Seaforestation

noun [ noun sea·for·es·ta·tion | \ (ˌ)sē-ˌfȯr-ə-ˈstā-shən ]

1. The act of restoring, planting, managing and caring for underwater seaweed forests.

Seaweed forests are rich habitat for marine life, including commercially important fish and invertebrates. In addition, they protect the coast from the impacts of extreme weather events. And they naturally capture carbon in large volumes in seaweed tissue, some of which gets trapped in the ocean floor for centuries. More than a food source many pharmaceutical and other products are already derived from seaweed. And new products can substantially reduce greenhouse emissions. For example livestock feed derived from seaweed can substantially reduce methane emissions from cattle. And if ways are found to work with natural processes to drawdown carbon dioxide using fast growing seaweed and taking it out of the carbon cycle at scale, seaforestation could provide a powerful contribution to addressing global climate risk.

With emissions continuing to grow, and the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at unprecedented levels, time is short. There is now a near universal consensus amongst climate scientists that the only way to keep warming below the internationally agreed 1.5℃ threshold is by drawing down and burying CO2 at scale. This is in addition to the significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that are needed. The options for scalable approaches to drawdown and sequestration are limited. The rate and scale of environmental change worldwide requires new bold approaches to finding and acting on solutions—solutions that can drive results faster and at larger scales than we have been considered to date. Simply doing more of what the conservation community is already doing will not have the impacts at the order of magnitude the situation demands.

We are primarily interested in seaweed farmed or restored that maximizes the environmental returns to the oceans, people and climate. A premise is that seaforestation projects, in addition to delivering significant environmental returns, will be economically sustainable and support livelihoods of coastal communities.

Ocean Wise is committed to take seaforestation growth and expansion to scale responsibly. We acknowledge important knowledge, financial, regulatory and social-license gaps and seek to fill those in partnership with a growing international community. And we take the urgency to translate ideas into action seriously. We co-create seaforestation initiatives at a scale that matters using extreme collaboration. We are inviting partners to join Ocean Wise on this exciting, new endeavor.