I can imagine that many of us have already experienced this. You have an idea / a goal and start working towards it. Clarifications have to be made, investments are made and agreements and coalitions are entered into – the ball starts rolling, you think. But, as is so often the case, you haven’t taken bureaucracy into account. The authorities, the state, “suddenly” have what feels like new objections that you’ve never heard of before, but which have been in the pipeline for years. If only someone had thought of communicating this in an accessible way.
That’s how my Sjøgård – the Sea Farm AS is currently doing. After initially receiving consistently positive feedback and reviewing the existing documents regarding my application for a sea area to be used for algae farming, “suddenly” such major concerns have arisen – especially due to a report that has existed since 2017, which proposes that aquaculture / fish farms should no longer be permitted in the “Vega World Heritage Site” area and the buffer zones.
Actually a good suggestion. What is a cultural heritage worth if it can continue to be exploited by modern, destructive industries as before? Two things are still very tedious for me as a future algae farmer:
- The report explicitly mentions aquaculture / fish farms. The fact that Norway, or rather Nordland, is expanding to include all variations of aquaculture, seems pretty heavy stuff to me. The differences between an algae farm and a fish farm, for example, could hardly be greater. The former is a great support for local biodiversity and for the reconstruction of a healthy (marine) climate. The latter is pretty much the opposite.
- The zoning plan for the municipality of Vega, where my future cultivation area is located, is already several years past its expiration date. But only this version is available because there is no new one yet. And in it, the zone of my application is clearly indicated as an aquaculture area. The mayor of the municipality confirmed this to me in writing.
I must add that things have started moving again in the last few weeks. The relevant offices of the Norwegian state have decreed that the ban should only apply to salmon and trout farms. Now the ball is with the Fylke (something like the canton / state), which has to adapt the rules for the municipality, which has always been very supportive and has campaigned for Sjøgård – the Sea Farm AS.
So everything is going well. It’s just taking a lot longer than I think it should. If everyone involved had studied the documents with the appropriate background knowledge and drawn the – in my opinion – correct conclusions, less water would have flowed down the Rhine, less money would have been spent and the algae would already be in the water.
I will definitely keep at it and in the not too distant future I will grow algae, which, among other things, bind CO2 up to 20 times faster than our forests. You can get involved too and do your part to absorb CO2: