Official Side Event

Safe Seaweed Coalition, in partnership with Australian Seaweed Institute and Lloyd’s Register Foundation

Seaweed: A Revolution to Achieve Goal 14 and More

June 30, 11:30-12:45

Committee Room, Altice Arena

The event aims to highlight seaweed’s revolutionary role in sustainability and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), notably SDG 14.

It will be held in two parts: the first will systematically review the multiple contributions of seaweed to achieving the targets of SDG 14, describing the progress to date and identifying needed next steps, and the second will extend the discussion to seaweed’s contribution to other SDGs. Each speaker will describe specific contributions the seaweed sector has made to the achievement of targets under SDG 14. In the second part, speakers will highlight seaweed’s multiple contributions to other SDGs, including (but not limited to) eliminating poverty and hunger and women’s economic empowerment.

It will serve as a thorough reference to document the importance of seaweed – and through it, the Ocean – to people and our planet. While systematically advancing the state of knowledge, it will also serve to introduce seaweed and key Ocean considerations to a broad set of stakeholders.

Speakers

• Moderator: Nichola Dyer (Canada, UK), Senior Advisor, Safe Seaweed Coalition

Opening remarks 

• Vincent Doumeizel (France), Senior Advisor UN Global Compact, Director Food Programme Lloyd’s Register Foundation, Head of Safe Seaweed Coalition

Panel

• Jo Kelly (Australia), CEO, Australian Seaweed Institute and Chair of the Board of Directors, Australian Sustainable Seaweed Alliance and Safe Seaweed Coalition Steering Committee representative
• Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted (Denmark, Trinidad and Tobago), World Food Prize Laureate 2021 and Global Lead for Nutrition and Public Health, WorldFish (One CGIAR)
• Bailey Moritz (USA), Program Officer, Aquaculture, WWF and Safe Seaweed Coalition Steering Committee Representative
• Merete Tandstad (Norway), Senior Programme Coordinator, FAO

Summary conversation

• Valerie Hickey (USA), Global Director for Environment, Natural Resources and the Blue Economy, World Bank
• Árni Mathiesen (Iceland), Senior Advisor, Iceland Ocean Cluster

Linking to the broader Ocean agenda

• Peter Thomson (Fiji), UNSG Special Envoy for the Ocean

Closing and Thanks

Event outline

After opening remarks, the first part will be a mix of rapid fire, prepared remarks by each panelist on seaweed and its contributions to SDG14 targets – these are the SDG14 targets that seaweed contributes to, why, what is progress to date (with a visual that will track what is being said), and key partnerships and solutions that have contributed to this progress – followed by an unscripted moderated conversation amongst the panelists about what is needed to support continued progress, and other points that their fellow speakers may have made that they would like to reinforce of otherwise comment on. The second part will begin with another round of rapid-fire interventions, on the other SDGs seaweed contributes to (with another visual tracking those SDGs), followed by another conversation among the panelists.

That second part will also be informed by the conversation at the Safe Seaweed Coalition’s Seaweed Day the previous day, which will have showcased how seaweed is contributing to – or can contribute to – some of our most pressing problems of the day. That event will have included sessions on seaweed and food and nutrition security, the environment, and other sustainability issues.

A high-level conversation will wrap up the substance of the event and it will close with an intervention from the United Nations Secretary General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean.

Seaweed and sustainability

With its potential as a sustainable nutritious food source for humans, animals, and even plants, seaweed could play a multifaceted role in combating world hunger. Seaweed also holds great potential to innovatively decarbonize the economy and reduce land and ocean pollution through applications in multiple arenas, including medicine, packaging, and textiles. Seaweed can also help restore ocean biodiversity by providing natural habitat and food for marine life. It also has potential to mitigate climate change by sequestering and sinking carbon in the ocean. It sustains women’s economic empowerment in Asia and Africa. Also, seaweed production and processing support the resilience of coastal communities by providing new sources of employment and revenues. The time has come for the world to cultivate seaweed and repair the ocean: for a seaweed revolution.

Alignment with the theme of the Conference “Scaling up ocean action based on science and innovation for the implementation of Goal 14: stocktaking, partnerships and solutions”

This side event aligns directly with the Conference theme. It aims to demonstrate how scaling up the seaweed sector through science-based innovations is contributing to achieving SDG 14, along with many others, thereby providing a thorough stocktaking. In doing so, presenters will highlight the key partnerships and solutions that have contributed to this progress.

Please find the pdf version of the agenda here.

The event will be live-streamed, link to be provided soon!