The Seaweed Revolution

The seaweed revolution is a fresh hope for tomorrow.

Seaweed develops in water everywhere, from the eternal glaciers to lagoons heated by the sun, from seas saturated with salt to the fresh water of our rivers. Yet we only know how to cultivate a few dozen varieties, at most. Incredibly diverse, seaweed could help to bring back balance in our ecosystems through a wide range of applications. It could allow us to better feed human beings and animals, replace plastic and fertilizers, boost medical innovations, mitigate global warming, repair biodiversity and support economies in coastal communities where fish stocks are declining.

Although seaweed has supported our development for millions of years, we have lost our connection with it and focused our efforts purely on land cultivation. Today a fast-growing global population, combined with climate, social and environmental crises, gives us compelling reasons to reconsider this forgotten treasure.

About the Author

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).

About the Translator

Charlotte Coombe is a British literary translator working from French and Spanish into English. She is a two-time Pen Translates award winner and was shortlisted for the Valle Inclán Translation Prize 2019 for her translation of Margarita García Robayo’s Fish Soup. She has translated various works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry and her work has been published in journals such as The Southern Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, Latin American Literature Today, Words Without Borders, Project Plume, Palabras Errantes, and World Literature Today. Her co-translation of Marvel Moreno’s novel December Breeze was published by Europa Editions in 2022. She is the co-founder of the Translators Aloud YouTube project that shines the spotlight on literary translators reading from their work.