The seaweed policy that India needs, and its implication to G20 agenda and 2030 Climate Goals
This article originally was featured in Technopolitik , a newsletter on technology geopolitics, from an Indian national interest perspective. I had the privilege to publish this article in the Technopolitik as a part of my graduate course in Public Policy at The Takshashila Institution . A course that has helped me to nurture and mature much of the thinking below, and taught me the basic mental models of thinking and designing public policy.
Guess what is common between your toothpaste, a thick creamy chicken soup, and biodegradable plastic.
The answer is seaweed.
For the uninitiated, seaweed is a macro alga produced by the ocean.?
High chances are that you might have heard about seaweed in the context of Sushi, but it has far wider applications across multiple industries apart from just-food.
We call it the 6 F’s – Food, Feed, Fertilizer, Fuel, Fiber, and Farma?
(Pardon the creative liberty with the Ph in Farma).
But wait there is more, One Google search or Amazon search on seaweed, will throw you a number of cosmetic names offering various skin-friendly applications of seaweed. And very soon, your neighboring microbrewery might sport a new favorite seaweed-brewed beer.?Cheers to that. But till then, let us look at certain steps to make that beer available faster.?
What makes seaweed more interesting is that you might be contributing to global climate-proofing by using seaweed-based products.?
Seaweed is completely naturally grown. All it needs is ample sunshine and salt water, no fertilizer. It is not only carbon negative but seaweed also absorbs a high amount of CO2, which ranks it very high on carbon sequestration ability, making our oceans healthy.
Seaweed helps in increasing the overall ocean biodiversity. Any seaweed farm, be it be the large moving sargassum bloom in the Pacific or a small community-based farm, seaweeds offer a rich oceanic habitat for fishes and other marine animals. You can easily see fish eggs, tiny fishes, and turtles symbiotically growing, feeding on the seaweed.
And the value-adds from seaweed are not only bio-derived but also bio-degradable and bio-compostable. Know the difference between the three here .
By the ocean, of the ocean, from the oceans
So, seaweed is environment-friendly, ocean-friendly, and has a host of business applications.
In short, the whole package offers a true-blue circular economical model.
There are over 12,000 species of seaweed documented so far, India alone has around 434 indigenous species. With the struggling marine fishing sector, seaweed has been a low-cost, easy-to-adopt, locally available additional livelihood option for many coastal families globally.?
Seaweed cultivation has been life-altering for the many struggling coastal economies. The success stories are plenty, you can look up one of them from Zanzibar , for your reference. Up to 85% of work in a seaweed farm is women-led, so while the men of the family are fishing in the sea, the women can bring in additional bucks through seaweed farming, taking less than 4 hours per day.
Now, one might wonder, with all these business possibilities, and a deep equitable and earth-friendly impact, why we do not hear more of it in India. Why is our struggling fisheries sector not adopting it or why is your supermarket rack not sporting a seaweed-based snack?
It is a complex subject, but here are my efforts in unpacking it, and building the narrative to stress the need for seaweed cultivation in India, from an economic lens, an impact lens, a climate lens, and a geo-political lens.
I talk about how seaweed cultivation nicely ties into India’s current G20 priorities and the G20 High-Level Principles on Lifestyles for Sustainable Development. The recent India-US joint statements speak of technological collaborations with a focus on green technology, climate change, sustainable agriculture, and maritime domain awareness, all of which can be exploited through a shared seaweed agenda.
Taking the opportunity, I also take you through a set of suggested guidelines for a seaweed policy, whose sole purpose will be to boost seaweed cultivation in India, starting at the margins and scaling up volumes to replace some of the $24.7 billion worth of crude oil imports we did in Q1FY22.
A tiny drop in the ocean
A total of 35 million tons of seaweed was produced globally in 2021, with India doing just about 0.02% of global production . Cultivating even 5% of India’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), an area of 100 lakh hectares, can yield a potential for 50 million jobs, and a carbon sequestration capacity of 10 Cr tons or 100 million tons. India generated 2.7 Billion tons of CO2 in 2021.
A target of 11.2 Million tons of seaweed production by 2025 is being promoted by the Prime Minister himself. The Central Marine Fisheries Institute (CMFRI)? did a study on 342 potential sites of seaweed cultivation in India and the government has allotted a budget of 642 crore exclusively under the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY ) to promote seaweed culture. The recent G20 summit also spoke about seaweed cultivation to realize the G20’s agenda for sustainability.
This report talks about how except for landlocked nations in the EU, the G20 member countries represent 45% of the world’s coastline, 65% of the world’s population, and contribute to 84% of the global economy. However, we also contribute to 79% of the world’s carbon emissions. So, it’s imperative for the G20 nations to plan towards using frameworks for Collective Actions for Sustainable Development for working towards rebuilding global marine health, a US$3 trillion economy.
And now coming to India.
The current seaweed story in India is similar to the aquaculture industry in the early 80’s. It needs training and technology to increase supply and market development to create demand.
Anything related to marine is more complex than land. India’s territorial waters and the EEZ is a complex overlap of multiple jurisdictions spread over areas controlled by the coastal police, the coast guards, and the navy. These are then layered with state and local fisheries departments and maritime boards. The many departments make it difficult for any seaweed enthusiast to understand whom to seek permission from. And often when enthusiasts have tried to grow them individually, they have been stopped for the lack of knowledge in asking the right authorities.
So, the sector needs de-regularization and decentralization. We can learn from countries like Tanzania which is much ahead of the curve.
Blue is the new green
Various recent dialogues are seen cutting across global forums concerning the blue economy. The coastal community, globally, is in the front lines of a shifting climate, experiencing sea-level rise, high sea surface temperatures, ocean pollution, ocean acidification, erosion, and increasing frequency of natural disasters such as tropical storms and cyclones. India given its geographic position is highly exposed to the altering coastal climate.
The overall Indian Ocean blue economic corridor supports a teeming population equivalent to a 3rd of the global population. The Indian Ocean is the world’s third largest body of water and commands 68.5 million square kilometers of a large socio-political and economically thriving mass. We have 3.9 million ha of estuaries, 0.5 million ha of coastal mangroves, 100+ km of salt pans, a brackish water lagoon of 1,100 sq kilometers, and million hectares of open shorelines.
The need of the hour is to arrive at a climate-resilient and sustainable solution for this large economic corridor while taking care of the food security of the affected millions spread across this coast.
A billion-dollar of goodness
Seaweed has long been established as a miracle crop for the environment, however, the business applications of seaweed offer no less economic value. Global markets have pegged seaweed to over $100 Bn market opportunity.?
A recent World Bank report talks about how the predicted seaweed market is set to grow across various industry sectors driven by multiple value adds.
For example, one of the value-added extracts from seaweed can help in substituting a considerable amount of Potash, a key ingredient of any fertilizer, which as a country we import 100% of our consumption needs. Potash, a source of Potassium, is used both for direct application as well as in combination with ‘N’ & ‘P’ nutrients in NPK fertilizers, which we currently import an amount of 4.5-5.0 MMT (Muriate of Potash) annually, amounting to Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000 Crore.
In the midst of rising concerns for our oceans globally, land-based Agri capacity saturating, and rising demand for everything sustainable and bio-degradable, seaweed is quite the super healer.?
Our green warriors on the blue front
For a 4 million Indian coastal fishing community, fishing days are getting shorter and grimmer. Cultivating seaweed requires a very little investment of less than Rs 3000 per raft, further subsidized through the PMMSY scheme, and just air and seawater to grow.? An average seaweed farm can employ up to 20 farmers and provide up to Rs 20k income per farmer. We have seen many such success stories in Tamil Nadu, a state that has pioneered seaweed cultivation in India, spearheaded by AquAgri Processing Private Limited , the Indian veterans in this business.
What makes seaweed a nexus of SDGs is that it helps tick-mark multiple SDGs – 2, 10, 12, 13, and 14.
Towards the sea of change
The following are the primary suggestions for articulating a seaweed policy for India
A provision for the amendment has been made in a recent 2023 bill. It is currently residing with the Expert Committee. We hope this is cleared soon basis which further de-regulation and market development can be made.?The NITI Aayog 's seaweed committee is actively working towards building a strong seaweed policy and we have seen pathways towards that being created through the recently launched Coastal Aquaculture Act 2023.
The above points have been put together with discussions with the Seaweed Association India . The association was formed early this year and is currently being headed by the five premier seaweed companies in India, ClimaCrew , AquAgri Processing Private Limited , Sea6 Energy Pvt Ltd. , SNAP Natural & Alginate Products Pvt. Ltd. , and Marine Hydrocolloids . The association is actively working towards improving the production volume and quantity of seaweed in India and also towards boosting consumer awareness and generating demand.
Tools of technology for the tailwind?
Any discourse on seaweed starts with identifying areas in the ocean that are suitable for growth. Marine spatial planning becomes very important not only to identify seaweed hotspots but also to find areas of least conflict with any ongoing fishing activities. Site analysis and identification are done by analyzing various parameters, both marine and weather, none of which is possible using manual methods. Here is where analyzing satellite data and modeling it using advanced machine learning models can help in both descriptive and predictive analytics.
The application of space data analysis in combination with IoT gathered in-situ data will reap benefits to the marine sector similar to what satellite data did to the land agriculture sector . Also, being out in the sea, these sites are much more prone to harsh weather conditions, so both site identification pre-cultivation and site monitoring during cultivation will be extremely vital. And this nicely ties into the G20 discussion on the use of data to advance the 2030 agenda.
In fact, the agenda under climate action talks about using the power of satellite imagery, a strong power that India has been building in-house through its space sector advancement. The Indian Space Policy 2023 talks largely about collaboration around space. The recently signed Artemis Accords make this dialogue stronger, by signaling a growing global corporation in space and using space data for collaborations on Earth.?
At ClimaCrew, we are harnessing the power of satellite data to analyze potential seaweed spots across Indian coasts. This is done by studying various marine parameters that contribute to the floating algae index. The ClimaCrew GIS team in their early avatar at Numer8 has developed the @N8Ofish app using similar spectral analysis of satellite data which is currently live and in use by the marine fishing communities.
Strengthening our Geopolitical stance – the deep-sea, tech-for-good, and data-driven impact
India’s G20 Priorities read 6 different focus areas which include accelerating progress on SDGs, technological transformations, tech-enabling development in sectors such as agriculture, and women-led development. Also, the revised climate pledge for India has two quantitative targets
1) To reduce the emissions intensity of its GDP by 45% by 2030 and
2) Derive about 50% electricity from non-fossil fuel-based energy resources by 2030
We are hearing a lot of discussions of trebling green energy and halving emissions as of the current G20 discussion. Seaweed cultivation is a golden chance for India to tick all of the above.
From improving its neighboring ocean conditions to building a domestic sustainable circular economy to doing massive import substitution in agriculture, and alleviating food security issues across impoverished coastal millions, it will enable us to contribute on a large scale to the global commons .? And with using the right tools of technology, the power of our space sector, we can lead the world in showcasing the power of technology for good.
Seaweed is truly for the oceans, from the oceans, and by the oceans, and an essential commodity for building a more marine-conscious India. And by focusing on seaweed, we should be able to focus and address other large problems troubling this sector and bring change, globally.?
The ClimaCrew team is working towards building the world's first seaweed digital platform that will establish the best practices of seaweed cultivation, processing, and handling across the supply chain, along with integrating and aggregating the highly disintegrated supply and demand market. More on us https://www.climacrew.in/
Ref: India's G20 Presidency https://static.pib.gov.in/WriteReadData/specificdocs/documents/2023/mar/doc202336166901.pdf
Ref: Blue Economy Assets of India:?
Ref : Publication: Global Seaweed: New and Emerging Markets Report, 2023
Ref : Earth has lost a third of arable land in past 40 years, scientists say