Aquaculture represents a scalable opportunity to provide significant local ecosystem benefits, help offset terrestrial agricultural emissions, and improve livelihoods in coastal communities.iv As seaweed grows, it takes up excess carbon and nitrogen, creates habitat, and reduces the impacts of acidification. Post-harvest, this versatile crop can be used as a net-neutral animal feed, both displacing resource intensive feed commodities and improving animal health. The sector is also exploring fertilizer, biostimulant, and bioplastics applications for seaweed, thereby helping to reduce the land use, freshwater consumption, and emissions of existing terrestrial supply chains. Furthermore, seaweed farming can serve as an income diversification tool for fishermen reliant on fleeting and fluctuating wild stocks. In nascent seaweed markets, however, access to capital is a substantial bottleneck to scale; investors have historically been reluctant to back seaweed ventures due to the constraints of annual farming cycles and the lack of technological innovation. Therefore, there is an opportunity for WWF to invest catalytic capital in these overlooked spaces and help farmers and processors build new markets.
WWF Impact is helping growth-oriented startups kickstart sea farming in regions with little existing production volume but significant potential. Our investments in this space share an overall approach to sustainable seaweed that addresses barriers to scale -- reduce production costs through technological innovation at the farm-level, build new markets for value-added seaweed products, and improve public acceptance for ocean farming.
WWF Impact is focused on four high leverage areas within the aquaculture industry:
- Novel nursery and hatchery production methods
- Scalable, low-cost farm designs
- Processing and extraction innovations
- Animal feed, biostimulant, and materials product development
