The Global Ecological Tipping Point: the time to act is NOW!

Our global engagement with ecologists and scientists has provided clear evidence that the scale and speed of kelp loss is significantly greater than we had imagined.  

To accelerate deployment and impact, Urchinomics has decided to establish a new division called “Urchinomics Impact”.  Urchinomics Impact will be a new social enterprise that will be tasked to actively pursue high impact urchin ranching and kelp restoration opportunities.

Impact Investment

We invite impact investors, charitable donors, non profits, and other strategic partners to work with us to develop and deploy impact investment strategies to help restore kelp forests faster than what we can do on our own. Projects that fit with Urchinomics Impacts´ mandate and score high on ecological impact will have access to all of Urchinomics´ intellectual property, including future technologies, supply chain and market access, at nominal, non-commercial, “Impact” rates.

The Facts: The critical importance of Coastal Ecosystems and Kelp*

• The ocean represents 70% of the planet’s surface and its coastal ecosystems provide 60% of the entire ocean’s ecosystem services, despite representing less than 8.5% of the ocean.

• Coastal ecosystems provide the same amount of ecosystem services as all terrestrial ones combined, therefore making coastal ecosystems THE MOST valuable ecosystems on the planet.

• Within the coastal ecosystem, the kelp ecosystem forests are equivalent to all the tropical forests on the planet, despite terrestrial tropical forests covering 10x more surface area than kelp forests.

• Kelp forests represent 0.4% of the planet’s surface, yet generates 11.4% of the planet’s ecosystem services and seagrass/algae beds (kelp forests) are about on par with Estuaries and swamps/floodplains as the world’s most valuable ecosystems per ha.

 (*The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital Robert Costanza et al. NATURE|VOL 387|15 MAY 1997)

High Priority Regions

With the help of scientists and our global partners, Urchinomics Impact has identified 3 major regions where we can rapidly scale up in order to make a significant difference in the kelp ecosystem:

• All of California

• Northern Norway

• Southern Japan

Connect

We invite potential partners to reach out to info@urchinomics.com to explore how we can work together to restore kelp forests in your region. If you are not from these regions, we would still like to hear from you but please be patient with us as we grow our infrastructure to handle more global initiatives.