From its office on Solano, Seacology has used a "win-win" approach to help save sea turtles, gibbons, mangrove forests and island ecologies in dozens of countries while providing material aid to the local cultures that rely on them.
Greece's legendary coastline is under threat. Posidonia seagrass, a natural resource that protects coastlines from erosion and sequesters ten times more carbon per acre than a rain forest, is literally being ripped up by its roots as boats anchor in its waters.
"We've lost 50% of all seagrass in the last 50 to 60 years," said Duane Silverstein, executive director of Seacology, a Berkeley-based environmental nonprofit whose work is dedicated to conserving the habitats and cultures of the world's islands. "It turns out that perhaps the most threatened cooling system in the entire world right now is seagrass."
The destruction of seagrass is so threatening to Greece's ecology and economy, Seacology has made its protection the focus of its latest global effort, a five-year, $1.2 million project soon to launch in partnership with other Greek NGOs.
The initiative will seek to replace the long ingrained habit of dropping anchor, with tying up at moored buoys. Seagrass will also be replanted.
The Greek Islands Seagrass Alliance is one of the 60 to 70 active Seacology projects going on around the world at any given time. Operated out of a second-floor office on Solano Avenue, Seacology has launched 450 projects in the islands of 73 countries around the world since its founding 35 years ago.
Seacology has helped save sea turtles, dugongs and one of the rarest primates in the world: the Hainan black crested gibbon, and preserved more than 1.5 million acres of threatened island forest and marine ecosystems over its long history.
So far its largest and most far-reaching initiative launched a decade ago, the Sri Lanka Mangrove Conservation Project, which protected all 21,782 acres of Sri Lanka's mangrove forests, which act as a natural partner in the fight against global warming. The project earned it a Momentum for Change Award from the United Nations in 2018.
Seacology's innovative, award-winning approach breaks the mold of a typical environmental nonprofit in a couple of ways. The majority of its work are what Silverstein calls "win-win projects," providing island countries with a needed benefit -- often the construction of a school -- in exchange for an environmental protection, whether it be a marine or forest preserve.
And it does so by forging reciprocal agreements that benefit both the island nation and the environment -- an attempt to avoid an exploitative imposition of Western values on Native populations.
"It may sound extraordinarily obvious but many international organizations don't listen to the local people," Silverstein said. "We do listen. It is the village that tells us what they need. They're in a better position to tell us that they need a freshwater delivery system so the women don't have to walk two hours every day to get fresh water to drink. So we work out a deal: For the next 20 years, there won't be any cutting down of any trees in this 5,000-acre area. Both parties benefit. That's a hallmark of our work."
The Sri Lankan project, for example, had to offset the food, medicine and other products that Native communities made from mangrove. Seacology did so by providing alternative job training and microloans to approximately 12,000 women living in the small, adjacent communities.
About 15 years ago, Seacology helped save a rainforest on a Bali mountaintop by preventing access via roads from three local villages. In exchange, each of the villages were provided with the cultural centers and traditional gamelan instruments they had requested. Around the same time, Seacology had a 100,000-acre marine area added to a reserve in Raja Ampat in Misool, Indonesia, in exchange for the construction of a kindergarten.
In Greece, part of the seagrass education campaign will be to encourage boats to use moored buoys to tie up instead of dropping anchor.
Silverstein said what often surprises people is that Seacology doesn't work through a nation's parliament or a congress, but instead with Indigenous governments and local leaders, which can be a money-saving, speedier and more equitable process with less red tape. In such situations, he said, there is less of a chance that project funds will go missing.
"If you work with a local tribal council and chief and they say there's no fishing in their waters, there is no fishing," he said. "You don't have to wait seven years for a permit and the punishments are much more severe -- they can take away your boat. In the U.S., you will get a court summons for three years from now and a $300 fine. Which do you think is more effective?"
On the island of Dominica, Seacology began working with the Native Kalinago tribe last year, supporting its ecotourism efforts in L'Éscalier Tête Chien. In exchange for protecting 400 acres of forest and planting trees, Seacology is helping rebuild the tribe's ecotourism program after 2017's Hurricane Maria ravaged the land and a visitor center.
"Working with Seacology has been a very positive experience," said Chief Anette Sanford-Thomas. "As an Indigenous community that has faced centuries of marginalization, we are always mindful of how partnerships are approached and whether they truly respect our culture, needs, and aspirations."
She said Seacology's model "felt like a genuine partnership."
"They have allowed us to self determine the initiative and allow the opportunity to showcase to the world that we are able to manage our own affairs if given the required support," she said. "Our community is benefitting directly, and the environment -- which we have always seen as sacred -- will be preserved for future generations."
Seacology was born -- out of thin air -- when Paul Alan Cox, an ethnobotanist, was doing research in the village of Falealupo in Western Samoa when he heard earth moving equipment that was preparing to cut down a pristine 30,000-acre rain forest.
The village chiefs told Cox that the government had insisted that villagers build a better school or it would remove the teachers. In such a barter-based economy, where the per capita income at the time was $100 a year, the only solution the chiefs could think of was to sell logging rights to a lumber company to build a new school.
Instead, Cox proposed that "we" raise money to pay off the loggers and build the school to save the rain forest. The problem was, there really was no "we."
"Paul was bluffing," Silverstein said. The "we" turned out to be Cox and his wife, Barbara, who quickly created Seacology and raised $75,000 in six months.
"The school was built and the rainforest still exists now," Silverstein said. "It worked so well, the idea was, why don't we do this on islands all over the world?"
Seacology focuses on islands because that's where 80% of animal extinctions in the past 500 years have occurred, according to the biologist Stoors Olson. Although islands take up only 5% of the earth's land, they are home to an estimated 20% of the world's bird, reptile and plant species. As island animals go extinct, Silverstein noted, so do the cultures that once depended on them.
Islands are also the most threatened by rising sea levels, the result of climate change. Many of Seacology's projects, especially those that protect mangroves and seagrass, sequester a lot of carbon and help prevent erosion, thus combat global warming and rising seas.
Only about 1% of Seacology projects are in the U.S. because projects here cost more. (A typical school that Seacology builds costs $40,000.) U.S. projects tend to be smaller scale, but apply the same criteria when considering a project.
"We want to save important habitat, work directly with communities and be as cost-effective as we can," said Mary Randolph, Seacology's program manager.
One main difference, Randolph said, is that American Indigenous groups rarely have much control of an island's natural resources, which falls under governmental control. Whereas, a village in Fiji may have the right to control the forest and sea around it and commit to conserving them for 20 years.
Last year the organization partnered with the University of Washington to replant 12 acres of native eelgrass on Washington's Sucia and Shaw islands, a project that enlisted the help of Native youth who are members of the Coast Salish community.
Silverstein, an islander himself -- a native of Massapequa on Long Island, New York -- headed the Goldman Foundation when it awarded Cox the Goldman Environmental Prize for Seacology's environmental work in Western Samoa in 1997.
Silverstein, who holds a master's degree in public policy from UC Berkeley, had been executive director of the San Francisco-based foundation for almost 20 years when Cox suggested that he take the reins at Seacology. At the time, Seacology was based in Kauai, where Paul directed the National Tropical Botanical Gardens.
Silverstein took the job on one condition: Tired of commuting to San Francisco for 20 years, he wanted Seacology's offices moved within walking distance of his Berkeley house. Cox agreed and proposed his own condition. Seacology had $16,000 in the bank. Silverstein had to raise everything else: for his salary, rent and projects.
"It was a gamble," Silverstein said. He took the position in 1999.
Today Seacology has a $3.5 million budget and nine employees, most of whom live in Berkeley or nearby.
Seacology is entirely funded by donations -- from individuals, foundations and corporations -- not the federal government, which has "really worked well for us," Silverstein said, given the Trump administration's slashing of federal agencies like USAID.
While Seacology's program manager is based in its Berkeley offices, its "eyes and ears" are 28 field reps around the world who work on a contract basis out of their own homes. Silverstein described them as "super well connected locals who know the local customs and go around talking to villages."
Silverstein said that there was a great range in how the field reps are paid, but said they were "well compensated per local standards."
The organization pays for a project's equipment and supplies, but much of the labor is provided by local volunteers. Villages are also in charge of maintaining the projects.
An advisory board includes some of the most prominent scientists in the world, including Jared Diamond, author of "Guns, Germs and Steel," and marine biologist and oceanographer Sylvia Earle, a National Geographic Explorer at Large since 1998.
During a recent tour of Seacology's offices, Silverstein pointed out the gifts and bona fides that Seacologly has received for its efforts over the years. Handcrafted items, like a kerosene wood carving of fish and turtles from the Solomon Islands and various types of tapa cloth from Samoa, give the airy, second-floor offices a gallery-like feel.
On a wall of photos, there's Silverstein with George H.W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, Henry Puna, the former prime minister of the Cook Islands, Maithipala Sirisena, former president of Sri Lanka, and King Tupou IV, former king of Tonga. In another image, Silverstein and Cox pose with Prince Albert II of Monaco after Seacology received the Prince's Prize for Innovative Philanthropy in 2015.
"What was cool about it was that we were picked as the most innovative philanthropy in the world," he said. "We didn't apply for it." That is also true for several other recognitions.
Since 1992 Seacology has been giving out its own eponymous prize to "an islander for exceptional achievement in preserving island environments and culture."
This year's recipient, Cynthia Ong, will receive the award at a ceremony that's free and open to the public on Oct. 13 at Berkeley's David Brower Center.
Ong stands out because she's undertaken several projects in her native Borneo, "any one of which are worthy of winning the Seacology prize," Silverstein said.
She has helped start a renewable energy coalition that will bring clean power to remote Indigenous communities, worked to certify sustainable palm oil to reduce the damage that oil palm plantations do to the island's forests and communities and was key in getting the Sunda pangolin, the most illegally trafficked mammal in the world, listed as a protected species.
Also in October, Silverstein will be leading a trip with donors and board members to Greece to check on what's going on there. The damage to Grecian seagrass is so extensive it can be seen from satellite photos.