“Global Challenge, Global Solutions” is a series hosted on Climasphere highlighting inspiring, innovative, and creative global solutions to the challenge of climate change in the lead up to the next major climate conference, COP22. These solutions have been provided by members of the Earth To Marrakech coalition, a group of more than 50 media organizations, civil society groups, and businesses from around the world who are raising their voices in a collective call to move from words to action on climate change. Let’s send a message, from Earth To Marrakech: The solutions to climate change are out there, and they’re inspiring. 

Vertical Ocean Farming Creates Healthy Ecosystems

Gre­en­Wave has cre­ated a sys­tem for ver­tical ocean farm­ing, where sea­weed, scal­lops, and mus­sels grow on float­ing ropes, stacked above oyster and clam cages be­low. The ocean farms are sys­tems of un­der­wa­ter ver­tical gar­dens, able to grow 10 to 30 tons of sea ve­get­ables and 250,000 shell­fish on each acre per year. From these crops, food, fertilizer, animal feed, and sustainable biofuels are produced. Ac­cord­ing to the com­pany, the kelp pro­duced ab­sorbs five times more car­bon than land-based plants, and the crops do not re­quire any fer­til­izers, fresh wa­ter, an­ti­bi­ot­ics, or pesti­cides.

Rather than grow­ing vul­ner­able mono­cul­tures, this approach creates biodiverse ecosystems us­ing the en­tire wa­ter column in pro­duc­tion. With a rep­lic­able model en­abling those with a boat and $20,000 in start-up costs to start their own farm, Gre­en­Wave has partnered with farm­ers to cre­ate a total of eight farms in a two-year period.

RELEVANCE OF SOLUTION
Nearly 40% of the world’s oceans are severely af­fected by hu­man activ­it­ies, res­ult­ing in pol­lu­tion, ex­hausted fish­er­ies, and loss of coastal hab­it­ats. De­signed to re­store rather than de­plete ocean eco­sys­tems, Gre­en­Wave’s ocean farms in­crease biod­iversity and res­tor­a­tion in areas where eco­sys­tems are suf­fer­ing, if not com­pletely de­pleted.

TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE:

ENVIRONMENTAL
Mar­ine spe­cies ab­sorb five times more car­bon than land-based plants and se­quester ex­cess ni­tro­gen.

SOCIAL
Gre­en­Wave provides its Farm Star­tup and Ap­pren­tice­ships Pro­grams at no charge to new farm­ers in an ef­fort to help them se­cure jobs in the emer­ging blue-green eco­nomy.

ECONOMIC
Farm­ers re­ceive guar­an­teed pur­chas­ing of 80% of their crops at triple the mar­ket rate for the first five years, ac­cord­ing to Gre­en­Wave.