About Us
The “Kelp Forest Foundation” (KFF) is a Netherlands-registered non-profit charity with a vision of harnessing the power of giant kelp to help restore the health of the planet.
Even though the ecological role and benefits of kelp are currently understudied, kelp forests are known to sequester huge amounts of carbon, provide long term solutions to climate change, and also serve as a foundation species for vast marine ecological pyramids.
The purpose of the foundation is to address the gap in science and knowledge around kelp forests’ ecosystem services. The KFF aims to raise the awareness of the economic and ecological importance of kelp forests, drive research, build knowledge and strengthen the science around wild forest restoration and cultivated kelp afforestation.
The research and results will be open access and made publicly available. In order to better enable all interested stakeholders, like governments, NGOs, researchers and companies, accelerate the awareness and application of kelp forests as powerful nature-based solutions to a range of environmental problems.
Funding for the foundation will come from a wide range of sources, including donations, grants, subsidies, prizes, and periodic contributions.
Our Team
Samantha Deane
Founding Director
Xu Ben Zhang
Research Program Lead
Dr. Lieschen Smith
Managing Director
Scientific Advisory
Prof. Carlos M. Duarte
Scientific Advisor
Dr. Ian Hendy
Scientific Advisor
Finn Ross
Scientific Advisor
Prof. Dorte Krause-Jensen
Scientific Advisor
Board of Directors
Caroline Slootweg
Board Chair
Daniel Hooft
Board Member
Sarah Mathies
Board Member
Tim Flannery
Chief Scientist
Kat Bruce
Board Member
Our Partners
Annual Reports
2021
2022
Our research project, “Offshore Kelp Cultivation as a Carbon Sink”, has been endorsed by the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development as a Decade Action.
The United Nations Decade of Ocean Science is a framework to enhance collaboration and delivery of projects focused on creating ‘an ocean we want’. The Decade Actions are projects that are collectively working in all ocean basins, strengthening the global momentum for ocean knowledge-based solutions.
The programme has endorsed an action by the Kelp Forest Foundation and the University of Cambridge. Our research project, “Offshore kelp cultivation as a carbon sink”, is being recognised as a project that enhances knowledge of the ocean, necessary to achieve sustainable development. In March 2023, the UN Ocean Decade endorsed 35 Decade Actions that are focused on the generation of qualitative and quantitative ocean knowledge to inform the development of solutions to contribute to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Our action is a collaborative research project with several research institutions including University of Cambridge, KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology), International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), ETH Zürich, University of Bremen and University of Namibia to understand and quantify the potential role of (cultivated) kelp as a carbon sink.
