study and then to travel. Um, and since I was very young, so growing up in rural France, I was always, um, surrounded by nature. Um, and I remember when I was a kid, I would just take my, my dog and go for long walk in national parks. And at that time, you could still fetch, um, uh, wild fruits like cherries and berries. And so I've always grown up very close to nature. Um, but I had also, uh, I was always very passionate by, um, travels, uh, what's happening abroad? I was always looking like watching documentaries about different cultures, different countries, different languages. And so when I grew up, I sort of combined that at university by. So I studied a foreign languages. Um, yes. And I also was very involved in voluntary work, like with WWF. I mean, I was like buying all the items and like the little pandas and things like this, having the t shirt. So I was, oh, I've always wanted to do a contribution to, um, to protecting biodiversity and nature. Um, and then I was like, why, but maybe I could combine this, this both interests that I have. What if I would be protecting forests worldwide, right? I think that was kind of a dream that I had, but, um, I never felt it was initially like, if you look, theoretically, it was, it was really hard, right? Because my family could not necessarily they couldn't send me abroad. They didn't have the funds to send me abroad and so forth. And so I thought, this is something I have to work on myself. And so the very first year I was able to work, when I was about to turn eighteen, I started like every single holidays I had, even during Christmas. I remember even, uh, first of January, New Year's being out and working in the cold. And so I was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do it myself and I'm not gonna give up. This is what I want to do. I want to travel, I want to, to create a change. And so this is what I've done. Um, I've done a lot of also part time jobs, but also a lot of, uh, volunteering. I've done a lot of volunteering because I've realized that this is how you get, uh, to, to learn and this is how you get the connections. So I've volunteered abroad for a month. And then like at the beginning of the month and I collected more money traveled for six months. Like that was, I think like twenty ten Costa Rica. I went, uh, I went Costa Rica volunteering for six months. And all this was while studying. So yeah, that's how it kind of all started. And then I had the decisive turn was my last internship that I had. So I have a double master's degree. And, uh, in France, when you do a master's degree, the last six months should be about like having a technical practice internship. So my last master's degree is internship was, uh, in Malaysia. So working on sustainable biofuel. Um, it was a project between a French research center and Airbus. So how it was all about how to find alternative to, to fuel and how to find sustainable biofuel for, for airplanes. So this is what took me all the way to Southeast Asia. That was in twenty fourteen. Wow. I mean, yes, Just on that bit of getting your first foot into the the sector. I mean, it's something that really resonates with me. I remember starting out and I didn't have the financial means to just go off and volunteer or take a sort of unpaid job somewhere. And I think I was looking at jobs to become an economist in the City of London at one stage, because I just couldn't work out how to get a job in development or overseas, or doing the thing that I really wanted to do and, and finding those opportunities. Um, but luck and perseverance, I think eventually found found a, a way through for me, but it wasn't, it certainly wasn't something that was handed to me or I was lucky enough to come from a background where I had access to those opportunities, definitely had to kind of work for it. And, and I don't know if that sort of stays with you in the kind of manner that you just take don't take for granted what you've managed to do and, and the opportunities that you've had. I think it's, it's something that I value a lot, I guess, but, um, it feels like that's similar to your sort of story and journey of how you get going and get out there. So jumping then to Airbus and Airbus was quite a pioneer in the sort of some of the satellite technology mechanisms and um, in the palm oil in Southeast Asia, working with core organizations who were doing that, that work with communities, but also with industry, trying to find those solutions and changes. I mean, we look back now, you know, that was ten years ago, fifteen, twelve years ago, you know, in twenty ten to twenty fifteen, there wasn't any kind of satellite stuff. Since twenty fourteen fifteen, we've got Airbus. We have, um, Global Forest watch. There's a number of different tools, but it feels like Airbus was one of the pioneers in moving that forward, that whole practical aspect. So how did that work then evolve and where did that sort of, you know, how did that kind of build to where to where you are now? And, and what do you see as some of the big things that it overcame the big challenges? Yeah. That time was, um, was a very early stages of what we call a no deforestation, no peat and no exploitation policies, right. NDP policies, um, especially in the palm oil sector. So when I started that internship with Airbus, um, it was a very early stages and some big companies, um, had made this, this huge commitment, which is we're gonna make sure that our supply chains are deforestation and peat conversion, exploitation free, right? And, um, at that time, everything was just a commitment on paper, which is, it's easy to do. Right? Are we gonna commit to that? But then when you look at the complexity of supply chains, Um. It gets. Yeah. It gets complicated. Right. How do you actually implement that with real stakeholders in front of you, real suppliers with real smallholders. So I think I started my career at a time when it was, um, becoming really interesting in the sense that it was all about implementation and figuring out how do you start even from collecting simple traceability data right at that time? Um, I don't know if you remember, one of the big push that's, uh, led companies to having these commitments, like you had this big campaign, the shocking campaign from, from NGOs about, uh, oh, you're destroying, uh, orangutan habitats or you're contributing to forest destructions and fires. And a lot of, of the brands, especially downstream is like, how can our chocolate bar or shampoo contributes to such a disaster? And so there was a huge effort and work around traceability and supply chain transparency. So I think the very first part of the work, and this is when I joined a shortly after my current organization. Uh, and so it was very interesting because we started to work with, with the, with, with companies and, and figuring out together. Uh, okay. How is that gonna, um, how are we going to implement all of this? And a lot of companies at that time as well, they didn't have dedicated sustainability team. It was a procurement people, commercial people that had to, uh, to, to find a way on, on, on how to, to have sustainable procurement practices. So I think we started from there and we learned of course a lot. And, um, so after two years established supply chain transparency, traceability is about, okay, next is then how to identify the issue, right? Which supplier is currently deforesting? Which one is actually, uh, having like a social issues and stuff like that. So there's a lot of work. Um, that's that we had to understand the supply chain and who are the suppliers, who are the decision makers behind the suppliers and not just online. Traceability line on a paper, but it's actually okay, who are we going to speak to? And so, um, I think you were mentioning a satellite imagery and indeed where Airbus is one of them, but, um, but yeah, there's a lot of especially free access, uh, technology nowadays. They're very good to inform decision, but um, it is just not enough without the human intervention, there's no change that can be created, right? Because okay, let's say I see on the satellite image that there is deforestation that has occurred, but then how do you know which supplier has committed the deforestation, who to speak to? How is it linked to a buyer supply chain and also understanding the complexities on the ground. Right. It's never black and white. It's not all that bad company has cleared or like, it's just sometimes it's a mix of factors. The government that is also pushing for development because we should not forget that government also are pushing for. They have their own agenda in terms of economic and land developments. Uh, sometimes it could be, yeah. Local communities that were encroaching into into the land. We have a lot of cases of illegal gold mining these days, for example, because of the price, the current price of gold. So all of this really requires, um, um, human expertise. And so no matter how much the technology has evolved and how great it is now, you will never be able to create a change unless you have a human intervention. I think it's, it's so true. And in the last couple of years, we've seen this rapid rise in the amount of tools and everyone's got the data solution for everything. And, and I think that human, the human side of it, the human knowledge that on the ground, Understanding what drives individuals, it just can't be underestimated. And technology goes a great way and a long way and helps things. But it's it's not everything. And like you say, you've got to understand what is going on on the ground and how that reacts. And it was a sort of very linear, top down solution to things. And actually it's all about what happens on the ground and how people need to survive in their own world and create their own livelihoods and living, um, in the way they were. I mean, you're, you're obviously very passionate about being on the ground and, um, engaging in society and communities who you're now based in Indonesia. Are you, is that your in Malaysia? Actually Malaysia moved back to Malaysia three months ago, came back to the region after living in Canada for five years. Wow. Okay, so you've come back and, and, and been there and obviously speak the language in a really sort of become part of the community. It sounds like that's very important to you. And in terms of, as colleagues has just achieved an amazing goal. And you sort of you've now more than thirty million hectares of land are being sort of monitored. Is that right? And two million hectares of forests have been sort of protected under some circumstances. What do you think's made it such a success? Um, yes. First they're just a little, just a little um story for the, the being part of the culture and how crucial that is to understand the local contexts, especially now when you talk about new D, R and so forth, where you talk about legalities, it's very complex on the ground. And indeed you have a lot a proliferation of, of data provider and, and it's just on paper, right? Someone based off us or, or France. And, um, this is, it's what made me learned so much from. As Michael and my colleagues write, they all think I'm. A big number of our colleagues are actually from local areas. Some of them have had their own land affected by land grabbing fires or any sort of of yeah, unsustainable practices. So for them, it was really about creating a change in their own place. How can we use all this, like all this data of this data set and whatever to create better conditions for society? And when I moved to Indonesia in twenty fifteen, um, I actually lived at the, I had an office guest house. So I lived with my colleagues at that time. They couldn't speak English at all. And at that time I couldn't speak Bahasa Indonesia at all. But we've like then we've managed to have learned Bahasa Indonesia and they're now pretty good in English. So it's been. But that has been a really crucial. Um, yeah, a turning point also in in, in my work and in the way I see things, because before that I was really seeing sustainability in Western. Right? Right. And the Western way, as you say, like a really, uh, top down and like, we believe that all the standards we have in the West, they are the golden standards and everybody should follow the same. But especially if you look at social aspects, right? It's not as, it's not as easy. So, um, so yeah, sorry, that was no, no, no, I think, I think you're, it's just so important to really understand how it works on the ground and, and until you've gone out and actually lived and worked with the community or gone in the field and, and seen seen it, I mean, it's, it's invaluable to, to actually then coming back and then thinking, okay, like, how do we actually make this work? And, you know, yes, I'm guilty as it as many other people that you kind of sit at your desk in your office and carry on, but you've said it right. You've said, but we you also don't claim that the first thing you told me when you presented the organization. Right. You're not claiming to know about the grounds, you're establishing the policies, the standards and stuff, which is which is as valuable, which is also needed. So it's working in partnership and collaboration, isn't it? Always, always these things come down. So we're with um, in a, with where you are now with the earth qualifier with inovasi mosaics, like where do you see, um, the future going and how are you adapting those tools to new challenges and new on the horizon? What's, what's happening? Oh, so you were also asking about, sorry, jumping back again, we're asking about the millions of hectares that are being monitored. And so they're currently, uh, about twenty four million hectares of land that are being monitored, which is, which is a lot, which is basically the entire palm oil industry worldwide. I think, uh, including smallholders, that would be about thirty million hectares in. Africa as well Latin America and the two million hectares that are. Um, unfortunately, they're not fully protected, but this is what we call as avoided deforestation, meaning that, um, we have tried to quantify the impact of the work that we've done, the great work that we've done with, with the, with the company, with the corporate sector. So at any level of supply chain, right. So we've, we've, we're working with really growers, plantation companies, but also traders and processors, as well as US downstream, like consumer goods company. And so we've, we've estimated that based on the work we've done with them, which is whether direct engagement. So let's say we found a company was was committing deforestation. We're committing deforestation sounds like a crime, but they were deforesting. Um, and then with the, we've engaged them directly because we do a lot and I've had the chance to be involved myself in direct engagement with several companies, uh, or we've informed buyers via our regular monitoring reports, uh, of deforestation. This company, your supplier, has deforested. You should engage. So this engagement has pushed, uh, companies to commit to what we call stop work orders, and then they have themselves adopted sustainability policies. Okay. So this is, uh, this we have estimated in two million hectares. Why we say is not fully protected because this takes it to the next step where you need the government's involvement to have the forest stamped as legally protected. And this is we're working on that as well through social forestry program. Legalization of of social forestry areas with communities. But that is more challenging. But that forest is is still standing thanks to those corporate commitments. Wow. Yeah. Always um, something we really rubbish at. I think we as in kind of everybody in this space is actually getting the good news stories out. And I, and I feel that at these kind of particularly at the moment when the world is slightly skewed against us, that getting as many of these positive stories out and real positive impact on the ground is so key, so important to give those moments of hope and examples that things can be done. And if we all work together. In fact, earlier we were just this morning, we had a meeting with with one of our partners and they were saying, um, could you send us like maybe every year, every cup of all what has been achieved this year? And because we tend to send, okay, that's the next case. And the next case, you need to engage it. But they say there are actually success stories. And it's true. There is, um, not there is related to your previous question where you were asking or where is the industry headed next? What are the next challenges? Um, one of the main topic is one of the trendy topic is re is what we call reentry and recovery. Avery. So, um, the idea behind that is the oil companies have looked as an industry on how much they have contributed directly or indirectly to deforestation, um, since the cutoff date is twenty fifteen, because it was two years after the first NDP policy. So the grace period and then okay, anything that has happened after twenty fifteen, we consider that companies had done it, uh, knowing, knowing knowingly. So so they work deforesting knowing that there's a sustainability commitment. So they looked at that and they, they, they quantified as what they call a liability. Okay. All these sectors, uh, have been deforested in the past years. Some they have directly deforesting, some they have purchased and benefited indirectly, uh, from, from, from the products. And so this is a liability that should be settled, right? It's not just, I think the for the longest time And because of campaigning NGOs, you've had this, uh, or suspend the company if your supplier is not compliant, cut them off, cut them off, cut them off, which I think it's good as a last signal. If really the company is not willing to comply. Well, you have to follow your policy. Right. But, um, what we encourage is like suspend, then engage. So you suspend to give a signal. Sorry, like you've breached our policy, but you should re-engage those players so that they come back, uh, into sustainable supply chain. And why? Because we want these companies to come back in sustainable supply chain and be have good standards, meaning they're not going to DeForest anymore. They're going to have a minimum standard for the way they treat their workers, as well as how they engage with the surrounding communities. So you know that it's going to be better than have them find an alternative market that disregards sustainability at all. Right? So we are pushing for that. And it's actually, uh, some companies are especially downstream companies are trying to, um, to support smaller ones to come back into the supply chain. And we have, I'm, I'm going to give you one example. So it's a company that had deforested about a thousand hectares of, of forest since between twenty fifteen and twenty twenty, I forget exactly twenty two, twenty three which, which is pretty small compared to some others. And so that that buyer that say that, okay, you can come back in our supply chain if you remediate what you've done. So they've, they've done so we've engaged with them, went through the process to confirm, okay, is it what you deforested like? Because it's also a joint, a collective effort. And in the end, they've committed to legalize a social forestry area around their plantation, about, uh, six thousand hectares. So it's six times bigger than what they had. Yeah. Um, than what they had cleared, because Indonesia also supports a lot of the social forestry agenda, because it's about empowering local communities. So we're using that as a tool of, of, of forest protection. So. Okay, listen, this area is still very good forest. Let's legalise it. That one. It's a degraded forest. So what are we going to do is to turn it into agroforestry. So if they if they, if they help them plant a coffee and they've trained them to actually harvest the coffee bean, the good ones. So they've on one side protected the forest and on the other side empowered local communities. So they don't want to go and encroach into the forest to take a wood or gold or like clear the forest, right. They have a economic like they have an income. Um, so that's one example actually several cases, other success stories that we're currently working on. It's amazing. Yeah. No, it's they are little golden nuggets without talking about gold mining of of optimism and hope and success stories. And I think there is this real, um, or we need to just protect, we need to protect, we need to tell people, no, don't do that. And, and don't touch things, but people need to live and work and you live alongside a forest and you depend on it for non-timber forest products for, um, for food, for all sorts, for health, for medical, for reasons, for water. And it's an intricate part of people's lives. And you need to then find ways to make that remain accessible. But like you say, create alternative incomes, different ways of using the resources around them so that they can develop and they can have prosperity and move out of poverty and living hand to mouth and have a way to change their lives without necessarily being told no. Pack your bags and move to the city to get a job in an office. I mean that it's so important that we get that balance, right. So we've done great things. Where do you where are you going next? What's the next sort of five, ten years look like for you? And what is your hopes, I guess, what's your hope that you'd like to achieve? Um, that's a good question. Not something that I've thought a lot about. Um, it's always, it's always interesting because we always think, oh, the problem is almost over. The deforestation is almost finished. And then before you know it, you have a funny government coming in like now in Indonesia. Like I think the all eyes are on the West part. But I think in, in Indonesia, there's also a pretty, um, interesting, uh, there's a, there's a change, change in the political frame everywhere, isn't there? And I think this drive for a greater protectionist type approach and individualism and sort of protecting a country is, is not helpful when we're working on global commodities, Global climate and all these issues which are global. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to really affect the whole like, right. We were saying protecting a forest depends on, in the end, a government policies, right. And, you know, the previous government has a policies saying, oh, well, they will not issue issue any new permits. Uh, not a current one. They've been giving a two million hectare permit for a mega food project in Papua, which is a mix of sugar cane. And I don't know, for biofuels, which is doesn't make any sense. And so like when we think, oh, when we thought, oh, it's fine, the problem is over, then you have a change. Uh, the UDR also has been something pretty interesting, even though to be honest, it's not something we've had high hopes on. Well, it creates a level playing field in the sense that many companies that were not really involved in sustainability, all of a sudden they had to know, okay, where do I buy from? How am I going to provide a maps of, of, of plant plots of productions? Um, but yeah, in terms of the scope and the cut of data is not best, but at least it's there, right? It creates some, some leverage there. Um, what's next? I would say, um, yeah, really forest protection is really a big, a big, this, this whole recovery work, I think, is what's going to take a lot of our efforts and time, uh, on how we gonna prevent some areas to turn into Sumatra, for example, Sumatra, there's a very little forest left and you have just small patches here and there, a lot of, of, um, there are a lot of issues with human and wildlife conflict because they don't have habitats anymore. So we would like areas like Borneo ideally. Now what we're trying to do is prevent Borneo to turn into, uh, another Sumatra. There's still big patches of forest, very good, uh, dense forest with a mega diverse, uh, area. So we, we're really trying to put the efforts where they matter. Um, and also the other, the other big challenge, which still remains and has been the same questioning since I started my career is what about the social aspects? Like what about social conflicts in human rights? Because it's not as easy as stopping a deforestation, detecting deforestation, or protecting a forest. It's always I mean, as you know, rights always involve several parties with different interests. And again, it's never black and white. It's never, oh, the the bad company has taken the land from this poor little guy. But sometimes you also have like different, like stakes from some different people. And so I think we're also trying to think of, of the same idea of remediation, but with the social aspect of, of the work, what, what are we going to do with some communities that have been impacted by the developments and, um, what can be a win win situation for all? So I, I, it's such important work. And I think having. I've worked in Kapuas, Hulu, Hulu in the in the middle of the Borneo region and you see Sumatra. And then the recent sort of floods caused by mining and deforestation in Aceh. You know, it's there's so much evidence out there to show you why it's important to not do things. So going back to what we said earlier, getting those positive stories about why it's important to do the right thing for positive reasons rather than just avoiding the negative reasons, is, is really key as well, isn't it? So it's been fascinating talking to you, and I could talk to you for hours, and I know I'm under a time frame. So if you just had final thoughts for other women that want to work in this space in, in the sustainability arena, what would, what would you say to them? Um, based on my own experience, my own background is, um, really like working hard to achieve the objective that you have in mind, even if it feels hard to achieve. Um, and when I look back, as I was mentioning earlier, I'm like, I could, I would have never seen myself where I am now. Um, and so, but by going out, working hard, engaging with people, I think one of the key of success, at least that, that has been one of my, um, key for success is, uh, networking really going to conferences, going to events, not being afraid to talk, to ask questions. And I think this was very valid at the beginning of my career because this is how I got my first role. Um, but also now in terms of positioning myself as, uh, a thought leader in the industry is really about going out there speaking to people. Um, and this is really, really important. Um, but I know that now times are, um, this, everything is now much more competitive than it was maybe ten years ago. And so it might still be challenging, but I think it's trying and never giving up is something, even if it's. I know a lot of people are interested in sustainability and maybe it's hard to make it like make it a career goal. I mean, you can have it, but sometimes it's hard to actually get the job. But like volunteer, like be involved in those little things that that can actually create a change. And I couldn't agree more. And, and it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you today. So thank you very much for that. Thank you, Priscilla, for joining me. And thank you all for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and we hope you can join us soon for another episode. All episodes can be found at our website, effica dot com.