Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Corporate buyers often assume they are too far downstream to stop deforestation. They may have far more leverage than they realise.
My guest is Priscillia Moulin, Director of Strategy at MosaiX and senior adviser to InovasiDigital and Earthqualizer Foundation. Her work focuses on turning deforestation commitments into something companies can actually implement across palm oil and other commodity supply chains: traceability, satellite monitoring, field verification and supplier engagement.
The timing matters. The EU Deforestation Regulation is due to apply from 30 December 2026 for large and medium-sized operators, pushing companies dealing in commodities including palm oil, soy, cocoa, coffee, rubber, cattle and wood to demonstrate that relevant products are deforestation-free. That turns supply-chain visibility from a voluntary aspiration into a much harder operational requirement.
What changed my thinking was the amount of practical leverage that can exist several tiers upstream. Priscillia describes cases where satellite data flags suspected forest loss, human experts verify what actually happened, teams or drones investigate where necessary, and commercial pressure is then applied to the supplier. Sometimes, she says, clearing can stop within a week. Across interventions using this approach, her organisations estimate roughly 2 million hectares of avoided deforestation, an area about the size of Slovenia.
There is another counterintuitive lesson. Simply ejecting a non-compliant supplier may clean up your supplier list without fixing what is happening on the ground. Priscillia argues for “suspend, then engage”: remediation, forest protection, restoration and eventual re-entry where suppliers genuinely change. We also examine why algorithms cannot safely replace human verification, and why forests cannot be reduced to tonnes of stored carbon when water, erosion, biodiversity and local livelihoods are also at stake.
This is not a carbon-offset story. It is about using traceability and commercial relationships to change physical outcomes.
For: business leaders, procurement teams, sustainability professionals, policymakers, investors and anyone dealing with EUDR, deforestation risk or commodity supply chains.
If you are trying to remove deforestation from a real supply chain, I’d be interested in what is proving hardest: traceability, supplier engagement, data quality or implementation.
Climate Confident: climateconfidentpodcast.com
Subscribe on YouTube and follow Climate Confident on your preferred podcast platform.
⏱️ Chapters / timestamps:
00:00 2 Million Hectares Saved
00:22 Show Intro and Crossover
02:15 Meet Priscillia Moulin
03:33 Palm Oil and Corporate Commitments
08:24 Traceability and Risk Mapping
10:07 Satellites Plus Field Verification
13:13 Stopping Deforestation Fast
15:09 EUDR and Rising Urgency
22:11 Success Stories and Closing Thoughts
Corporate buyers often assume they are too far downstream to stop deforestation. They may have far more leverage than they realise.
My guest is Priscillia Moulin, Director of Strategy at MosaiX and senior adviser to InovasiDigital and Earthqualizer Foundation. Her work focuses on turning deforestation commitments into something companies can actually implement across palm oil and other commodity supply chains: traceability, satellite monitoring, field verification and supplier engagement.
The timing matters. The EU Deforestation Regulation is due to apply from 30 December 2026 for large and medium-sized operators, pushing companies dealing in commodities including palm oil, soy, cocoa, coffee, rubber, cattle and wood to demonstrate that relevant products are deforestation-free. That turns supply-chain visibility from a voluntary aspiration into a much harder operational requirement.
What changed my thinking was the amount of practical leverage that can exist several tiers upstream. Priscillia describes cases where satellite data flags suspected forest loss, human experts verify what actually happened, teams or drones investigate where necessary, and commercial pressure is then applied to the supplier. Sometimes, she says, clearing can stop within a week. Across interventions using this approach, her organisations estimate roughly 2 million hectares of avoided deforestation, an area about the size of Slovenia.
There is another counterintuitive lesson. Simply ejecting a non-compliant supplier may clean up your supplier list without fixing what is happening on the ground. Priscillia argues for “suspend, then engage”: remediation, forest protection, restoration and eventual re-entry where suppliers genuinely change. We also examine why algorithms cannot safely replace human verification, and why forests cannot be reduced to tonnes of stored carbon when water, erosion, biodiversity and local livelihoods are also at stake.
This is not a carbon-offset story. It is about using traceability and commercial relationships to change physical outcomes.
For: business leaders, procurement teams, sustainability professionals, policymakers, investors and anyone dealing with EUDR, deforestation risk or commodity supply chains.
If you are trying to remove deforestation from a real supply chain, I’d be interested in what is proving hardest: traceability, supplier engagement, data quality or implementation.
Climate Confident: climateconfidentpodcast.com
Subscribe on YouTube and follow Climate Confident on your preferred podcast platform.
⏱️ Chapters / timestamps:
00:00 2 Million Hectares Saved
00:22 Show Intro and Crossover
02:15 Meet Priscillia Moulin
03:33 Palm Oil and Corporate Commitments
08:24 Traceability and Risk Mapping
10:07 Satellites Plus Field Verification
13:13 Stopping Deforestation Fast
15:09 EUDR and Rising Urgency
22:11 Success Stories and Closing Thoughts
