“These are seed varieties that survived … It’s a library of life.” – Cary Fowler
Over 800 miles north of the Arctic Circle in Spitsbergen, Norway, The Svalbard Global Seed Vault sits buried 400 feet in the side of a mountain, Nationally owned seed banks exist in almost every country. They’re staffed by scientists who study and preserve local agriculture, including endangered and ancient crops. But politics, natural disasters, and wars have devastated national preservation programs. Without a backup copy, hundreds of seed varieties can go extinct in a matter of hours.
Cary Fowler, a member of the Crop Trust, first presented the idea of a global seed storage facility on the island of Spitsbergen in 1983. Arguments over property rights to genetic samples slowed progress. Others expressed the legitimate concern of genetic theft. Fowler defines this as the “idea that a recipient might acquire intellectual property rights through such a sample and reap undeserved benefits.” Thus, construction was delayed until 2001, when the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture made the initiative plausible.
The Crop Trust defines the seed vault’s two functions. First, the vault provides an international storage space for seeds that can be withdrawn in case of emergency. The biggest concerns are war and natural disaster. Second, the vault preserves today’s agricultural diversity for millennium to come. This isn’t an overdone Apocalypse preparation scheme. Norways’ Global Seed Vault provides a priceless hope for agricultural diversity today. Still, as invincible as the structure may seem, frozen seeds cannot insure the same for long. The vault needs to be protected.
The Global Seed Vault fulfills every requirement for an international seed preservation facility. Specifically, it’s in an ideal location and protected from natural disaster. Moreover, it offers perfect storage conditions, protection from genetic theft, and prevention from international attack. When engineers chose a site and drafted plans for the vault, they tried to envision every possible scenario that might undermine the vault’s security. The result is a marvel of modern architecture. The vault is simple, functional, and strong yet ruggedly beautiful.
The vault was designed to withstand climate change and natural disaster. Most notably, it was built 130 meters above sea level. Thus, melting Artic ice can never reach it. Only a few hundred miles from the North Pole, the vault overlooks Longyearbyen, a small town on the island of Spitsbergen, within the Svalbard archipelago. The Spitsbergen climate is so cold that even in the event of serious global warming, permafrost will keep some of the seeds viable for up to 200 years. The location of the seed vault plays a crucial role in ensuring the long-term safety of the samples.
The preservation of the seeds themselves depends on temperature and humidity inside the vault. It must be kept dry and very cold. The depositing country carefully packs seeds in four-ply foil, places them inside sturdy boxes, and arranges transport to the vault. There, the samples are placed inside one of three secured rooms. Permafrost cools the vault to about five degrees below zero. Moreover, a cooling system powered by locally mined coal drops the temperature to a frigid eighteen below zero degrees Celsius. If the cooling system fails, there’s still hope. Fowler estimates that it would take several decades for the vault to warm enough to damage any stored seeds. Under ideal conditions, seeds could last for thousands of years.
(Wikipedia Commons)
The greatest obstacles to the seed vault initiative were the issues of property rights, genetic theft, and upkeep costs. The Crop Trust devised a system for the Global Seed Vault that manages to bypass political tensions and secure national property rights. Cary Fowler explains that the Global Seed Vault avoids genetic theft in two ways. Each country retains national ownership of its deposits and assumes responsibility for maintaining and refreshing each seed sample as necessary. Only the depositing country can ever open the seed boxes. Even then, as Fowler notes, “a sample can be retrieved only by the gene bank that deposited it.”
This approach safeguards genetic material and keeps management staff at the seed vault to a bare minimum. Little direct involvement with the vault reduces the upkeep costs to about 200 thousand dollars annually. The seed vault is one of the most valuable global resources. Still, the annual upkeep is less than half the amount of rent and fees typically paid by a small McDonald’s restaurant. These numbers help dispel the widespread misconception that the seed vault is draining resources that would otherwise be available to projects like the United Nation’s World Food Programme.
Vault management includes protecting the seeds against international attack. The Global Seed Vault is its own insurance policy. Depositing countries include the United States, Great Britain, North Korea, Japan, China, Afghanistan, and Germany. Thus, any damage to the vault is a risk to agriculture around the world. To successfully destroy the vault would come at a great cost to the antagonist. Besides this concern, the vault’s remote location makes access possible but not easy. Its location, nearly 130 meters deep inside a mountain, makes it impervious to any attack, apart from a direct nuclear hit. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was built to preserve seeds for an indefinite period. It’s a reliable, secure facility that can provide a duplicate of genetic material in case of emergency.
The emergency the vault was waiting for came in the summer of 2015. A seed bank on the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria had become embroiled in civil war. A team partially evacuated the seed bank. Still, a large collection of basic crops, including lentils, barley, and wheat, were in desperate need of restocking. Staff had little hope of returning to Syria. Fortunately, duplicates of seed samples from the Aleppo bank were held at the Global Seed Vault. In the fall of 2015, Syrian scientists flew to Spitsbergen and withdrew 116,000 seed samples from the vault. The seeds were planted and used to restock the Syrian bank. As soon as possible, duplicate samples were sent back to Svalbard. To date, the Syrian withdrawal remains the only one. Thus, without the Global Seed Vault, several drought-resistant crop varieties would have gone extinct. Their genetic material would have been lost.
The vault’s secondary purpose is the long-term preservation of agricultural diversity. Every crop variety has genetic traits that make it resistant to drought, heat, disease, or insects. Naturally, maintaining this genetic diversity is key to the future success of the seed vault. The Global Seed Vault was built to hold 4.5 million seed samples. This is about three times the estimated number of crop varieties on earth. Each sample averages 400 to 500 seeds. The latest seed deposit, on February 22, 2017, brought the vault to a grand total of 940,000 seed samples. They come from over 200 different countries, including thousands of different varieties of the same species. Over 100,000 varieties of wheat and rice rest within the vault.
However, this virtual treasure chest of agricultural diversity is only as valuable as it is current. The Global Seed Vault strives to preserve diversity by preventing the extinction of crop varieties. Climate change is the largest factor in the extinction of crop samples. It and natural disaster can be brutal reminders of natural selection. Thus, only the strongest, most resilient crops survive. These stronger crops spread and adapt to the changing environment, and the cycle is repeated. The seed vault prevents this loss of diversity by storing the seeds that are at risk alongside those that are thriving. In other words, the vault attempts to stand in the way of ‘survival of the fittest.’
Seeds stored indefinitely depend on the hope that a crop that would become extinct due to environmental factors in the next few years will be viable after several hundred years. However, a crop variety on the verge of extinction due to climate change today may not thrive in the climate hundreds or thousands of years from now. Seeds have evolved and adapted to the fluctuating environment for thousands of years, but for the seeds in the vault, time has stopped. Evolution is literally frozen. Unless the seeds in the vault are kept meticulously up-to-date, they could become useless to the changing world of agriculture.
Clearly, agricultural diversity can only be preserved through a combination of different strategies. The Global Seed Vault is a secure storage space for ancient and brand-new crop varieties. It holds seeds that could save agriculture today. But to protect agriculture a few hundred years from now, active development of crop varieties and careful nurturing of various traits, in addition to a precise storage method, is vital to effectively maintain crop variety in a changing environment. No single solution will indefinitely preserve crop diversity. But if the Global Seed Vault remains a dynamic facility, with old and new varieties stored side-by-side, its work will be priceless for centuries to come.
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Katherine Muser grew up military and settled in Colorado Springs a few years ago. She is pursuing a career in music, with a focus on teaching and music therapy. In her free time, she enjoys reading and drawing.
