How did you first become interested in the environment?
I started thinking and asking and learning about different ways to deal with climate change when I was really young. I used to have a plan to build an electric car company, and I would drag my parents to conferences on renewable energy. I was very concerned that there was this problem, and nobody was paying attention, and felt like somebody had to do something about it. I thought that I would try and play as much of a role as I could. When I finally had the freedom to study climate solutions in college I jumped at the chance.
What led you to choose your majors, environmental studies and government?
When I got to Wesleyan I decided that I really loved the environmental studies major, and I didn’t want to be boxed into taking the entire earth and environmental science curriculum, particularly online during covid. I liked the variety within the environmental studies major, and I really liked learning about policy, which led me to pursue the government major as well. I chose Wesleyan in large part because of our open curriculum and academic flexibility. I’ve been lucky to take fantastic IDEAS, biology, E&ES, and religion classes alongside my major coursework.
Would you share a bit about your research junior year?
I started off the year writing a thesis with Professor Mary Alice Haddad that turned into a one- semester paper. There’s a brainstorming phase at the beginning of the thesis process where you research and determine what you are specifically interested in within a broad area. I am really interested in how climate change, and resource and land stress, are going to interact with areas where there’s about to be high population growth.
Those regions are primarily East and West Africa. There are 8 billion people right now, and we’re probably going to top out at 11 billion people if the population theorists are correct. Almost all of that growth is going to happen in a pretty small region of West Africa and and then a slightly larger region of East Africa.
I was doing research about what kinds of energy commitments these areas had made and how they would be achieved. I was thinking a lot about how a lot of these countries are scaling hydropower. However, some of the hydropower projects are not working. There were these two dams in Nigeria, the Mambilla and Zungeru hydropower projects, that were being financed by the same banks, built by the same contractors, in the same region, under the same government. One of them was succeeding and had just started generating power. One of them was failing. They hadn’t even started building it even though they had been planning them both since the 1980s. I asked: why was one working and the other failing? Are there any lessons that can be learned here? Why on earth has nobody studied this?
I did a deep dive into dams and Nigerian project financing and came to a couple of conclusions. The most interesting conclusion was that if you do not set up structures to properly pay the people you’re displacing from a project, it causes all sorts of problems. That’s a pretty interesting take away because many of these governments are more authoritarian and feel like they can just build a project however they want, but in fact, it’s much cheaper for them to put mechanisms in place to make sure the people they are working with are satisfied first. I wanted to actually go and interview some of these people who were being displaced by these projects. Nigeria seemed to be increasingly politically unstable, and so I had to come up with a backup plan. Fortunately, I had a backup plan that I liked.
How did your junior year research inform your summer project, which was funded by a Bailey COE summer fellowship?
In the early research phases, I had also been learning about sources of land stress and agricultural emissions. Agriculture is responsible for nine percent of global emissions, and almost a third of that is from cow methane. Solutions involving seaweed were becoming increasingly viable. There were studies that were coming out last year about this seed we call asparagopsis that is showing 80 percent reductions in cow methane.
I had also been in my research phase thinking about what would reduce land stress. In a place where there’s a population growing like crazy, you can’t grow only on land forever. You need to start growing in other places, and the obvious solution is to grow them in the water. I was already thinking about seaweed farming, and then I realized that there was the potential for seaweed farming to address not only agricultural methane, but land stress at the same time.
There’s a lot of seaweed farming in Asia. Australians are also starting to farm asparagopsis, the special type of seaweed that reduces cattle methane. But there is a really burgeoning industry of seaweed farmers on the coast of Tanzania, that fewer people were paying attention to as a serious spot for this industry to grow.
I cold emailed a professor who had written some papers for the University of Dar es Salaam about this. I asked If I got funding, could I come over to Tanzania and help her research? She said yes, and I was able to get a grant through the Bailey COE. Her name is Dr. Flower Msuya.
How has Dr. Flower Msuya played a role in seaweed farming in this region? How has she influenced your research?
Dr. Flower Msuya brought seaweed farming to East Africa in the late 1990s. She determined the cultivation methods for this region. She is directly responsible for the livelihoods of 100,000 people.
In the 2010s climate change and warming water started to cause problems for seaweed. She started to research and develop solutions that could be implemented by Tanzanian farmers to manage climatic effects on their seaweed crops. The farmers that she’s working with now, not only are they adapting to climate change based on her research, but they’re also using seaweed as more than just a raw product. Right now the raw product is sold to China to make the preservative carrageenan. She has found that because it is so nutrient dense you can make fertilizer, soap, shampoo, and many other products. You can read an interview with Dr. Flower Msuya, here.
She set me up with one of the original farmers in Tanzania. Although my overall goal was to learn about the adaptation methods and about the research that she’s doing, I needed to start at level one and learn about how seaweed farming works. The family that I was living with were one of the original secondary product manufacturers. They are quite successful now, because the secondary products sell for about 20 times more than the raw seaweed does. It’s a big business that is really starting to take off.
I got to Tanzania and I made it to this little village on the coast of Zanzibar, and I lived there for a while working in the shop making products and farming seaweed. I started attending farmer training and talking to Dr. Msuya about her research and learning about adaptation methods. Dr. Masui invited me as her guest to Zanzibar’s 7th annual National Seaweed Day; they have made a real priority of what they’re calling the “blue economy”.
The President of Zanzibar has created a ministry of the blue economy and started subsidizing aquaculture. I had the opportunity to meet him, which was an incredible experience.
Do you hope to continue your research in this area?
After graduation, I want to do a study in collaboration with the University of Dar es Salaam, to see if it’s possible to grow asparagopsis in this region. I want to see how the work being done in Australia can be replicated in Tanzania.
I’m also interested in the other side of this question, which is measuring cattle methane itself. I have been working on some designs for a methane sensor in an IDEAS course and in the Wesleyan Startup Incubator. Existing sensors can cost tens of thousands of dollars, which is not affordable for many farmers. These farmers do not necessarily need research quality data on methane emissions, they just need to know if the methane from their cows is changing along with expectations. They could use a sensor to sell carbon credits as well, even if they have a large margin of error, they could report the carbon level at the bottom of their margin and still receive a high quality credit.
I am working on building a methane sensor with cheaper components than the ones that the researchers are currently using. I need to do more testing, but it’s looking like it is going to be possible to measure methane from cows for a cost in the hundreds of dollars as opposed to the thousands of dollars.
I have some clients in upstate New York who want me to measure methane emissions on their farm this spring. I hope to go back to Tanzania, but in the meantime I will continue working on my methane sensor here.
Is there an existing industry for seaweed based cow feed?
There are nine current suppliers. There are six in Australia, two in Hawaii, one in Brazil. Australia is the market leader right now, but there are high labor and shipping costs. With those factors in mind, it could be more efficient if sourced from East Africa. The faster that the seaweed can be grown in East Africa, the less methane will be emitted into the atmosphere.
Do you have any advice for other students who share similar interests?
My advice would be to do independent research and do it early. You don’t have to wait until your junior or senior year. There are tons of resources at Wesleyan for figuring out how to follow your interests. There are also opportunities to engage in traditional research paths, working on other people’s projects. I would also recommend working for the sustainability office as an eco facilitator. You will be in a supported and structured environment, but you can take on independent projects, and be paid to do so. If I had known this was an option as a freshman, I would have started earlier. I would also like to highlight that the College of the Environment provides grants, which I am very thankful to have been a recipient of, and that the Wesleyan Green Fund also provides funding for student projects., I would recommend looking into my article A Cardinal Plan For Climate Action in the Wesleyan Business Review. In this article I made a map of four steps you can take to get from wanting to solve a problem, to actually figuring it out and implementing the solutions.
The COE staff, and professors are also an amazing resource. I want to thank Rosemary Ostfeld, who mentored my project in Tanzania. She believed in my idea when it was still being developed. I felt like I didn’t have time to waste, and that I needed to go right away. She supported me and helped along the way.
