Regenerative Resources Co

We solve a gordian knot of problems--poverty, biodiversity loss, ecological degradation, and food and water scarcity,within a  specific bioregion:  desertified and degraded coastal areas in the tropics and subtropics. 

Our solution is the world's first regenerative aquaculture, which we call Regenerative Seawater Agroforestry (RSA).  We use the effluent from shrimp aquacultures to grow mangrove wetlands & forests, and in turn grow the aquaculture feed from the same forests, creating a circular, closed loop, regenerative system.  

There are over 15 million hectares globally where this system is applicable, with astounding potential. Deployed globally, this system will sequester gigatons of carbon, provide habitat for thousands of species, and increase freshwater resources, while creating circular, regenerative economies and lifting hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty.  

We are solving the problem of resilient ecosystems, particularly with mangroves, by creating scalable mangrove agroforestries that enable reforestation, afforestation, restoration, and conservation. 

Mangrove deforestation is a global problem, affecting millions of people, and also deeply affecting the health of our oceans. About half of the world's mangroves have been lost since 1970, with aquaculture and agriculture as the primary causes of deforestation. 

The primary factors of this degradation are related to an old and deep pattern--that we as a species solve environmental issues by exacerbating human ones, or we solve human issues by exacerbating environmental problems.  Our systems combine the two, such that we can create economies that heal mangrove ecologies.  Functionally, this means creating new indigenous patterns whereby people act as a keystone species to heal and steward ecosystems, that in turn enable the people to build wealth. 

Mangroves are a critical ecosystem--they cover only 2% of ocean space, but are responsible for 50% of sediment carbon sequestration of the oceans.  More than 60% of all ocean species rely on mangroves during key parts of their life cycle.  Mangroves offer the greatest protection against sea level rise and hurricanes. 

Regenerative Seawater Agroforestry (RSA) can be deployed at any latitude where mangroves grow.  Using seawater and aquacultures, we grow mangrove alleycropping systems, mangrove woodland, and mangrove wetlands.  Each component has a separate management protocol, but together they function as a non-polluting, closed-loop, regenerative system.

RSA transforms degraded landscapes into productive ecologies, and has significant effects both economically and ecologically. 

ECONOMIC EFFECTS:

RSA produces shrimp, finfish, mushrooms, biofuels, animal fodder, wood products, biochar, micro & macro algaes, and shellfish, and the externalities of this system are the growth of new mangrove ecosystems.  As a commercial system it forms the backbone of new regenerative economies where poverty & degradation are prevalent. 

ECOLOGICAL EFFECTS:

In our first iteration of this system, in Eritrea, the number of bird species living on site increased from 25 to over 230.  Floods that would have run into the sea instead were intercepted and began to refill shallow aquifers.  Measurements on carbon sequestration lead us to estimate that by year 6, the entire system becomes net carbon sequestering.  

In other words, this is an economic system that increases biodiversity, increases fresh water, creates soil & sequesters carbon, while lifting people out of poverty. 

There are four major applications we are developing for this system:

1:  Creating new economies in fishing communities.

In Laguna San Ignacio, a UNESCO biosphere and whale sanctuary in Baja California Sur, Mexico, fishing villages are partnering with us to develop RSA along their coastlines.  In these communities, their catch has decreased by 90% in the last decade, and their fishery faces a total collapse.  By establishing RSA systems in these communities, we can provide jobs for every single fisherman, and give the fishery rest for multiple years.  Parallel to this economic development, we are working with them to reforest 8000 hectares of mangroves within the biosphere, to assist in increasing the health of the fishery, and to provide a better nursery for the baby Pacific Gray Whales that are born here every year.   After the fishery has enough years of rest to recover, we will work to implement sustainable fishery management.  The mangrove conservation and rest provided to the fishery are enabled by our RSA system and the economic space it creates for the people. 

This pattern is relevant across thousands of villages in the globe, and we have had some leads in Senegal, Ghana, and other areas of W. Africa to engage in similar projects. 

2:  Retrofitting existing aquaculture facilities.

Aquaculture is a dirty and polluting industry in general, and is one of the main industries responsible for the loss of mangroves globally.  We can retrofit many of the aquaculture facilities to stop polluting and become the source of nutrient to grow mangrove forests & wetlands.  In turn we can help make these facilities more cost effective and resilient, as we have a proprietary aquaculture feed in development that is produced by the same mangrove agroforestries we grow.

3:  Drought-proof animal fodder without the use of freshwater.
Much of the Middle East and East Africa rely on imported fodder from Australia and the United States for their dairy & meat industries.  Oftentimes, the production of this fodder is a major stress to water resources.  For instance, Saudi Arabia's largest dairy is consuming enormous amounts of water in Southern California and Arizona to produce alfalfa, which is shipped to dairies north of Riyadh.  Through our RSA system we can produce 100% of the fodder needs in these regions, without the use of freshwater.  This has significant implications for water & food security globally, but particularly in regions where nomadism and pastoralism are still a strong part of the culture, but where freshwater resources are scarce.

4:  Seawater Intrusion into coastal aquifers.

In the gulf of Mexico, seawater intrusion is leading to coastal aquifers becoming more and more brackish.  In Texas, this is already starting to threaten farms that are near the coast, as traditional farming and grazing systems cannot handle the salinity.  Our RSA system is deeply relevant here--as they can contribute to the greater health of the mangrove ecologies on the coast, while making use of brackish water to maintain the productivity of these landscapes. 

These are four major applications of our RSA system that we are working to deploy--with projects in Mexico, Texas, and Namibia as our likely first installments.  We have decades of experience in approaching and managing projects across multicultural and multilingual teams, and are dedicated to deep partnerships with local communities, who in the end will manage and operate these systems.  For instance, we have spent over 18 months developing relationships with the fishing villages we are partnering with in Laguna San Ignacio, having held multiple townhall meetings, and developed relationships with NGO's, local politicians, and other stakeholders.  In Namibia, we are partnering with local governments and local businesses in a public-private partnership, and guided by our local partners in all aspects of our project development.

Unless people become stewards of their ecologies, we will continue to degrade them as they are the primary source of the resources we use to live.  Where ecological degradation and poverty are deeply intertwined, we create wealth by engaging in ecological regeneration.   Just as people are the primary cause of degradation, people can also be the primary solution to healing our world, and that requires establishing regenerative systems that align people's incentives with ecological health and lead to the creation of new indigenous patterns.  This is what our systems do. 

We did the first iteration of our RSA system in Eritrea, from 1999-2004.  By year three we had 800 employees, were exporting a ton of shrimp to the EU annually, and had a women's co-op that managed the community's fodder & grazing animals.  Unfortunately, this system was too successful, as it was seized by the Eritrean Army in 2004, and we were forced to burn our records at gunpoint, and given 48 hours to leave the country.  

So while we have already done a prototype, we have no system currently in operation.  We tried to get another system going in Egypt in 2009, which was stymied by the Arab Spring. 

Today we have revamped the business model, financial modeling, our product stream, and our strategy, and are ready to deploy iterations of Regenerative Seawater Agroforestry with our first three projects in Mexico, Namibia, and Texas. 

There is nothing conventional about our Regenerative Seawater Agroforestries, but the most innovative aspects are our regenerative approach, our use of seawater & degraded landscapes, our methodologies for growing crops, and the choreography between multiple components to create an ecologically sound and regenerative system.   Some examples:

1:  Seawater as the source of productivity.  Using seawater to grow crops on degraded and salinized landscapes is a fundamental innovation. 

2:  Aquacultures as fertilizer.  Where other aquaculture systems are responsible for heavy amounts of pollution & degradation, we convert aquaculture effluent into fertilizer to grow mangrove forests. 

3:  Cropping systems:  mangrove alleycrop, mangrove coppice, and mangrove wetlands.  No other entity on earth manages these systems the way we do:

• Alleycropping mangroves has never been done commercially.  We take the best practices of agroforestry, in the use of integrated pest management & diversification of perennial and annual crops, but apply them in a seawater setting!

• Mangrove coppicing has no historical precedent but managing mangroves in a copse will extend the trees' lives and provide a continuous source of both leave & wood material, which are critical inputs to the rest of our systems. 

• We develop constructed mangrove wetlands as an agricultural productive system.  Mangroves in the wild are a major source of all commercially fished species, as well as crustaceans and shellfish.  Yet we are the only entity globally that has constructed mangrove wetlands to produce these goods on otherwise desolate and salinized landscapes. 

Currently:   20 (includes our teams in Namibia, Mexico, and the USA)

In one year:   about 10,000 (we estimate having over 600 employees across 3-5 projects by the end of 2022, and about 10,000 indirect employment opportunities created by our projects). 

In 5 years:  25,000. 

 
These projects take 5 years before they hit full productivity; they move at the speed of ecology.  But in each region where we establish a primary project, there are hundreds of thousands of hectares that we can expand to, fractaling out in job creation, mangrove restoration, and agroecological development.  When we read "directly and meaningfully" affect, we are not taking into account the people we will inspire or give hope to through our media. 

So while we do have the potential to directly affect millions of people, the rate at which we expand is determined by the amount of degraded land that we can transform into productive ecosystems.  We estimate going from 0 to 1 projects will take as long as going from 1 to 10, and from 10 to 100. 

Key metrics for us that show we're going the right way:

1:  Biological:  

• number of mangrove trees grown, both in conservation, and in productive systems (our goal is one billion mangroves grown for the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration, though it may take us 15 years rather than 10).
• Increases in biodiversity--we will measure baseline and changes to biodiversity on the landscapes and waterscapes we manage, with birds as a major indicator.  We intend to track biodiversity on our corporate financial statements, similar to earnings per share, but # of animals we've created habitat for per share. 
• Carbon sequestered--this is critical not just for a revenue source but as part of our marketing and to verify that we are actually doing what we say we are.

2:  Economic: 

• Jobs created, both direct & indirect.
• Revenues & profits.
• Jobs opportunities for women created.
• Children of our employees sent to school.

Our US Team has 6 full-time staff. 
Our Mexico Team has 4 full-time staff, and 6 part-time. 
Our Namibia team is an amalgamation of 3 different entities with whom we are doing a joint venture; the other two entities have a total of 5 full-time staff for that project.

We are the only team on the planet that has done a commercial scale version of these regenerative seawater agroforestries before. 

Aside from the actual system, one of the reasons previous attempts have failed was a lack of business acumen and lack of good financial modeling and business planning (a typical version of engineers and scientists developing brilliant ideas but not knowing how to bring them to market).   We have learned the lessons from previous attempts at deploying this system, revamped the business model, the financial modeling, the finance strategy, and added key team members who bring critical experience. 

Between our founding members, we speak 10 languages, have lived and worked in 14 countries, and have deep experience in economic development & regenerative agricultures. 

We also have a team of advisors who are experts in every component of our systems and business--aquaculture, mycology, agronomy, agroforestry, ecology, business development, CPG businesses, finance, and policy. 

Our Mexico team is deeply connected in Baja California Sur, and are locally-known and respected experts in their field.  Wherever we develop these systems, we intend to maximize use of local knowledge, local expertise, and local resources, and our experiences in international development have taught us the right way to do that. 

RRC will never discriminate against individuals on the basis of race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, disability, age, genetic
information, veteran status, ancestry, or national or ethnic origin.

Furthermore, RRC's  commitment to these principles is a key part of our overall success:

Because we intend to have operations globally, we need to have a team that is culturally adaptable, flexible, and cognizant of cultural differences and local realities.  Culture will make or break our success. 

By definition, that means we need a team with a diverse set of experiences, attitudes, abilities, and origins, that are able to facilitate the implementation of our regenerative systems so that they integrate with local cultures.  Without a diverse leadership team, this will be impossible to pull off. 

Furthermore, one of the primary reasons that international development, and economic development fail, is because they are not inclusive of local peoples and their understanding of local realities.  For our systems to succeed, being inclusive of all the stakeholders that we will impact is an necessity.  Thus we are committed to the principle of inclusion, accepting of all stakeholders, and even expanding that principle to include wildlife and biodiversity as key stakeholders of our operations. 

Just as there is a deep connection between poverty & ecological degradation, there is also a deep relationship between community wealth, community resilience, and ecological health.  It is this relationship where we focus in creating sustainable communities. 

Our regenerative aquacultures have the capacity to create alternative circular economies for communities that rely on fishing for their wellbeing.  In fact, this is one of the main dynamics for a project we are developing in a UNESCO biosphere in Baja California Sur, Mexico.  We are partnering with fishing villages to give them the space and time to rest their fisheries, via the mechanism of creating a separate regenerative economy.  In conjunction with mangrove reforestation, the multi-year rest period for their fishery will allow for restoration & the establishment of sustainable fishery management.  This is a fractaled system that can be duplicated in arid landscapes of the tropics & subtropics. 

The systems we are deploying are functionally mangrove agroforestries, and as we develop projects we will grow hundreds of millions of mangroves, which are among the most efficient nature-based solutions for carbon sequestration.  Moreover, because these systems are a critical piece of a greater regenerative economic development, the incentives to protect & steward these systems and the ecologies we restore are built in.  By combining ecological restoration with regenerative economic development, we create incentives for people to be stewards of their landscapes.  This strengthens both the conservation objectives of our systems and allows for the establishment of new indigenous patterns.