Halophytes/Saline Water/Deserts/Wastelands Nexus as a Scalable Climate Mitigation including Freshwater Impacts

Abstract

Climate change is rapidly exacerbating and adding to major-to-existential issues associated with freshwater availability and utilization. The massive, thus far untapped saline/salt water/ocean—wastelands/deserts—Halophytes resources nexus can, at scale and profitably, provide major climate change mitigation and greatly alleviate most extant freshwater issues. Approaches include ocean fertilization and saline/seawater agriculture on deserts and wastelands to sequester massive amounts of CO2 and methane and for food, freeing up some 70% of the freshwater now utilized by current agriculture for direct human use. This also enables the production of huge amounts of biofuels and biomass-based chemical feedstock employing the massive capacity of cheap saline/seawater and cheap deserts and wastelands. Overall, saline/seawater can, uniquely, at the scale of the climate and freshwater issues, without desalinization, profitably, utilizing extant technologies, some 40% of the land that is deserts/wastelands, and the 97% of the water that is saline/seawater rapidly, seriously, address land, freshwater, food, energy, and climate.

Keywords

• halophytes
• seawater agriculture
• CO₂ sequestration
• climate mitigation
• droughts