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Sustainable Farming Practices Turning the Tide in the Philippines
Posted on Jun 24, 2026
From falling fish stocks to seaweed salvation: How sustainable farming practices are turning the tide in the Philippines
At first light in coastal villages across the central Philippines, the tide reveals a quiet transformation. Bays that used to be busy with small fishing boats are now lined by long rows of seaweed lines, swaying in the shallows.
For years, these communities wrestled with the tension between maintaining their reefs and feeding their families. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) were expanding, yet fish populations were in steady decline, and legal enforcement clashed with the preservation of local livelihoods.
Coast 4C’s answer, supported by the UK’s Blue Planet Fund through the Ocean Risk and Resilience Action Alliance (ORRAA) and other partners, has been to pluck a new opportunity from the same water. By linking community-led regenerative seaweed farming to the maintenance and regulation of MPAs, Coast 4C aims to reduce dependence on dwindling fisheries, strengthen coastal ecosystems, and improve the financial resilience of coastal communities. With ORRAA’s support, Coast 4C provided regenerative seaweed farming equipment and training to 300 farmers, as well as developing technological tools to increase financial access and streamline financial management.
For ORRAA, this partnership falls in perfect alignment with our overarching mission to activate at least $500 million of investment through innovative finance and insurance products to build the resilience of 250 million climate vulnerable coastal people in the Global South by 2030.
By supporting the development of innovative community enterprises, ORRAA is helping turn a locally-led initiative into a model that can be adapted and replicated elsewhere.
The Idea
This shift did not begin in the boardroom.
Local women’s groups, long-time fishers and community organisers were already discussing the need to adapt. They knew that fish stocks were declining, but a highly fragmented value chain meant they struggled to access equipment and services to develop sustainable livelihoods, as well as being at the mercy of middlemen and volatile global prices.
Meanwhile, Nick Hill, a PhD student at Imperial College London and the Zoological Society of London, had been growing increasingly disillusioned with traditional non-profit approaches to sustainable livelihoods.
In 2006, Nick met with a local marine conservation specialist in the Philippines. Amado Blanco, better known as ‘Madz’ shared Nick’s concerns, so they put their heads together to find a solution. In 2020, the pair launched Coast 4C with a targeted mission: to build the world’s largest supply of high-quality, responsibly sourced seaweed while building resilient blue economies.
Putting it into Practice
Coast 4C worked with local communities in the Philippines to understand farmers’ needs and design a model that allowed regenerative seaweed farming to work in harmony with MPAs, enabling conservation and income to reinforce one another rather than compete. The project began with eight MPAs in locations where Coast 4C was already active, creating a living testbed for the new approach.
But to translate this idea into a viable enterprise, farmers needed practical inputs, such as seedlings, tools, training, and reliable finance.
Progress accelerated when Coast 4C joined forces with ORRAA in 2024, securing a two-year grant that would fund a number of key activities, including the scale-up of farm input packages to 300 seaweed farms; the rollout of innovative farm management technology; the development of tailored finance and insurance products; and the strengthening of MPA monitoring.
Coast 4C’s farm input packages provided local seaweed farmers with everything they needed to turn underproductive and underutilised farms into productive and useful assets. To maximise their chance of success, Coast 4C connected farming households to a localised village savings and loan association (VSLA) model, empowering them with access to community finance and ensuring that transactions were transparently recorded.
Additional project partners, including Arribada and Howden, supported the development of new technologies and services, including low-cost sensors and a feasibility study on insurance solutions to support smallholder seaweed value chains.
The Impact
To date, the project’s farm input packages have benefited at least 1,545 coastal people. Almost three quarters of farming operations supported so far are led by local women, marking an enormous stride towards gender equity in these small-scale fishing communities.
Farmers participating in the programme supplied an average of 8.7x more seaweed than other seaweed farmers, more than doubling production over three seasons.
These impressive results highlight the potential for scaling up the project and unlocking commercially viable livelihood opportunities. Surveyed farmers also reported increased enthusiasm for, and adoption of, sustainable farming practices, including a dramatic reduction in the use of disposable plastics.
Beyond the numbers, Coast 4C’s efforts translate into real-world improvements in peoples’ lives. Farmers have used their newly enhanced income to bounce back from seaweed disease outbreaks, to replace damaged infrastructure and to prepare for extreme weather. Women like Ronel and Bernicita were able to pay for their children’s college education. Others, like Cornelio and Vilma, were able to repair their homes after Super Typhoon Odette, and went on to launch their own entrepreneurial ventures.
In 2024, Coast 4C was selected as a Finalist of the prestigious Earthshot Prize, a welcome recognition of their profound impact.
Scaling and Replicating
From the outset, the partnership between Coast 4C and ORRAA was designed to scale. Coast 4C’s success has stimulated demand for regenerative seaweed farming support across the Philippines. With further investment in system improvement, digitalisation and governance, combined with ever-improving operational efficiencies and a growing network, Coast 4C is well-positioned to meet this demand.
At the same time, Coast 4C has been working on the financial architecture needed to support long-term investment. During London Climate Action Week in June 2026, they announced the successful close of an oversubscribed seed funding round, securing $2.5 million to scale their operations.