What If We Get It Right?

How can you move from dread to durable action in the face of climate chaos? In What If We Get It Right?, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson argues that the posture of possibility is not a mood but a method. She invites you to treat “What if we get it right?” as an organizing question that channels science, policy, finance, design, culture, and everyday civic life toward specific, just outcomes. This is disciplined optimism: you hold the hard physics and social inequities in view, then aim your imagination at futures that are detailed enough to mobilize real people, power, and money.

Johnson opens by acknowledging the emotional whiplash you feel—between despair and stubborn hope—and insists that imagination, focused by facts, produces grit. She blends personal narrative (her “Ocean Love Story”) with a pragmatic tool you can use immediately: the climate action Venn diagram—where your skills, what brings you joy, and what solutions need doing overlap. The book’s mosaic of interviews, poems, and frameworks shows you how a believable better future looks, why justice must be centered, and how to find a role that sustains you. (Note: this solutions-first scaffolding echoes Drawdown, but Johnson foregrounds culture and equity as core design constraints, not add-ons.)

Start with reality, then widen the frame

A brief “Reality Check” and an interview with climate scientist Kate Marvel ground you in physical limits—CO2 at ~420 ppm, oceans absorbing >90% of excess heat, accelerating sea-level rise, and tipping elements with uncertain thresholds. Marvel clarifies that the biggest uncertainty is human behavior: scenarios hinge on our choices. That scientific spine justifies Johnson’s thesis: pairing mitigation with adaptation, and planning across risk envelopes, compels faster, smarter action now.

Treat nature and design as infrastructure

You then widen the frame to the world that supports you: water cycles, soils, forests, mangroves, and cities. Judith D. Schwartz shows how restoring living systems cools land, stores carbon, buffers floods, and revives livelihoods—from beavers and reindeer to the Al Baydha Project and blue-carbon coastlines. Designers like Kate Orff, Bryan C. Lee Jr., and Paola Antonelli push you to see streets, shorelines, and buildings as climate infrastructure. Living Breakwaters off Staten Island doubles as habitat and a civic learning hub; design justice co-creates with frontline communities; circular building practices slash embodied emissions.

Follow the money and the story

Johnson threads two accelerants throughout: finance and culture. Bill McKibben’s divestment campaigns shrink fossil fuel social license; Régine Clément’s CREO Syndicate organizes family offices to take early risk; Jigar Shah’s DOE Loan Programs Office de-risks first-of-a-kind infrastructure (think massive hydrogen storage at ACES in Utah). In parallel, storytellers shift what feels normal and desirable: Adam McKay, Franklin Leonard, and Kendra Pierre‑Louis argue that genre-diverse films and solutions journalism change politics faster than white papers alone.

Power, policy, and accountability

Power-building sits at the center. Youth leaders Xiye Bastida and Ayisha Siddiqa model moral clarity fused with organizing craft; Rhiana Gunn‑Wright explains how the Green New Deal reframed climate as jobs and justice, moving the Overton window and seeding the Inflation Reduction Act’s industrial policy. Kelly Sims Gallagher decodes why Paris’s NDC architecture needs transparent measurement, implementation muscle, and trillions in finance—especially for leapfrogging development. Abigail Dillen shows how law (Clean Air Act, NEPA, ESA) stops bad projects and forces cleaner ones, even amid headwinds like the Supreme Court’s “major questions” doctrine.

Ocean power and Indigenous sovereignty

The ocean—often ignored in climate debates—gets a policy playbook via the Blue New Deal that moves from op‑eds to White House action. Regenerative ocean farming (Bren Smith) delivers low-input food, local de‑acidification, and jobs if ownership remains with coastal communities. And Johnson centers Indigenous leadership through Colette Pichon Battle and Jade Begay: Land Back, FPIC, and resourcing cultural continuity are not symbolic; they’re among the most effective biodiversity and resilience strategies on Earth.

A governing question

“What if we get it right?” is not Pollyanna. It’s a strategic prompt to picture specific wins, map who must act, and claim your lane.

Across the book, the method repeats: picture an attainable future, anchor it in science, braid justice into design, move money accordingly, and tell stories that invite millions in. You see how small acts cascade—pre‑permitting ocean farms, funding local emergency managers, electrifying postal trucks after litigation, or writing a memo that becomes federal ocean policy. By the end, you don’t just believe a better world is possible—you have a planner’s map, a budget, a legal toolkit, and a cast of collaborators to help build it.

Johnson insists you look squarely at the physics before you imagine solutions. With climate scientist Kate Marvel, she lays out the non-negotiables: CO2 has climbed from ~280 ppm to ~420 ppm, raising global temperature ~1.3°C. Oceans have absorbed over 90% of excess heat, fueling stronger storms and marine heatwaves; sea level rise accelerates via thermal expansion and ice melt. Add uncertain tipping elements—AMOC slowdown, West Antarctic ice sheet instability, Amazon dieback—and the prudent path becomes clear: cut emissions fast, adapt smart, and avoid pushing the system toward thresholds we can’t undo on human timescales.

Scenarios hinge on human decisions

Marvel demystifies models: they are scenario engines, not crystal balls. The biggest uncertainty is not physics but policy and behavior. If society chooses a high-emissions path, impacts compound; if we decarbonize now, we limit damage. Delays raise the price of later action: cuts must be steeper and faster, infrastructure turnover more disruptive. Stopping emissions stabilizes temperatures over time, but to cool again you’ll also need durable carbon removal (forests, soils, engineered pathways)—always coupled with deep reductions.

Plan across risk envelopes

Marvel recommends designing for a range—1.5°C to 3°C—using “low-regret” choices that pay off under many futures: rapid renewables buildout, grid modernization, efficient buildings, urban shade and green infrastructure, and coastal resilience. This mindset complements Johnson’s “disciplined possibility”: you don’t fantasize; you specify targets, timelines, and plans that are robust even when the future veers. (Note: this precautionary framing aligns with IPCC guidance and National Climate Assessments, which tend to be conservative due to publication lags.)

Mitigation and adaptation are joined at the hip

You must do both, everywhere. Cutting emissions without planning for floods, heat, and drought is negligence; adapting without cutting locks in escalating harm. Nature-based solutions—mangroves, salt marshes, urban trees—reduce climate risk now and store carbon for decades. Infrastructure choices—like elevating substations, expanding transmission, or designing for disassembly—save money over asset lifecycles and speed decarbonization by making the clean choice the default.

Three things to remember

1) Climate is here, not hypothetical. 2) The physics are robust. 3) Human decisions drive the outcome—your vote, job, investments, and advocacy matter most.

Your planning lens

Translate warming levels into local risk maps and investment plans. Ask: what fails first at 2°C here—grid, hospitals, housing, crops—and how do we harden, relocate, or redesign now? Then match roles to your climate Venn diagram: a city planner updates zoning for floodplains; a utility engineer designs demand flexibility; a journalist embeds climate context across beats; a donor funds community cooling centers. The thesis is simple: reality is the firmest foundation for imagination—own the numbers, then build futures that hold under stress.

If you want cheap, fast, and multi-benefit climate wins, start with living systems. Judith D. Schwartz reframes forests, soils, wetlands, and keystone species as infrastructure that regulates heat, water, and carbon. Healthy vegetation cools land via evapotranspiration; porous soils absorb rainfall and store carbon; intact wetlands blunt storm surge. These functions are not “nice to have”—they are baseline services your safety and economies depend on.

Water cycle first, carbon second

Schwartz urges you to restore the small water cycle—soil moisture, transpiration, local rainfall feedbacks—alongside the global one. Beavers rehydrate landscapes and reduce wildfire risk; reindeer trampling snow preserves permafrost albedo; swales and microtopography (as in Saudi Arabia’s Al Baydha) convert scant rainfall into resilient green. This hydrologic view explains why degraded land runs hotter and drier—and why re‑vegetation and soil cover cool it quickly.

Soil: the overlooked carbon bank

Soils store roughly three times more carbon than the atmosphere. Practices that keep roots in the ground—cover crops, reduced tillage, compost, perennials, and agroforestry—increase organic matter, improve yields and drought resilience, and sequester carbon. Johnson notes that decades of soil depletion correlate with declining nutrient density in produce; rebuilding soil health restores food quality and climate stability together. (Note: these practices rank high in Drawdown and are validated across regions.)

Blue carbon and coastal shields

Mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrasses can store up to five times more carbon per hectare than tropical forests and protect coastal communities from surge. Johnson links these ecosystems to culture and livelihoods across the Caribbean and U.S. coasts, reminding you that restoration is also cultural repair. Projects like Living Breakwaters show how habitat creation can pair with youth education and local stewardship for durable gains.

Doable steps where you live

On land you manage, keep soil covered, plant diverse perennials, retire marginal acres to prairie or wetland, and integrate animals where appropriate. In cities, expand tree canopy, bioswales, green roofs, and permeable streets; update zoning to protect riparian buffers and floodplains. In policy, finance nature-based solutions first: they often cost less than gray alternatives and outperform them across co‑benefits. Aim for 30x30 protections, but mind trade‑offs—avoid planting trees on native grasslands and treat offsets as supplemental, not substitutes for cutting emissions.

A powerful statistic

Restoring just 15% of converted lands could prevent about 60% of expected species extinctions and sequester roughly 300 gigatons of CO2—while improving water security and rural economies.

Treat ecosystems as core infrastructure in capital plans and emergency management. When budgets are tight, prioritize projects that stack benefits—flood reduction, cooling, jobs, biodiversity—because they hedge multiple risks at once. Nature isn’t a side gig in climate policy; it’s the operating system you rely on every day.

Regenerating soils and restoring land stewardship can cut emissions, improve nutrition, and renew rural economies—if justice guides who owns, works, and benefits from the land. Brian Donahue and Leah Penniman offer complementary roadmaps. Donahue imagines a diversified New England that grows half its own food by 2060 through expanding farmland from ~5% to ~15%, practicing ecological forestry, and repopulating rural towns with good jobs. Penniman’s Soul Fire Farm shows how regenerative practices and food sovereignty repair soil and history together, centering Black and Brown farmers who were pushed off land over the last century.

Regenerative practice, practical gains

Both emphasize keeping soil covered, rotating crops, integrating animals and trees (agroforestry), and composting to build organic matter. Every 1% gain in soil organic matter can store roughly 8.5 tons CO2 per acre while boosting water retention and yields. Ecological forestry—long rotations, selective harvests, local milling—stores more carbon in forests and buildings and supports regional housing. These tactics translate into livelihoods: more mid‑scale farms, forestry crews, mill jobs, and local processing.

Ownership, reparations, and policy

Penniman tracks the collapse of Black land ownership from its 1910 peak to about 1.5% today and calls for land return, community land trusts, and reparative policy (e.g., Justice for Black Farmers Act). Donahue calls for Agricultural Preservation Restrictions, targeted subsidies for regenerative methods (not commodity overproduction), and rural infrastructure to support repopulation. Together they show that who owns the land determines what practices are financially possible and politically durable.

Democracy grows in healthy soils

Donahue’s provocation—more people living and working in the countryside strengthens democratic will for climate policy—frames rural renewal as a political strategy. Penniman’s seed stories, including braided seeds carried by enslaved ancestors, make clear that land work is cultural revival. When communities control land and local supply chains, they feed themselves better, keep wealth circulating, and build power to defend watersheds and pass protective laws.

Actions you can take

Support land trusts and rematriation efforts (Agrarian Trust, Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust). Vote for candidates who fund regenerative incentives and farmworker protections. If you farm or garden, prioritize cover crops and perennials; if you’re a builder, prefer regionally harvested wood from ecological forestry. Align procurement (schools, hospitals) with local regenerative producers to create dependable markets. (Note: these moves reinforce nature-based solutions and embodied‑carbon cuts discussed elsewhere in the book.)

Shared premise

Regenerative land stewardship can sequester carbon, create dignified work, and repair historic harms—if policy and financing back community ownership.

Treat soil as a climate asset, land as a democratic institution, and farming as a cultural craft. When you invest in all three, carbon, justice, and rural vitality rise together.

Your daily life runs through designed systems—streets, buildings, parks, and shorelines—that can either magnify risk or absorb it. Landscape architect Kate Orff argues that reconnecting ecological and social infrastructure should be design’s highest priority. Architect and organizer Bryan C. Lee Jr. adds that design is what love looks like in public; it must be co-created with the people most affected. Curator Paola Antonelli pushes museums and procurement officials to normalize circular materials and design-for-disassembly so we stop demolishing embodied carbon and start reusing it.

Ecology welded to community

Projects like Living Breakwaters off Staten Island don’t just dampen waves; they rebuild oyster habitat, anchor K‑12 education, and knit residents into coastal stewardship. Orff’s regional visions—an American Shoreway and a Mississippi reconnection—treat coasts and rivers as living systems, not hard edges to wall off. Bryan Lee’s process principles—center primary users, co‑design, and build trust—avoid “fortress” infrastructure that protects wealthier enclaves while sacrificing others.

Materials and circularity

Design for disassembly can cut demolition emissions dramatically; reclaimed steel and sustainably harvested wood reduce embodied carbon 19–31%. Adaptive reuse beats tear‑downs on cost and climate, and wood from ecological forestry (see Donahue) stores carbon in buildings. Cities should adopt procurement that prioritizes low‑carbon materials and long lifespans, minimizing waste and maximizing resilience.

Disasterology meets design

Samantha Montano reframes disasters as social failures. Most local emergency offices are underfunded and understaffed—even as catastrophes (Katrina-level, system‑overwhelming events) become likelier. Every $1 invested in mitigation saves multiple recovery dollars, so cities must budget for upstream protection: urban trees and cool roofs to cut heat deaths, green streets to absorb floods, hardened substations and hospitals, and plans for equitable buyouts and relocation where necessary. Design choices determine who lives, who loses wealth, and who recovers.

Your local agenda

Push for climate-smart zoning (setbacks, floodplain protections), transit expansion, and nature‑based infrastructure that stacks benefits. Demand funding for emergency management (FEMA’s EMPG is tiny relative to need) and require that museums, libraries, and schools pilot circular construction and host public climate education. Co-govern projects: a resilient park that doubles as a detention basin, a school canopy program that teaches students to monitor heat, a waterfront where offshore wind logistics also finance community job training.

Design principle

Plan, build, and maintain places as climate infrastructure—ecological, social, and material systems braided into everyday life.

Resilience is not a singular seawall or a shiny building—it is a culture of maintenance, shared stewardship, and learning-by-doing across neighborhoods and watersheds. Design is how policy becomes real in your block.

Ideas don’t scale without money. Johnson traces how capital must flow away from fossil expansion and toward clean, just infrastructure. Bill McKibben’s divestment movement weakened fossil fuel social license and pressured banks funding pipelines. Régine Clément’s CREO Syndicate mobilizes family offices to take early risks in climate tech and nature-based projects, making them bankable. And Jigar Shah’s DOE Loan Programs Office (LPO) shows how public capital de‑risks first‑of‑a‑kind deployments, crowding in private trillions.

Two-track strategy

You need offense and defense. Defense: divestment and bank pressure to stop financing new oil and gas (since Paris, top banks lent about $6.9T to fossil companies; campaigns target that pipeline). Offense: catalytic capital to scale solutions—loan guarantees, offtake contracts, green procurement, and family office capital that tolerates risk and longer horizons. Together they shift the business case.

Public money as lever

LPO’s track record—helping scale utility-scale solar and backing Tesla’s early growth—illustrates how government can underwrite learning curves. New authorities from the Infrastructure Law and IRA supercharge this approach across transmission, storage, nuclear, hydrogen, and carbon management. The ACES hydrogen storage caverns in Utah (one cavern ~150 GWh) point to seasonal balancing that batteries alone can’t deliver soon.

What you can do with or without capital

If you have retirement assets, push pension funds to adopt climate-aligned strategies and screen out fossil expansion. If you’re a donor, fund nature restoration, farmer training, and project development that reduces risk for later capital. If you vote, back policies that repurpose fossil subsidies, fund public de‑risking programs, and require transition plans from banks. If you run a company, sign green procurement contracts that guarantee demand for low-carbon cement, steel, and power.

Guardrails and integrity

Beware greenwash. Offsets should be last-mile, high-integrity, and additive; disclosure must be standardized; and community benefits have to be built into deals to avoid extractive dynamics. (Note: CREO’s emphasis on biodiversity and circularity expands the lens beyond carbon-only returns.) HSBC’s commitment to halt financing new oil and gas shows policy can move when reputational and regulatory pressure converge.

Bottom line

To “get it right,” you must both starve the old system of cash and flood the new with de-risked, justice-centered capital—and do it fast.

Treat money as infrastructure: move it, stack it, and align it with place-based outcomes. When finance follows possibility, markets and politics follow too.

Policy alone does not move hearts—or votes. Johnson gives culture its due because stories define what feels normal and desirable. Producer Franklin Leonard (The Black List) shows how curation lifts climate scripts; Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up proved satire can spark national debate; journalist Kendra Pierre‑Louis argues that news must embed climate across beats and show practical civic on-ramps, not just doom headlines.

Tell many kinds of climate stories

Genre diversity matters: rom‑coms about neighbors starting a compost co‑op normalize everyday climate joy; action films that race across electrified transit make clean infrastructure aspirational; speculative worlds like Wakanda render climate-forward design iconic. Not every story must preach; it just needs to show a life people want to join.

Journalism as navigation aid

Pierre‑Louis calls for “solutions journalism” that reveals levers of power—how to testify at a planning board, track corporate money, or demand producer responsibility for plastics. Climate should be the context across housing, business, and sports, not a sidebar. Local reporting is particularly potent; where it collapses, corruption and mismanagement rise.

Museums and public platforms as labs

Paola Antonelli urges museums to prototype circular systems and teach embodied carbon to mass audiences (see MoMA’s Broken Nature and Design Emergency). Exhibitions, festivals, and school curricula translate technical fixes into lived culture. When people can touch low‑carbon materials and see resilient streets, they update their expectations—and their votes.

Your role in the cultural flywheel

As a consumer, reward content that treats climate as everyday life. As a creator, include climate as setting, not sermon. As a funder, back screenwriters and local newsrooms building capacity. As a public official, integrate climate narratives into civic programming. Culture makes policy plausible by making new realities feel obvious.

A bridging tool

Humor creates community, and community creates courage. Laughter can pry open space for action where argument fails.

Shift the stories, and you shift the coalition willing to pass big laws, build big projects, and fund big transitions. Culture is a force multiplier for everything else in this book.

International climate policy is the scaffolding on which national action hangs. Kelly Sims Gallagher explains that the Paris Agreement’s genius—and weakness—is its flexibility: every nation files its own pledge (an NDC), enabling near-universal participation but creating comparability and enforcement gaps. The 2023 global stocktake shows we’re off course for 1.5°C; gigatons must still come out of current plans. Implementation, transparency, and finance now matter more than summit speeches.

Measure to manage

Without reliable data, targets are theater. Satellite systems and initiatives like Climate TRACE expose underreported emissions, especially in oil and gas operations. But data must be open, comparable, and used. Capacity gaps in many countries mean measurements don’t translate into policy or enforcement. Your leverage: fund transparent MRV (measurement, reporting, verification) and support agencies that can turn signals into standards and penalties.

Finance is the pivot

Developing countries need trillions to leapfrog fossil development and adapt to damage they didn’t cause. Public funds are limited and politically fragile; most capital sits in private markets. Reform development banks to mainstream climate in every loan; design guarantees and currency hedges that de‑risk projects; and heed the Bridgetown agenda’s call for debt relief and low-cost financing so climate shocks don’t trigger austerity spirals (Pakistan’s floods are a case study in climate‑induced debt stress).

Leapfrogging and justice

Fairness is not a vibe; it’s a set of tools—technology transfer, industrial policy, and ownership models. China’s green manufacturing shows that rapid scale is possible with state-backed planning; similar ambition is needed to localize clean supply chains across the Global South. Pair decarbonization with jobs and health outcomes so political coalitions can hold. (Note: this justice-through-industry framing rhymes with the Green New Deal approach domestically.)

What you can press for

Advocate that multilateral development banks adopt climate stress‑tests and condition lending on low‑carbon pathways; support open, satellite‑verified emissions registries; and push export credit agencies to stop backing fossil expansion. Universities, NGOs, and philanthropies can fund MRV training and policy design teams inside environment and energy ministries to close the “implementation gap.”

Core lesson

Paris set the table; measurement, money, and equity determine whether anyone gets fed.

Global agreements matter when they change bank ledgers, factory floors, and household bills. Build the plumbing—data systems, finance tools, industrial policies—and the targets will finally pull emissions down.

Big shifts require moral clarity, organizing craft, and legal leverage. Youth leaders Xiye Bastida and Ayisha Siddiqa show how teenagers turned outrage into a 300,000-person New York strike and millions worldwide. Their movement reframed climate as a justice issue and built coalitions with established groups (350.org and others). The lesson isn’t romantic: attention without infrastructure fades. To last, movements need COOs, accountants, travel stipends, housing at conferences, mentors, and pipelines into law and policy.

Moral clarity fuels strategy

Chanting “Climate justice now!” is not naïve; it’s a north star that aligns tactics—litigation, legislation, procurement fights, and corporate pressure. Ayisha’s push for more climate lawyers, and Xiye’s call for intergenerational collaboration, illustrate a pragmatic arc: pair street power with institutional savvy so headlines become rules, budgets, and built projects.

Law as a force multiplier

Earthjustice’s Abigail Dillen maps how existing statutes—Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, NEPA, Endangered Species Act—can halt polluting facilities, force cleaner alternatives, and accelerate public electrification (as with the U.S. Postal Service truck case). Courts can also constrain agencies (see West Virginia v. EPA’s “major questions” doctrine), so legal strategy includes “losing loudly” to catalyze legislative fixes and public will.

Enforcement and institutions

Laws work when agencies are funded and fearless. That means resourcing EPA, state regulators, and local permitting offices; protecting NEPA’s public participation; and training frontline communities to use these tools. Litigation strategies fall into three buckets: stop the bad (e.g., Formosa Plastics permits), force agencies to follow the law (mandate pollution standards), and set precedents that reshape policy.

How you show up

If you’re a donor, fund youth infrastructure and public‑interest law. If you organize, build ties with litigators and policy drafters. If you’re in government, hire implementers—program managers, accountants, engineers—who can convert mandates into megawatts, trees, and transit lines. If you face a setback in court, translate that loss into a campaign for clearer statutory authority.

Movement math

Moral clarity + organizing infrastructure + legal leverage = durable power.

Accountability is not a one-off lawsuit or a single march; it’s a sustained practice of making rules real, budgets just, and institutions competent. That’s how movements turn into governments that deliver.

The ocean is a climate workhorse and a justice frontier. Johnson’s Blue New Deal shows how neglected ocean solutions—coastal restoration, offshore wind, regenerative ocean farming, cleaner shipping—moved from a 2019 op‑ed into federal platforms, executive orders, and the White House Ocean Climate Action Plan. The playbook is replicable: write clear memos, build coalitions, poll to prove support, brief campaigns, and fight for implementation with justice at the center.

Regenerative ocean farming

Bren Smith’s kelp + shellfish polycultures create low-input food and fertilizers, sequester carbon locally, and mitigate acidification (“halo effect”) that helps oysters grow. Farms designed like willow—flexible and modular—survive storms better than rigid systems. Scaling requires reef-like networks of small farms, community hatcheries, shared processing, and predictable markets. GreenWave’s Kelp Climate Fund pays farmers to plant, and its “My Kelp” app turns farmers into data generators for faster learning.

Ownership and finance that protect communities

To avoid corporate capture, Smith argues for co‑ops, revenue‑based financing, and shared infrastructure—models that spread risk and keep control local. Policy can pre‑permit zones, fund hatcheries, and design crop insurance. Offshore wind hubs can share docks, cold storage, and power with ocean farms, multiplying benefits across the blue economy.

Ocean justice and Indigenous sovereignty

The Ocean Justice Forum crafted a platform that influenced the White House Ocean Justice Strategy (announced at COP28), embedding community control and benefit‑sharing into ocean policy. Colette Pichon Battle and Jade Begay push you further: Land Back and FPIC (free, prior, and informed consent) are necessary for durable, equitable climate action. Indigenous stewardship protects a disproportionate share of global biodiversity; resourcing cultural practices—traditional burning, adobe construction, seed banks—and financing via Indigenous CDFIs (NDN Fund) strengthens sovereignty and resilience together.

From memo to shoreline

The Blue New Deal’s path—Grist op‑ed to Elizabeth Warren’s plan to White House actions—shows how outside ideas enter government when advocates pair public narratives with technical detail and political timing. Urban Ocean Lab and Data for Progress provided memos and polling; congressional proposals like the Ocean‑Based Climate Solutions Act built specificity. Justice wasn’t tacked on—it shaped permitting and community benefits from the start.

Guiding rule

Build ocean economies that restore ecosystems and keep ownership with the people who live by those waters.

If you work on coasts, convene coalitions early, pre‑permit responsibly, and fund community‑led pilots. If you invest, choose instruments that entrench local ownership. If you legislate, make FPIC and benefit‑sharing non‑negotiable. The ocean can feed, protect, and employ—if sovereignty and ecology steer the helm.