Put it in the Vault

The government of Norway is scheduled to begin work this year on a $3 million “seed vault,” which will hold around three million varieties of seeds in safety.

“If the worst came to the worst, this would allow the world to reconstruct agriculture on this planet,” Cary Fowler, director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, an independent international organization promoting the project, told New Scientist magazine last year.

The vault will be built 120 metres into the side of a frozen mountain on the Norwegian island of Svalbard, inside the Arctic Circle. The island is permanently frozen at between -4 and -6C, meaning that even if the vault’s cooling equipment, which will keep temperatures at -18C, fails, the seeds will be preserved without germinating. The vault will have metre-thick walls of reinforced concrete and will be protected behind two airlocks and high-security blast-proof doors. It is designed to withstand nuclear war, terrorism, rising sea levels, earthquakes and the ensuing collapse of electricity supplies. Even if the cooling equipment fails and global warming takes effect, the mountain’s permafrost should preserve the seeds for centuries.

Though it won’t be permanently staffed, the island’s population of polar bears is expected to act as a deterrent to ill-intentioned visitors.

The facility, which was approved by the United Nations, will serve as a crucial safety reserve should the supplies in other seed banks be destroyed or stolen.

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