Seaweed Cultivation as a Means to Realise the G20’s Agenda for Sustainability

This policy brief proposes promoting seaweed cultivation as a potential solution to address the many socioeconomic and environmental challenges facing the world today. Indeed, seaweed has many applications, including as a food source, and in fertilisers, biofuels, plastic alternatives, animal feed, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and sequestering carbon. Furthermore, seaweed is one of the major components of primary biomass production in coastal marine ecosystems and plays an integral ecological role as a habitat and a substratum for invertebrates, fish, mammals, and birds. As such, the G20, which accounts for around 84 percent of the global economy and has access to nearly half of the world’s coastline, can catalyse a paradigm shift in seaweed cultivation through a concerted and coordinated strategy. This alternative could also have a positive impact on several Sustainable Development Goalsa if strong policy interventions are made by the group’s members.