Hyundai is taking its reforestation initiatives to new depths, in tandem with BBDO New York, to restore and protect sea forests across the globe.
Forests Without Names claims to be the world’s first unified effort to name and map these important ocean ecosystems to give them public recognition and a place in conservation planning.
While forests on land often have names and are subject to environmental planning, sea forests aren’t visible on current maps and are therefore overlooked, despite being critical to biodiversity, supporting thousands of local species.
With only 16% of sea forests located in protected areas and 1.6% in highly protected areas, their conservation is also considered important for offsetting carbon emissions. The campaign references a BBC report positing that global seaweeds (including kelp) sequester nearly 200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year, enough to equal New York State’s annual emissions.
The thrust of this campaign is a unified mapping effort of global sea forests, using local and regional maps from multiple organizations to create a shared standard reference. The map aims to be a ‘living resource’ that combines NGO sea forest knowledge with ocean condition data from The Weather Company to track sea forest growth, shifts and declines with changing temperatures and weather patterns. This, in turn, is expected to help researchers and scientists predict and identify patterns to better protect these areas.
The naming of sea forests, meanwhile, is important symbolically for their recognition as distinct ecosystems. This campaign kicks off the project by naming three previously unrecognised sea forests in Korea, Argentina and Australia in collaboration with NGOs and local communities.
In a bid to elicit broader engagement, the public is invited to vote on several proposed names for the sea forest in Australia.
For Hyundai, this conservation initiative isn't coming out of the blue. Not only has Hyundai been running landed reforestation efforts through its IONIQ Forest Project and Cannes Lions award-winning Tree Correspondents initiative, but also sea forest resoration work in South Korea, culminating in two sea forest being restored in Ulsan and named throught collaborative efforts with the central government.
Campaign's Take: Initiatives like these may be viewed as award bait by critics wary of automotive companies whose products have done plenty of damage to the global environment. But Hyundai has a track record now of working at forest restoration, which makes this project more than suitable. Most importantly, this is an environmental concern that is deeply in need of recognition and a starting point, which this campaign now provides.
