Has the Netherlands figured out how to mainstream seaweed?

Farmers in Vietnam face rising sea levels but rejected the city's water engineering projects. They prefer gradual measures to cope with climate change so scientists have allowed the farmers to steer the conversation.

Seaweed is a sustainable and nutritious food source, which could be a solution to feeding a growing global population—the tricks getting people to eat it. Several Dutch companies are serving up seaweed in familiar formats like burgers, pasta, and falafel to make it an easier sell. They're also pioneering infrastructure to make farmed seaweed affordable.

Around the world, farmers are turning to permaculture and agrodiversity to create higher yields than chemical fertilizer while also avoiding the negative effects of conventional farming's focus on monocrop. Although results aren't fully conclusive, evidence does point to the success of low-impact farming strategies.

In Jamaica, locally-led coral nurseries are working to restore the coral reef that have been lost to natural and manmade disasters. These organizations have small coral gardens where they can grow free of danger and when they’re big enough, are transported to a reef. With coral and fish being so codependent in the underwater ecosystem, the regrowth of coral has meant an increase of fish and fishing for the country, which many people rely on for their livelihood.

A new submersible machine produced by the Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida allows scientists to more effectively spot phytoplankton blooms which can cause red tide. This harmful algal bloom event can wreak havoc on ecosystems and the Programmable Hyperspectral Seawater Scanner is an improvement on an older model. While the maintenance cost can be high, scientists hope the instrument will be able to detect harmful algal blooms early in order to prevent outbreaks.

During the Industrial Revolution, farmers began harvesting monoculture crops which produced promising profits but proved harmful to the soil and weakened the immune capabilities of native plants. Lately, however, permaculture practices have been on the rise amongst farmers to better diversify their yields and reduce reliance on chemicals.

Fruit farmers in the Pacific Northwest are implementing mitigation strategies like shade, produce coatings, and water misters to protect their crops from extreme heat.

A grassroots campaign to encourage more environmentally sustainable diets called the Plant Based Treaty is picking up support across the globe. Pledgers make their own decisions on how to best take action.

Residents of North Cove, Washington, are rebuilding their eroded coastal beaches with a form of dynamic revetments in which long cobble berms are deposited along the beach. The rocks cause waves to slow and drop sand instead of crashing into the coastline and eroding it.

When organic materials like wood chips and manure are heated in the absence of oxygen they create a black powdery substance called biochar. This material prevents the release of carbon into the atmosphere from the natural decaying process. And it has other beneficial uses like improving soil fertility, too.