Untitled - November 13, 2026

00:00:00 Speaker: Hello and welcome to the Sustainable Commodities Podcast. I'm Barnaby Patchett, MD of one hundred ninety nine agency, a commerce agency working in sustainability. And with me as always, Judith Murdock from Murdock Associates. And we work in forestry commodities. Now, today's episode is one we've both really been looking forward to. Genuinely, I know this is going to be good. We're joined by Glenn Horowitz, founder and CEO of Mighty Earth, an organization that's earned a serious reputation for making the boardrooms of global commodity giants break into a cold sweat. Um, Glenn's going to be taking us inside the mighty earth playbook. Why it was formed, their approach and how they work to transform industries from palm oil to beef, cocoa and heavy industry. We're going to be covering a lot of ground here from whether the stick is mightier than the carrot to how mighty earth works. And of course, Audr, which they've just published a report on. Over to you, Judith. Welcome, Glenn. I'm really excited to have you with us, but like to start off with some basics and say, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and why did you found Mighty Earth? Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to the conversation. Um, I founded Mighty Earth because I saw that the world needed a nature advocacy organization that was entrepreneurial results focused, agile. Um, and that would tackle the big issues on nature and climate that were not getting sufficient attention. So one of the things that we've tried to do from the beginning is bring the best of the business world into our culture. Uh, as a nonprofit advocacy organization. Um, so we've even done things like, you know, really modeled our culture on Netflix and it's very scalable culture of freedom and responsibility. Um, but I think the other insight that we had that we saw strategically was that, you know, when it came to protecting rainforests, uh, around the tropics, um, working in many developing countries, there often were good policies on the books, but because of corruption, because of lack of capacity, uh, many governments weren't getting conservation results from them. Uh, just because government wasn't doing it. The government may not have been doing its job, but the job still has to be done. I think, unfortunately, that dynamic has spread, at least in the United States, where government is not doing its job. We still have to protect nature and climate amidst the twin extinction and climate crises. And so that was the the spur to it. Um, and we've seen that the private sector, paradoxically, the companies that typically are responsible for, you know, centuries of decades of deforestation of climate pollution are actually best positioned to solve it. In many cases, because of their power of their supply chains, the amount of capital they have, they can go. They can scale way beyond what like a philanthropy or government could could do directly in many, in many cases. Where did you start then as an individual? How did you arrive at this? So when I was ten years old, first of all, I'd always love nature and animals from when I was a little kid. But when I was ten years old, global warming first hit the headlines and it totally freaked me out. I was an avid tennis player, and I remember being up for one in a set, and then I started thinking about what was happening to the world and how the climate was getting hotter, and my game broke down. I wasn't always an emotional wreck dealing with climate change, but I did find it upsetting, and I sought to do things that would help. So, you know, I at times like, would carry around a giant trash bag to fill with recyclables and endured some understandable mockery from my. My friends. Good, good natured, good natured mockery, but mockery nonetheless. Um, and, you know, I, I pursued journalism for a while, um, in, in high school and college and, and, you know, certainly subsequently and what I found to my frustration was that just writing about an issue, revealing it, exposing it didn't solve it. And it was only, um, after George W Bush got elected and I thought, well, we've got to save the planet from him that I got in touch with somebody who had trained me in environmental. It had who had, uh, I'd done a, like a very modest environmental campaign with on campus. And I said, what do I do? And she recommended this program called Green Corps, which trains, uh, twenty five to thirty five recent college graduates and everything it takes to run and win campaigns, coalition building, grassroots organizing, fundraising, direct lobbying of officials. Uh, and then they send you out somewhere in America to a state to work with a national, state, local group on a big campaign. It was way more responsibility than I ever thought I'd have. But it worked in spades. And within four months, myself and my my colleagues had organized a campaign that convinced California to shift five billion dollars towards clean energy. Uh, I was able to recruit a coalition and build a grassroots movement that was able to move the votes of senators to protect Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and fifty thousand acres of state forests in Pennsylvania. So and I saw my colleagues having the same experience. I was like, wow, this really works. You can have this amazing outsized impact. And I've essentially pursued those strategies since then. I've had some forays into politics and journalism and business. But, you know, most of my work has been environmental movement. And at Mighty Earth, we have sought to bring those very basic organizing and campaigning strategies into issues and places where they're sorely needed. And to me, I think it's been a combination of what we call our obsession with impact, which is the characteristic that unites mighty Earthlings, whether staff or board or volunteers, donors, um, with a, you know, a very business focused, results focused culture. Um, but also that kind of, uh, faith in, in very, you know, rigorous application of basic organizing principles that I think has led to some of the outsized successes that we've had. Yeah. I mean, I've seen so many of your reports over the years, uh, you know, when, when Mighty Earth releases a report, the industry definitely takes notice. You know, I see it on the engagement on your LinkedIn post. I see it in the media. I mean, if I'm going to put it very crudely, if you're named in a Mighty Earth report, you know, their comms team and their crisis team is probably going to themselves. Um. Talk me through the process. Talk me through it. So first of all, I think the important thing to say is we started from our goal. Our goal is industry transformation. So if you're looking at deforestation, we're looking at what is it going to take to end it. Um and that's within our quiver to deliver. So we typically tackle the largest or one of the largest companies in the industry because they have the market leverage to set the terms for everybody else. A smaller company may feel like if it adopts sustainability provisions, that it doesn't have the market power to drive its competitors to do the same. Um, and the first thing we do is we reach out to the company with practical solutions at the CEO level. So we, you know, before you see a report or a protest outside a supermarket, um, or indeed, if we're doing this on a policymaker before we're, you know, really launching a public campaign, we are going to them and we're bringing concrete solutions. We're saying, why are you driving deforestation when you can expand onto the world's one point six billion acres of degraded land instead? Um, you know, what is here is a cost effective pathway to make green steel, green aluminum. Um, you know, here's how you can scale animal free proteins. And here are partners, uh, whether it's nonprofit organizations like Earthworm Foundation or consulting groups that can come in and help you, uh, if you don't feel like you have the temperament or expertise to do it. So that's the first step. And often we make progress there. But, you know, we are asking for significant changes, uh, a requirement that any of your suppliers protect all, you know, their, all of their nature that, and there's often thousands or tens of thousands of suppliers. Uh, and that can feel daunting even for companies that want to do it. Um, it's, uh, you know, in, in the case of the industry decarbonisation, we're talking about a trillion dollar plus investment over time. We're not expecting it all to be green tomorrow, but we do want them to adopt strong, ambitious guidelines. So I you know, the first step is the outreach. And I will say, I think that's very important for actually driving change because even if the initial meetings, uh, don't produce a immediate transformative results, the experience of the companies is, okay, you guys are for real. You want a concrete impact that's feasible. Maybe we don't feel like we can do it right now, but they know that we're earnest and that we're interested in solution, and that we're not just interested in beating up on them to get media attention or funding or something like that. Uh, and so when, you know, sometimes it does take a lot of pressure to move them, but when that happens, they're usually more open to actually talking with us about how to execute it. And, and so everything else flows from the goal. You know, we look at, okay, what is it going to take to move this CEO or this company? Um, some of it is very strategic substantive analysis who are their investors. And we reach out to those investors and organize them. We've developed really close relationships with investors representing trillions of dollars in assets under management. Who are their customers? This has probably been the single most powerful lever. So, you know, we our largest campaign around the world is to transform the meat industry, which causes more deforestation than the rest of agriculture combined and more climate pollution than the entire transportation sector. Number one target, they're not the only one is JBS. How are we going to move them, their customers? Who are their customers? Well, this kind of research is really important. We discovered or just read their largest customer is Carrefour, the France based supermarket chain that owns the largest supermarket chain in Brazil. How are we going to move Carrefour? Um, and similarly, you know, in the palm oil industry, we first tackled Wilmar International. You know, they had at the time a terrible reputation which they'd earned for vast deforestation. But from the conversations, we found that they were very open minded. Their CEO was really, to his credit, very open minded. And it did require pressure. It did require a campaign. But in both of those cases and many others, once the organizing, the appeals to sometimes their family members, the, uh, elite media landed, um, when especially, you know, we talked about the like right now, the haze crisis in Southeast Asia. Yeah, we and our allies are not talking about it as a general problem that it's, you know, it's, it's only that it's getting too hot and there's deforestation is something that just happens. It's like, okay, who are the companies that are responsible for that? And what should they be doing? And what can they be doing? And suddenly, you know, I've gone on TV in Asia, for instance, and talked about that, and suddenly the CEOs are like, feel much more pressured around that. And so then they're, they're, you know, willing to talk. And then, you know, we're going in and talking at a high level. That's the other thing because I think still too often, especially, you know, in the last few years, often sustainability staff don't have the leverage that they should in companies. It varies a lot from company to company. But ultimately our goal is really like, how are you going to get the CEO and the procurement people to ask everybody else, okay, what would it take to make this change that they're asking for? And whether it's stopping deforestation, shifting and regenerative agriculture practices or deploying clean energy? Typically, the answer is, oh, it costs nothing or very modest, and maybe we'll even get a positive return. And it just I often say our biggest obstacle is not greed, but inertia. And so it's really overcoming that inertia, getting the attention of decision makers to ask these questions, because most environmental destruction is economically marginal. And there's so many opportunities. I'll just close by saying Kwok Hong Kong, you know, first Asian agribusiness, first business to adopt a no deforestation policy across their whole supply chain. Uh, tough campaign. He heard from his relatives about it. He was hearing from the Singaporean media. He was hearing from his investors. He lost investment. And but he did it. And he was it was brave step. Uh, just a couple of years ago, we're in. Ten years later, I had breakfast with him and he said to me, you know, Glenn, when you first came to me and you said we wouldn't lose any money by stopping deforestation, I didn't really believe you, but we were under so much pressure. I had to do it. But you were right. We've made billions of dollars. And and so, you know, that's the the ideal pathway that we want to get companies on. Yeah. Well, what just listening to you talk, the resource that you must have behind what the work you do. I mean, how big is your team? And, and you know, what type of person works with you to be able to deliver that outcome? What, what type of lunatic would sign up for this? Um. I, uh. So, you know, I think, as I said, the single characteristic that unites mighty Earthlings is this obsession with impact. Um, that's, you know, we have thirty seven staff. I think we're growing, which is great. We need to grow. We're quite lean. Um, I think the thing everybody says about us is we punch above our weight, which is nice to hear. Um, but the more we grow, the more efficient we become. We find. So, uh, and it's partly due to our culture and how we've structured things. Um, but, uh, I think the people, you know, at a core level, people are looking for big impact on nature and they have that deep investment. Um, I think we, a lot of people come to us, you know, work at other environmental organizations and they're usually very proud of the work they're doing, but they're looking for an organization that is really results focused, not about performance, not so much obsess about process. And one of the things we try to prioritize is hiring the best people we can find. Um, and that includes people who are not just talented and smart, but also humble. So we have a rule. No brilliant jerks, uh, that we try to be rigorous in applying. Um, and, uh, you know, that has helped build a very collaborative culture and a very candid culture that, um, is, is, I think quite different from what most people are used to and can be a little bit of an adjustment. But, um, it's been, it's been really great. And it was interesting, you know, over the course of our ten years as an organization, I think at first we've always had a big impact. But you know, I think at first it was we had some really smart people, we had some good ideas. We had determination. Um, but as it's grown, the culture has really developed to become the engine of success. So it's independent now of, you know, just a few driving people personalities. And that's, that's been great to see. And it's also meant for me. Um, you know, while I am very engaged and involved in, in our, our work, uh, we're able to do it at a greater scale because I don't have to be doing all the meetings or planning every campaign. Um, and we have a great team that's, that's teams that are, that are leading that around the world. Nice. Uh, in terms of you. AM I right in thinking you, you don't take any money from industry, do you? No, no. Yeah. How are you funded? How do you fund this? We're funded, uh, mostly from, uh, institutional philanthropies. Um, and we get some, uh, a couple, two, two with two government grants also not from the United States. Uh, and we have between ten and fifteen percent of our funding comes from individuals. Um, we really are prioritizing, you know, at the same time, we welcome the foundation support, of course. And it's it's been the engine for us. Um, we, we have a real need for flexible funding. Um, because for an NGO, uh, you know, your, your philanthropies can change with their funding and strategies can change. So we need the resilience, um, to have more flexible individual funding, number one. Number two, the thing that the flexible funding from, typically from individuals provides is an ability to invest in emerging issues where there may not be a lot of institutional support for it. So for instance, you know, I think you're probably most familiar with our work on changing the private sector. Um, we also we're looking for the biggest issues on nature and climate that don't get enough attention. So we identified one of those as rewilding North America, bringing back extirpated species. Um, we've, we've focused on bringing back the mountain lion east of the Mississippi River, where it's historically the keystone carnivore. We've had one hundred and fifty years of forestry growth, white tailed deer coming back from the brink of extinction, and other species like beavers and turkeys coming back, which is all exciting and great and beautiful. Um, but we're missing the keystone carnivores. And so we took a lot of inspiration from Europe and the success that they've had in bringing back bears and wolves, uh, you know, even to the suburbs of Berlin or Amsterdam. Um, and that hasn't really been happening in the United States, even though we have way more to the same extent to even though we have way more land, much less concentration of livestock on the landscape. And so we decided to do this. But there's like, there's very little institutional support for it. So we've been asking individual donors to help, and it's allowed us to launch this initiative. That one's really interesting to me, because I would think that you are almost moving across the political divide there as well, because some of the people who would understand that best might be, you know, hunters or, or sort of people there. So, so you really like you're bringing in a kind of really broad coalition of, of people, which is so important. Yeah. One of our, um, our leading advocates in the state of Vermont, which is where this, this campaign has been focused, um, you know, worked for a dozen years as the commissioner of Forest and parks for the Republican governor of Vermont. And, uh, he's a big hunter. And you're absolutely right. And, you know, I think historically nature has been very bipartisan or trans partisan or non, I mean, really nonpartisan that people across the political divide, you know, love wildlife, love the outdoors, are often concerned about what they see happening. Um, in the United States especially, it's become incredibly politically polarized. It's not only in the United States, it's in Europe, uh, and some other places as well. But I think what we find is that that's not really true in the grassroots level. Like there's at the elite political level, it's, it's crazy. I mean, when I started in environmental movement, we could count on six US Republican senators being our champions from the start of any issue, and we could expand from there. That's it's rare now to get one supporter. Um, but if you talk to Republicans as we do, you know, we do a lot of grassroots organizing in the Midwest, South Gulf of Mexico, uh, Chesapeake Bay area, uh, on a lot of issues, you know, on all sorts of issues. And we find that we have very strong supporters who, you know, are quite, are really pretty hard on the right in politics, but they're not people don't vote on nature in elections, unfortunately, like they're voting because of immigration, economic concerns. And it's been a long standing issue that environmental concerns haven't reached that political salience where they they matter enough. But of course, you know, the word conservative and the word conservation, they share the same root ideologically. They really should be on board with a lot of this stuff. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, um, it does Exist in England to a degree still. And in fact, we've had several supporters. Like people on our board and other champions in England who are in the Conservative Party, and they're just as enthusiastic campaigners as anybody on the left of centre. Yeah. So what's what's the thing that you're most proud of? What is the key campaign you're proud of today? Uh, which of my children do I love the most? Um, I, uh, I mean, I, I guess I'll put it this way. I'm proud of all of them. And I find them all moving. Um, and, uh, I think, you know, the work we're doing in Southeast Asia continues to be both very successful and very important. Um, I will say just in terms of I'm going to answer this in like a much more rational way, which is that in terms of, you know, long term impact, I think the transformation of the meat industry has the greatest potential. So number one, it causes just in terms of acres, so much in an order of magnitude more deforestation than anything else. So we've made some progress over the last few years in reducing that. And Brazil just recorded its lowest deforestation on record, both in the Amazon and in the Sahara ecosystem, which doesn't get enough attention, but is actually more much more destroyed than, than the Amazon. And that's a product number. You know, in the Amazon, I think partly of the Lula administration's better law enforcement creating national parks and indigenous reserves. But it's also and I think people don't understand this a lot, the progress of some great campaigns and private sector action. Cara, for in response to our campaign, persuaded its suppliers like JBS and Marfrig Minerva to cut off almost a thousand suppliers linked to deforestation. That sent a very powerful signal out on the frontier. If you engage in land grabbing or destruction of nature, you will very quickly lose access to global markets. And they brought a new era of transparency to the media industry. Um, this big soy traders, it took way too long to do this. And it's not quite comprehensive enough, but they've pretty much in most countries adopted, um, protections for nature throughout their supply chain to ban conversion. And so that's part of what you're seeing the results of in the figures. Now, if the Brazilian election goes into the hands of somebody who ideologically supports deforestation, thinks it's a positive good, and thinks stealing land from indigenous people is progress, it's going to create a challenge. However, we have seen our task for for, you know, a decade as locking in private sector progress in Brazil and beyond, so that conservation survives even when there's a hostile government. And even in the first Bolsonaro administration, maybe the last Bolsonaro administration. We'll see. Uh, the, um you know, the deforestation did go up and it was bad and scary. And that's hundreds of thousands of acres a year destroyed. That shouldn't be. On the other hand, it was going up from a much lower baseline. So even a significant percentage increase doesn't mean that you're returning to the battle days of two thousand and four. Now we still have to get like there's still way too much deforestation happening. It's devastating. And it's heartbreaking when you see it. And but but that's where we see our goal. But it's never a it's never a straight line, is it? There's the sustainability is a roller coaster and the pendulum swings. Um, now I'd like to talk to you a bit more about your approach. Now, as I see it, there are two approaches to, to driving change. You've got the carrot and you've got the stick. You know, you've got those that work inside the system. Let's say, you know, WWF might be the poster child there. Um, or the industry stakeholder initiatives like, you know, rspo or t r s and then there are the stick wielders, those who put on pressure from outside. Now I see your organization. I know you've talked about carrot as fairly well on the stick side. Um do you agree with that number one. And um you know, are the, the sort of carrot feeders, are they running a, a sort of inside out game as allies of you or do you see them as kind of more, I don't know, I guess industry pawns to some degree. Uh, so number one, I think you're, you're not alone in seeing us as primarily stick wielders, right? Like we had a, an outside evaluation done of us. And I was surprised to see that in some ways that that was a common impression amongst many, but not shocked. But like that, that was the main or one of the main, um, views. And I think, you know, we see ourselves as impact focused, right? And we're just pursuing whatever strategy it takes to get the result. I think very often we do see campaigns as a catalytic and a very effective way to drive rapid transformation of an industry or change a policy and a necessary one. But for us, it's like, oh, of course, that is, um, we try to do these campaigns in a very principled way. So that we do, we are also doing it. To me, it's not so much, I think internally it's like doesn't feel as dichotomous. So, you know, we are very happy to make progress just through inside means and through technical implementation. We started this big rapid response satellite monitoring program to drive implementation of deforestation program, which is not necessarily campaign focused. Second, um, you know, I am a very strong believer in massively scaling nature finance. We need to make trees worth more alive than dead. Um, the, I worked on that a lot. And unfortunately, you know, even though there's great ideas which have a little bit of juice behind them, like the Tropical Forest Forever facility, which incentivizes conservation, there's not actually enough financing right now or anywhere close to enough financing for any of these mechanisms to make a meaningful difference on a on a national or global scale. And so in any of the big countries. And so, um, all of this supply chain work, the campaigns have really been plan B for me because my plan A was to like get that financing. Um, and I still believe in it. It's, it's hard to raise money for nature, you know, given the economic pressures, the wars that are happening, governments feel pressured. But maybe we'll get to a point where that, that changes. Um, and we're, you know, we're excited to help, help create that moment. Uh, I regarding other organizations. So we do, we do work across the board, both with, you know, small community organizations, indigenous land defenders, but also the big NGOs, many of which have a more technical focus and we benefit from their expertise. Um, and we seek it out and we have close relationships there. I think they, um, increasingly this is not actually new. They really, many of them that used to do more campaigns have stopped doing those. And so we've become more lonely in pursuing advocacy. And then our, our colleagues in the, in the more, you know, technical focused organizations have actually come to see us as more essential, um, in our role because they increasingly understand if there's not a political push, if the companies and governments that they're trying to, you know, get large scale financing for from aren't feeling pressure, they're not going to do it. And so they, they want us and they're supporting, they're generally been very supportive. And it's a symbiotic relationship, uh, in, in, in most cases. I mean, there's, you know, are there moments of occasional frustration where it's like, uh, a company is getting praised by an NGO for things that we don't feel merits. Yes. I will say that has happened a lot less in the last like five years than it used to. the social media and transparency. Yeah. I think that that might be right. Yeah. Yeah. And, and so I, I think it's actually become more cooperative. I do think there's an issue that there's nowhere near enough financing for advocacy, even though it's catalytic. And so, um, you know, in general, of course, there's not enough financing for nature, uh, which is like a great tragedy that we're spending two, three trillion dollars a year on AI, another trillion plus on fossil fuels. And, you know, nature funding, depending on the estimate, is like eight billion dollars a year to maybe eighty billion dollars a year. Um, for all of nature that provides all of us life around the world. And, uh, and then, you know, within that, you look at the advocacy budget, it's maybe if you added all environmental organizations together, you know, up to one hundred million. And that's like, that's the lot for everyone. Yeah, that's the pot for everyone. Yeah. So, uh, It's. I think this is an area that needs to be scaled more. Mhm. Yeah. So just go back. Um, one of the questions I wanted to ask just on the back of the, the carrot and stick question was, what do you think of initiatives such as the, the rspo or, uh, you know, the, the various different schemes of which there, there are multiple different schemes. So, you know, on the, I'll just be very candid about how we've seen them. I think frustratingly for us, those certification schemes have been, um, slow to drive change. And I think it's actually that mostly they rely on certification, um to work. So which usually means that they're depending on a premium. So a, either a customer or the company itself is required to pay some amount. It's usually modest to certify that they are producing a product without deforestation or human rights abuse or pesticides, whatever. Um, the challenge when you rely on a premium is that you're usually capping out at at best at fifteen percent of the market. So it's great to get fifteen percent of the market to improve its performance. Uh, but, um, we're trying to change eighty five to ninety percent of the market, which is what we feel like you need to solve any of these problems. So we can't rely on premiums. Uh, and it's been our experience that most of the certification bodies, as a result, are not able to get the largest companies to certify across their supply chain. And most of the progress that I've described has happened without certification. Um, now I don't think it's a bad thing. Like, you know, if a company wants to spend a little extra money to market to show that its products, you know, are have a seal of approval, have some external scrutiny, that's totally fine on a consumer level, on a company level, um, we do rely in the timber area on FSC to a degree, because, you know, we want users of wood or paper to be using legitimate FSC certification. I think FSC has a lot of challenges also. So it's not perfect. Um, but for the commodity soft commodities, agriculture, commodities, we haven't found it to be a driver. And we found like even rspo, you know, they only really caught up to protection of high carbon stock and high conservation lands like ten years or something after the large companies had already adopted them. And so it was, you know, and there are things they're doing like one of the things we have used Rspo for, and I think is good is on paper, there are many companies that are required under Rspo to restore about eight hundred thousand hectares of land that they've deforested in the palm oil industry. The challenge is, for reasons that I find bewildering, like they haven't actually driven that restoration yet. It's an obligation on paper, but it hasn't actually happened yet. And so we're trying to, you know, maybe create some take some of those principles, but really provide some urgency around it. And I think in fairness to them, the ultimate challenge they face is the lowest common denominator. One that because there's such multi-stakeholder, because there's so many actors at the table, they've been dragged down by having the worst actors say, no, we're not going to go along. And meanwhile we're able to say, okay, we're going to focus on this one company. That's the industry leader. We don't care what your competitors are doing. We're talking about what your, your performance is. And, and that, I think has been a dynamic that has led to much faster action. But that's really interesting. Um, I guess industry pushback is the next kind of, uh, topic that would feed into this a bit. I know that companies have tried to sue you multiple times in terms of, of, of what you've done, but in the West, at least as far as I can see, you're pretty much undefeated in terms of they, they pull out or they don't take things forward. We've, we've actually really only been sued once. Oh, right. Um, and we were undefeated in that case because it was completely frivolous and absurd. And, um, we were, it was a terrible, uh, company that was doing deforestation in Papua that was based in Korea. And, uh, you know, we're not a Germany based organization, but they found some German connection and sued us in Germany because they thought that would be the most favorable court. And it was like long and slow. But we, you know, we prevailed ultimately because it was it was nonsense. I think, uh, you know, one, we have lawyers that are making sure we're telling the truth. But I often say to our staff, our best defense is just being accurate. And that really falls ultimately on us. Um, and I, to me, our campaigns can be really powerful, but with that comes a lot of responsibility. And so we, I think both try to be accurate. But another way I look at that is I feel a responsibility to focus on what they're actually the main drivers of the problems, not just products or companies that may be really famous. And, um, so I think that also kind of insulates us. And then the reality is like we are trying to move these companies. So we have a lawsuit going on right now, um, where we've been the initiator on JBS for, for greenwashing. And, uh, you know, our goal, our goal in that isn't to like get damages, financial damages. It's to drive. Ultimately, we hope this, this and many other things helps spur them to improve their performance. Um, so yeah, I mean, we, we are careful, but then also, I think, I think that doing it in a principled way has, has helped a lot also. Have you ever had to, um, to not publish a report? Have you ever got, you know, gone in thinking, right, we're gonna find something here, we're gonna find some stuff and then realizing, oh, actually, it's not all of us. It seems I'm not going to going to do that. Yes, that that happens. And, and, um, yeah, I think, you know, not infrequently and I would say it's more like, you know, in our earlier research phase as we're exploring options, something. But what happens more frequently actually is that whether it's a report or a big campaign, we don't pull the trigger on it because it's actually the prospect of it gets the company to the table and they take the actions that we talked about. So with Cara for, for instance, we were we had done a lot of public campaigning on them. We were about to launch our biggest campaign that we had ever done on Carrefour. It was going to be a pretty large TV, um, media, grassroots organizing in three countries initiative. Um, we were like, we're just going to put everything into this because we think it's so important. And they have such leverage. And within a, you know, a week or two prior to that, they reached out and I flew to Paris on very short notice to meet with their board members. And they were to their, you know, enormous credit. Not only were they talking about adopting some of the policies, but they'd actually already taken concrete actions through their supply chain that they felt comfortable, um, in that they had finalized. And so, um, that has happened over and over again. And so we joke that there should be some long German word that describes the mix of emotions you feel on the success of driving the impact you hope, but the slight regret that you don't get to deploy the very creative campaign idea that you've prepared for, and you have all these people around the world who are chomping at the bit. Um, I think one, one interesting challenge from that emotion is, you know, very often the inside track, it's like, um, we try to communicate within our staff very candidly, but like, not every outside stakeholder is aware of that all the time. And so suddenly this company that, you know, we have been and is and has a terrible record. We're putting out a statement celebrating some big change that they've announced. And you know, it it can be jarring. Um, and, you know, we always focus on implementation and we are very happy to go back to a company and beat them up if they're not implementing. Um, but I think that is a, you know, that it can be, um, hard to accept for some that progress is happening. Yeah. And I would just say that that's maybe part of your work that people wouldn't understand because they see the report and they don't maybe realize how much work has gone in behind that. And as you've said, where you've not actually pulled the trigger and, and, uh, yeah, I mean, it's good news in one respect, but, but, uh, yeah, everyone likes to release the hounds. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of, it's always that, oh, you know, uh, big, big, sort of, uh, scary, scary thing about seeing a report and maybe getting named in a report and not understanding what's been going on behind it for sure. Yeah. Mhm. Um, yeah. Um, but that I, you know, I do think the positive reinforcement is real is important as well. Yeah. Yeah. Fair, fair. And that's so important because if people see it's fair and, and, uh, they will react in a positive way. If most people are good people, I always that's what I always try to believe is that there's only a few people in the world that are people that we don't like. But, um, yeah, most people come at it from a good position. I think I could see Barnaby's wriggling to ask that question about our, our key topic of e d r. So I think I might just say to Barnaby, do you do you want to ask the question? Um, you handing it over to me? So basically, obviously you've had a recent report, um, about, uh, uh, the US lobbying to weaken EU doctor. And I mean, we talk about e e d r a lot. And you know is it going to make the changes that it wants to make. And and how it's excluding smallholders. And I think your point about certification, particularly in the palm oil industry, we know that most of the material that will come to Europe to be EU compliant will be rspo segregated because it's already there. So is it creating change on the ground? Probably not. So can you just talk a little bit about your recent EU ADR report? Yeah. I mean, um, I will say we've been working on EDR for a decade and helped conceive of the whole idea, um, and have been working with an amazing coalition of really what's come to be hundreds of organizations, um, in our work with many industries, rubber, palm oil, cocoa, uh, I don't know if I would quite say soy yet, but, um, there are a lot of companies, the majority of significant majority of companies have done a lot to prepare for order. And that means closer scrutiny of their supply chains, where they're getting their products and that they're free of deforestation, deforestation. Um, and so we have already seen positive benefits, even though it hasn't come into force. Now, I don't the soy is the single product imported into Europe that has the largest deforestation footprint. And I think many of the soy traders have played more games with it. As I said, there is also progress happening on reducing deforestation for Europe. So there's it's it's more of a mixed picture there. But on some of the other commodities, it has been really helpful. Um, yeah, I mean, our report, uh, you know, it talks essentially about the role of US lobbyists and interests and government. Um, sorry, I thought I was going to sneeze. Uh, I was, I was, I had a physical reaction to thinking about the Trump administration and US foreign lobbying, uh, to weaken the U d r I mean, look, the United States government is at the vanguard of an ideological assault on nature protection all around the world and in our own country. Uh, we are, you know, I have no understanding of why a environmentally motivated European policymaker or any European that has been the subject of tariff threats, military threats would take seriously any argument coming from the Trump administration or their backers, because what is the United States doing at home? The Trump administration is gutting the enforcement of the Endangered Species Act so that the only way you can be penalized is if you intentionally go out to kill a specific animal. So if you destroy a whole forest, if your just purpose is commercial, even if you kill an endangered woodpecker, a thousand of them, you're not liable. They got the roadless rule to protect fifty eight point five million acres of forest here and our marine protected areas. And then they, you know, have the gall to go out to say to Europe, oh, trust us. Uh, the UDR, um, is unworkable. Uh, and penalizes are really kind, uh, forest products industry. Um, that's so sustainable. And, and, you know, I have to say, look, it's not just the US, the Canadians are doing this too. Uh, and I mean, I, I, we, we should, uh, we want to be friendly to Canada, just to be clear. Um, uh, but, you know, there, there's a lot of it's weird that it's developed country interests that have become the real, the most influential opponents of the UDR, not typically the ones from the tropics, which are going to be most affected by it. And so I, I think this in this report, we're chronicling this influence. And also, you know, in all this lobbying and making the case for it, I. It boggles my mind that any European policymaker would take seriously what the United States is government is saying right now. But when they're saying just to kind of push back a bit on that, when they're saying similar things, whatever it's motivated by and however they're when they're saying similar things to, you know, the Indonesians have pushed back on it. The Malaysians have pushed back on it. Um, the Brazilians are to some degree. So there is kind of a, um, and I think whenever I speak to people in, in sustainability, no one in any of these organizations questions the intent or the, the kind of the ideology behind it to cut global deforestation and to know that our supply chains. No one ever does that. I've never heard someone say, you know what? No, we don't care about that. What they always come back to is either smallholder exclusion. If they're reliant on smallholders for their commodities, uh, they come back to the EU, not really muddling the impact because they didn't muddle the leakage potentially at all, or they come back to the sort of hyper focus on traceability rather than kind of stopping deforestation, that that traceability itself doesn't necessarily lead to global deforestation falling. And also, you know, then there's the usual ones. It's costly, it's bureaucratic. And yeah, those are the kind of pushbacks and the kind of biggest one that I see is like, it creates a bifurcated market where, you know, European supply chains get a clean and more expensive and the rest of the world cracks on. And I think that's where I see it. Where am I wrong? What am I missing here? So let me, let me tackle those, uh, individually. So one, um, I've, I've long said before EDR or anything, people who are making reference to smallholders, that reference to smallholders is the last refuge of scoundrels because the, you know, you, you hear these big companies suddenly so concerned about livelihoods of farmers that they're typically trying to exploit and take the highest percentage of profit from their product that they possibly can, and at least at a minimum, creating incentives for them to use, um, you know, slave or forced labor or child labor or in toxic pesticides. And suddenly when it comes to this issue, they're, you know, they're, they're bleeding hearts. Whose primary concern of Cargill is, is suddenly the farmers that supply them, um, and not the profit that they're trying to send back home. So I also would say, I say that partly because we work very closely with smallholders unions in West Africa, in Southeast Asia, in the Mekong, um, in South America. And for the most part, they are supportive of the UDR themselves. If you actually actual representatives of smallholders, for the most part, they are supportive because they see themselves as able to meet the requirements. They have cooperatives that can comply with it. And they have sent delegations to Brussels to make that case. Um, I. So that's for me just based on our own experience in the field also. I mean, it's worth saying outside of the Congo basin or really like not outside of DRC, in almost every other part of the world, the by far, far and away the largest driver of deforestation is, um, commercial, uh, crops and interests. It's like eighty, ninety percent in most places, not smallholders. And, and so I think this is why most of the opposition is centered on has come from companies. Um, I think the so you mentioned traceability, which I'll get to. There's one other issue that you raised, uh, muddling, muddling on the impact was one, just because they never really. Yeah. They said leakage would inevitably happen, but they didn't muddle the quantity and then didn't include it in their calculations of how much impact there would be. So I, I pretty strongly question whether leakage is inevitable because, um, I think that, um, what we have seen, you know, to some extent, with the exception of the soy industry, is that, well, the typically the cost of segregation far exceeds the cost of improving your practices. So I think there's a real question of whether there is an incentive, a financial incentive for companies to send. Um. Uh, only the good stuff, the good stuff only to Europe and garbage elsewhere. Um, I, I, what we have seen is like, first of all, stopping deforestation, shifting expansion to degraded land, doing some satellite monitoring is super affordable. And, you know, you can monitor the entire South American soy industry across all countries for about a million dollars a year. And the and so I, I, I, what I see happening is actually that the incentive of the UDR, which has not even having gone into force, has actually improved systems that are affecting the production everywhere, not just for those goods destined to Europe, because it literally is cheaper for them to make the whole system better than to come up, you know, different shipping systems and complicated certification requirements. Um, I think the traceability, so I, I don't give much credence to that. I also think that what you see positive leakage in that, where you have successfully broken the link between agriculture and agricultural expansion, deforestation, it people realize that like, oh, I don't need to do that. And it's a positive example and I can get more profit. And it goes back to what, you know, Coca-Cola home of Wilmer was saying and many others that you have a lot less risk when you're not engaged in deforestation. And EDR is part of that. I think traceability is a really interesting one. And, um, what I would say to that is it is very focused on traceability. That's undeniable. Um, I would hope that enforcement happens is focused on cases where there is real actual damage from either from deforestation or like, you know, linked to indigenous land grabbing rather than technical traceability violations, especially in the first few years. Now, I, um, some experts believe that the way it's structured means that the traceability is actually totally the key to it and that the technical compliance is what it's actually going to deliver the deforestation reductions. Um, I think there has to be some initially strategy, like if the first cases that are brought should be about things that are like really linked to deforestation, I view, or else it's going to lose support. Now, you know, there's time, like they've already had delays, but like, give them six months to get maybe the traceability part, not not legally, but like just in terms of discretion of law enforcement authorities, uh, they, they should be able to choose and focus on cases that they meet. There's not infinite resources going into other enforcement. So I would say to the law enforcement, and we would be very supportive of this to the law enforcement authorities choose the right cases to focus on, and they will have a big positive impact. Nice. Thank you very much for that. I know it's a bit of a contentious question, but thank you. You know, the smallholder one really gets me, I have to say, because I have seen, uh, dedicated like human rights, environmental, uh, people, funders and others give a lot more credence to that than I see that it merits. Um, and, you know, we've tried to, we've, we've tried to work with smallholders all over the world to push back on that. But, um, I, I just don't think it's the case that smallholders can't, uh, don't have the capacity to organize themselves to meet these requirements. I don't think it's necessarily that they can't. I think it's that the path of least resistance for the customers is to cut them out. Um, I don't think it's an intended consequence, I don't think. I think it's a unintended consequence where if I have to do all of this extra work, the easiest thing is to not have them. And in business, often the path of least resistance is the path most trodden. Yeah. And my European colleagues, if they were here, would say the other thing that's complementary to this, um, which we've been very supportive of, and I it's not off the top of my head what the exact status of it is, but complementary support for small holders that come from Europe. So, um, you know, we are very supportive of that. We think it's an important compliment. Yeah, yeah it is. I guess the bit I would just say is the if, if the focus hadn't been on the polygon data, it's not saying that there shouldn't be, uh, gaps. And so you're able to do the satellite mapping. I think it's the detail and the fact that that detail is so, so much that no one's going to do anything with that data. I think that's it's the it's the level of it. And I think it's interesting what you said about smallholders, because that is definitely the message that we clearly hear. Um, and it's interesting your take on it. And I think again, if you could just say by looking at the satellite mapping as is now as what happens now, people can see where there's deforestation and therefore you can pick on that area. You can, you can see regions rather than that specific polygon, which long term, I just don't see how it's how that is going to work, I suppose is, is and could be. It's downfall is too much detail. And if it just came out a bit, maybe that would be better to because it's, it's, it's getting people to say, we don't want deforestation anywhere close to us because eventually we might want to go to Europe and we won't be able to have this cut off date. I think that's. I think it's just it's changing. Changing it at a higher level, I guess, would be what maybe my thoughts on that. But very interesting your points on smallholders because. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's probably enough on on the ugr. Everyone who's listens to this podcast can take a drink. We do. We honestly, we have covered dozens of hours on a UDR, but I just because I had seen your report, we wanted to get it in. Um, can we go closer to home, Drax here in the UK, a specific campaign now, we both live very close to Drax. In fact, I grew up five miles from it. Tell us about your work there and what they've been doing. So what we've seen from Drax is like this single company, um, certainly from the West that's driving up deforestation linked to bioenergy or logging. Logging linked to bioenergy. And, you know, the British government, um, has gold clean energy goals and has made a dramatic shift over decades towards clean energy. But it has included incentives for, um, burning what turns out to be, uh, whole trees logged from the southeastern United States. I'm in Washington, D.C. right now, and we're part of the southeast, and it's such a gorgeous area with so many amazing forests. And you do see a lot of them replaced by monoculture plantations that are going to feed Drax, um, and others. Uh, I think what has been disturbing and shocking, um, and economically questionable is Drax expanding beyond that to drive investment in similar bioenergy schemes in other countries, in Asia and elsewhere. And the thing about bioenergy, like burning trees, it takes a lot of subsidy to make that economically Viable. The whole history of energy evolution in the world has been going from extensive energy sources, like burning plants that have a lot of water in them, that you have to dry out in order to, you know, get some amount of energy towards more efficient, concentrated source of energy. Initially coal and oil, then gas, and now wind and solar and clean nuclear. Um, and so it's like a total reversal. It's going back, you know, I call it caveman energy. And it's, um, you know, we have been working in Japan and Korea with some amazing allies there, uh, in, in Britain and Europe, again, with this whole movement around and with people from the United States who are affected by the community suddenly being logged that are going to policymakers in Europe and elsewhere and saying, this is completely false. And like, look at these pictures and look at what we're experiencing. Um, it's a real distortion. Uh, we've seen Japan and Korea adopt, uh, you know, partly influenced by Drax, um, standards that have enormous, like they're subsidizing electricity for biomass greater than the wholesale cost of electricity. So that's what, you know, you need that kind of subsidy to actually incentivize it because it's not very efficient. And you have now at a time when you have solar and wind and geothermal, uh, beating the cost of fossil fuel energy, it's really a bizarre relic. Yeah. I mean, it was obviously the, I think it was one of the biggest coal fired power plants in Europe at one point. Uh, but at least it sits on top of coal. They weren't shipping that coal from, um, from across the, uh, across the world. Well, and I mean, I think one of the trends we've seen is that the real purpose of the bioenergy policies is to lengthen the life of coal plants because they say, oh, we can reduce our pollution according to their calculations, that it's pollution free to burn a tree down. You can mix in biomass. And suddenly the pollution profile, as calculated of the coal fired power plant, is reduced. And that can, in many jurisdictions, lengthen its life. Yeah, yeah. It's really interesting from a PR point of view, because I remember when it when it changed over to wood pellets, it was like it kind of almost nodding, going, oh, okay, that's good. Not burning coal then. And then this is again, where messages get completely lost with consumers. And, you know, where is the outrage? Although I do think locally, it is quite interesting that there's a lot of people starting to think to be outraged, the ordinary people. And that's maybe what's the most important thing. But yeah, very close to us. Mhm. Well, keep up the good work on that one. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Good work on that. Thanks to my colleagues, uh, Katie and Roger and many others, uh, leading that, so. Yeah. Great. Well, okay. Should we should we go to the future now? Let's let's start, start to think about. So what's next from it's where are you aiming your satellites and researchers next, uh, where's the next battleground? You know, which, which industry is going to, uh, is going to end up in your sights? Well, we talked about rewilding, so that's maybe not an industry target so much as working with governments around the world. I will say that, um, on the palm oil, paper and rubber industries in Southeast Asia, that's a huge focus of ours for rewilding effort because of the significant increase in decrease in deforestation, ninety percent decrease in commercial deforestation in the region, we see an opportunity drive investment in healing, the damage of decades of destruction. We've always had that goal from the beginning of our work, but frankly, we had great challenge in raising sufficient funds to focus on the positive investment part of it. People just wanted to fund us to like, stop deforestation. And that's obviously the first priority. But with the progress, we have finally been able to shift some resources to that. So you're going to hear more and more about the palm oil industry having a responsibility to actually heal the damage. They're sitting on billions and billions of dollars. Some of that money should go not just to buying a, you know, their new four hundred thousand dollars car or their, you know, ten million dollars watch, which is like things that these tycoons do from my dinners with them. Um, and, you know, I don't begrudge that to them like go, go wild. But, uh, I do think if they're, you know, they've got so much money and it comes ultimately from an insane destruction of nature, like one hundred thousand orangutans killed for that industry. They should, they have an obligation to heal. And so we're going to be pushing them to do that. Um, so that's, that's kind of one of the big emerging priorities that we're going to be campaigning on more. Great. Well, you'll have some supporters here. We both work with some orangutan NGOs. So, uh, yeah, we're we're firmly behind you on that one. Yeah. Great. Well, you know what, Glenn? Thank you very much. We could do another hour on this, but I want to respect your time. And also. Yeah, just thank you very much for coming on. No. Appreciate it. This is this is a great discussion, if you don't mind my saying, um, if people want to get involved, help us, you know, get involved as a volunteer or donor. Mighty earth dot org. Uh, and then also I'm on LinkedIn, uh, that's where I post the most on social media. So it's Glenn Horowitz, uh, and also Mighty Earth is on, on LinkedIn and Instagram and other platforms. Yeah. And we'll put all of those links in the show notes as well. Um, yeah. So thanks again and thanks to everyone for listening to the Sustainable Commodities podcast. Great. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Bye. Bye bye.