As climate warms, the Arctic offers increasing potential for responsible economic development. Indeed, new industries, from aquaculture to ocean wind-power generation, are testing these opportunities both on land and at sea.
If this development is to be sustainable, however, damaged ecosystems must be restored and environmental impacts must be prevented or mitigated. Marine macroalgae are, therefore, increasingly in focus as key components in ensuring that the growing blue economies are sustainable.
Restoration of degraded kelp habitat is critical to promoting healthy ecosystems and biodiversity. Seaweed farming and harvesting can offer new economic possibilities for supporting local communities and providing raw materials for human food, animal feed, and other industrial products.
Macroalgae can also be part of multitrophic aquaculture solutions to mitigate nutrient loading of local habitats. And finally, seaweeds can be part of nature-based solutions for maintaining biodiversity levels in coastal and open-ocean industrial development. This side session will investigate the increasing roles macroalgae can have in the development of the blue economies of the North.
A more detailed program will come.
You will have to be registered for Arctic Frontiers this day to participated in the side-event.
Organisers are Akvaplan-niva, NIVA, Ava Ocean and SINTEF Ocean.
