AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Doomsday vault in norway12/15/2023 ![]() Industrial Agriculture: Monoculture and Biodiversity Loss It holds a wealth of diversity, containing over 10,000 years of agricultural history, with seeds originating from almost every country in the world. The vault contains the world’s largest collection of agricultural biodiversity, with over 1.1 million seed samples, representing 5,500 plant species. In contrast, the Svalbard Vault is situated above sea level, with permafrost and dense rock keeping the seeds frozen at -18✬, without the need for electricity. Further, alternate gene banks located worldwide are threatened by erratic power supplies, lack of funding, and poor management. The Doomsday Vault provides a safeguard against natural and human-induced disasters that may threaten other seed banks and impact food security, such as disease, climate change, biodiversity loss, and war. It is located on Spitsbergen Island, in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago chosen for its remoteness, the gene bank acts as a backup collection for the world’s crop diversity. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault – commonly known as the ‘Doomsday Vault’ – lays buried beneath the permafrost, 150 metres into a mountainside within the Arctic Circle. ![]() – Stefan Schmitz, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust (Crop Trust) The bank serves as a safeguard for catastrophe.“At a first glance, seeds may not look like much, but within them lies the foundation of our future food and nutrition security, and the possibility for a world without hunger.” The Svalbard Global Seed Vault-which opens only several times a year-will receive new seed samples. ![]() According to their website, the vault serves as a safeguard: “While there may be a role for the Seed Vault in the event of a global catastrophe, its value is considered to lie much more in providing back-up to individual collections in the event that the original samples, and their duplicates in conventional genebanks, are lost due to natural disasters, human conflict, changing policies, mismanagement, or any other circumstances.” Let's hope we never have to use the seeds interned in a frozen mountainside of Norway but for now, there's some solace in knowing that they are preserved to the best of human ability in case we need a backup. Along with maize and rice, it composes 40% of our global diet. Wheat is very important to the human diet. This month, the doors open to admit samples of millet, sorghum, and wheat. For this reason, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault describes its mission as “safe, free, and long-term storage of seed duplicates from all genebanks and nations participating in the global community’s joint effort to ensure the world’s future food supply.” Plant seeds interned around the world are backed up in Norway-like an external hard drive for agriculture. However, these climates may be more susceptible to climate crises. Many seed banks exist in Southern regions where many of the plants humans depend on flourish. While still vulnerable to climate change, the vault's arctic environment will remain cooler than other seed banks around the world. The Norwegian government has updated their facility in recent years and is watching climate change predictions closely. However, it is also cooled by state-of-the-art systems which maintain -18☌ (-0.4☏). Buried deep into the frozen Earth, the vault is naturally cold. In 2004, Norway agreed to fund and construct a seed vault in the arctic permafrost. The international agreement seeks to preserve food from natural and human disasters. The vault's origins trace back to the 2001 International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA).
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |