CACOR Live | Anitra Thorhaug | Solution for Global Climate Change – How can Canada and the world use seagrasses to store carbon dioxide? | 7 Oct 2026 at 13:30 EST
CACOR Members and Associates are invited to the following CACOR Live presentation
Speaker: Anitra Thorhaug
Subject: Solution for Global Climate Change – How can Canada and the world use seagrasses to store carbon dioxide?
Time: 7 Oct 2026 13:30 Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Summary:
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has long urged the removal and safe storage of excess carbon dioxide. Although coastal plants occupy less than 0.1% of Earth’s surface, they store more than half of carbon dioxide and dissolved carbon. Seagrass is especially effective and offers extensive global restoration potential. Large-scale restoration began 54 years ago through work addressing damage at Florida’s Turkey Point nuclear power plant and other sites, and the methods have since been shared across Europe and the developing world. Reviews of thousands of projects report consistent success (Van Katwijk, Thorhaug et al., 2016; Thorhaug et al., 2025). Yet restoration at scale remains limited to places such as Chesapeake Bay, Biscayne Bay, South Texas, the Netherlands, and Australia, with almost no large projects in developing countries despite lower costs. The key questions are how Canada can contribute effectively; who will finance local and global restoration; whether governments and major philanthropies will participate; and who will communicate the evidence to the public, industry, and commerce. CaCOR can help advance this discussion once the evidence is fully detailed.
Biography:
Anitra Thorhaug, Ph.D. Marine Biologist and Chemical Oceanographer from USA, Prof. Thorhaug has set policies for coastal sustainability and regeneration of global coastlines for more than a half century of intense field and laboratory work around the world. Among other positions she has worked with United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization ( Fisheries) , with the United Nations Development Agency, UN Environment Programme, World Bank, and International Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO. She has held faculty and research positions at Yale University, Univ. California Berkeley, University of Miami RSMAS, Florida International University. She presently acts as advisor on The USA Carbon Committee, and the Texas General Land Office Coastal Advisory Committee. Blue carbon and Global solutions to climate change are a focus of her larger vision presently. She is known as the original pioneer in Seagrass restoration from 1973 onward with the first large scale seagrass restoration, carried out for nuclear power plant. and acts as a global expert in tropical seagrass restoration. She has carried out projects on all continents, and all ocean basins except the arctic. Additionally, she has been President of USA Club of Rome 5 times, and is Full member of the International Club of Rome in which she and Ted Manning were chairs of the Voyageurs, and is a leader of Education for Hope.
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