Seafields’ faulty promises in the Caribbean

Our oceans are not a testing ground for profit-driven experiments or carbon-market gambling!

A UK startup called Seafields has been experimenting with sinking seaweed in the deep ocean, outlining plans to pump deep ocean water to the surface (a form of marine geoengineering called artificial upwelling). The aim? ‘Carbon removal,’ for the purpose of generating carbon credits to be sold to the world's biggest polluters (so that they can keep on polluting). 

Seafields’ false solutions debunked:
Seafields claims that, by cultivating large-scale invasive seaweed species in the Caribbean, it can:

• Solve the Caribbean’s Sargassum crisis,
• Draw down CO2 through seaweed cultivation, and
• Replace fossil fuels with biofuel.

These are classic false solution narratives - science has warned that, instead, its methods will likely:

• Lead to ocean de-oxygenation,
• Impact marine organisms, and
• Disturb the ocean’s natural ecosystems. 

Ocean-grabbing for carbon credits:

If Seafields’ business model sounds familiar, it’s because it’s part of the carbon market playbook - just as REDD allowed corporations to grab forests from Indigenous Peoples in the name of carbon offsetting, start-ups like Seafields and their partners want to turn the ocean into the next carbon credit casino. 

Meanwhile, the people who will pay the price for these experiments are the fishing communities, seaweed gatherers, and coastal peoples of the Caribbean and Global South who depend on healthy oceans for their lives and livelihoods.

What does this look like on the ground?

• Caribbean coastal communities losing access to the seaweed commons and fishing grounds they have tended for generations.
• Indigenous Peoples and small-scale fishers being pushed out as industrial monoculture seaweed farming moves in.
• A company planning to grow 15 times more Sargassum than the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt being given free rein (claiming to solve a Sargassum crisis by creating more Sargassum!
• Experimental seaweed sinking off the coast of Barbados despite regulatory frameworks such as the London Convention and London Protocol (LC/LP) treating these technologies as marine pollution under the category of marine geoengineering.
• Unproven artificial upwelling technology that could destabilize ocean circulation, disrupt fisheries and harm marine life.
• Public money from UK and German government agencies funding experiments that benefit carbon traders, not communities or ecosystems.
• Carbon credit schemes that allow Global North polluters and elites to continue emitting, in the middle of a climate emergency, while the Global South absorbs the ecological fallout.

How does this connect to international policy?
Seafields is sidestepping international regulatory frameworks based on the precautionary principle such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and London Convention and Protocol (LC/LP).

As the climate crisis worsens, there is mounting pressure to legitimize these risky technologies in our oceans. Discussions at the UNFCCC’s Ocean and Climate change dialogues are pushing for seaweed-based blue carbon projects.    

The report is a must-read for civil society organizations, negotiators, people’s movements and allies.