Of all the unexploited resources in the world, seaweed is the greatest! Thrust by the sea onto our shores, seaweed is a nuisance that our earthly pollution transforms into a red or green tide. Today, overpopulation and the ecological crisis oblige us to think about it. The most recent research tells us that seaweed is one possible solution for our future on the planet.
There exist approximately 12,000 types of macroalgae, and that’s without counting the thousands of microalgae. Seaweed develops everywhere, from the eternal glaciers to lagoons heated by the sun, from seas saturated with salt to the freshwater of our rivers. How many varieties do we know how to cultivate? A few dozen, at the most. The time has come to enter the ocean civilization. Seaweed is a fundamental link. If there were no seaweed, there would be no crustaceans, nor fish. The ocean would be a desert without carbon or oxygen. And at least half of our oxygen comes from the oceans.
Seaweed could feed human beings, reduce plastic pollution, absorb enough carbon to cool the atmosphere, reconstruct generative ecosystems, treat certain illnesses that are incurable today, replace land livestock farming that exhausts the environment, and give jobs to coastal populations. The seaweed revolution is a hope for tomorrow!
BIOGRAPHY
Vincent Doumeizel is Senior Adviser on the oceans to the United Nations Global Compact as well as director of the Food Programme at the Lloyd’s Register Foundation. Vincent leads the charitable objectives of the Foundation through the funding of innovative projects to drive safety in the food supply chain. Partnering with UN, FAO, The World Bank, WWF, Universities, NGO’s and large brands, Vincent led and released the “Seaweed Manifesto” in a call to scale up the seaweed industry in order to address some of the world most important challenges (hunger, global warming, pollution, poverty etc.).
C O N T A C T Lucy Chamberlain, lucy.chamberlain@legendtimesgroup.co.uk
Available for purchase from 25 April 2023
