a hidden hero for people and nature
We’re celebrating receiving almost £1 million over three years from The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest community funder in the UK, to unlock the power of seaweed. Seaweed is a hidden hero for people and nature and could urgently help address the climate crisis.
Working in partnership, the funding will allow us to work with coastal communities in Pembrokeshire to develop a model of community-led regenerative seaweed farming and support the scale-up of a sustainable, responsible UK-wide industry that benefits local communities, nature and climate.
Seaweed rooted in Welsh culture
In Wales, and across the UK there is a long tradition of harvesting wild seaweed, which has gone into foods such as laverbread in Wales.
Unlike other cultivated crops, seaweed doesn’t require fertiliser, pesticides, freshwater or land, and it grows rapidly. Regenerative seaweed farms can provide a sustainable and healthy food source, and a range of seaweed derived products (including food, animal feed, pharmaceuticals and fertilisers); as well as ecosystem services such as mitigating climate change, improving water quality, enhancing biodiversity and facilitating economic growth for coastal communities.
It’s a team effort!
WWF UK will be working in partnership with three core partners including one of the pioneers of seaweed farming in the UK, Câr-y-Môr in St David’s, Pembrokeshire, to raise awareness of the benefits of seaweed and its rich heritage in the region.
Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS), are working to capture the perspectives of community stakeholders in Pembrokeshire who are impacted by, or involved in, seaweed farming; Plant Ecology Beyond Land (PEBL) will monitor the impacts of seaweed farms on biodiversity and climate, creating an open access database that seaweed farmers and communities can directly feed into to develop sustainable practices.
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© Ashley Cooper -
© Câr-y-Môr -
© SAMS -
© PEBL -
© Ben Porter / WWF Cymru
The Climate Action Fund
This grant comes from the Climate Action Fund, a £100 million commitment over 10 years from The National Lottery Community Fund to support communities across the UK to take action on climate change and involve more people in climate action. This forms part of one of the funder’s four key missions in its 2030 strategy, ‘It starts with community’ - supporting communities to be environmentally sustainable.
The National Lottery Community Fund recently launched its strategy, ‘It starts with community’, which will underpin its efforts to distribute at least £4 billion of National Lottery funding by 2030.
As part of this, the funder has four key missions, which are to support communities to come together, be environmentally sustainable, help children and young people thrive and enable people to live healthier lives.
National Lottery players raise over £30 million a week for good causes across the UK. Thanks to them, last year (2023/24) The National Lottery Community Fund awarded over half a billion pounds (£686.3 million) of life-changing funding to communities across the UK, supporting over 13,700 projects to turn their great ideas into reality.