Keeling Curve

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Project Summary / Description:

The Climate Foundation is developing and scaling Marine Permaculture(R) (MP), a regenerative and flexible approach to offshore seaweed mariculture that has the potential to sink and store gigatons of carbon. MP platforms irrigate seaweed with cool, nutrient-rich water upwelled from below the thermocline, restoring overturning circulation slowed by climate change and improving seaweed growth while providing ecosystem services, including fish habitat and carbon fixation. We harvest high-value parts of the seaweed for commercial use, and sink the remaining 80-90% into the middle and deep ocean for long-term carbon storage, providing economically sustainable carbon sequestration for centuries.

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Seaweed mariculture is widespread throughout Asia and exists in some coastal communities of East Africa; however, warming waters and marine heatwaves associated with climate change are significantly disrupting cultivation seasons and reducing yields. Seaweed growing communities are thus significantly at-risk from climate change. In the East African context where many seaweed farmers are women, this threat to coastal livelihoods risks further exacerbating gender inequality. 
MP can rescue seaweed growth by providing replete nutrients that the seaweeds require for ideal growth with slightly cooler deep water. MP can not only secure cultivation from the impacts of climate change but even extend the growing season so that harvest can become perennial. Through community-owned Marine Permaculture platforms, smallholder seaweed farmers will be empowered to become marine permaculturalists, further enabling them to tap into a large and growing market for seaweed, seaweed products, and associated fisheries. Provision of fish habitat and its associated effect on fisheries also enables local fishermen to benefit. Our efforts to validate, quantify and document long-term seaweed carbon fixation and sinking additionally pave the way for MP practitioners to develop revenue streams for carbon sequestration. 
If deployed at scale, Marine Permaculture promises an alternative, sustainable livelihood for millions of people around the world presently engaged in ecologically destructive fishing or fish aquaculture. Trialling MP with seaweed growing communities enables them to be pioneers in demonstrating sustainable practices for the regenerative blue economy, which can be adapted and replicated elsewhere.

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