Viking Magazine - July 2016 - 20

Trust. Not just anyone can show up and
tour this ultra-secure facility. Special
permissions and dates were carefully
organized through dozens of emails
with a non-governmental organization
headquartered in Bonn, Germany.
This is partly because of security
measures, but also because the Svalbard
Global Seed Vault remains sealed and
unmanned most of the time. Its officers
only open the vault three times a year,
or when another shipment of seeds
from locations around the world have
been coordinated.
Why do we need a frozen Fort
Knox for seeds, and how did it end
up in Svalbard?
The Food and Agriculture
Organization of the UN reports that
since the beginning of the 20th century,
the world has lost more than 75 percent
of its agricultural biodiversity; the
United States has lost 93 percent. An
estimated 90 percent of historic fruit
and vegetable varieties have vanished
in the past century in the United States.
Of the 7,100 apple varieties that were
grown in the 1800s in the United States,
6,800 are extinct.
20 VIKING JULY 2016 sonsofnorway.com
In a world where experts estimate
one crop variety disappears every
day, the reaction has been to create
seed banks, some 1,750 officially
recognized sites around the world. A
seed bank can be of varying size and
sophistication, but its essential function
is to catalogue and preserve seeds from
varieties and strains of crop plants. It
is a repository for the genetic diversity
of a community's or nation's food
system, and the idea is to have them
available for plant breeders to continue
to innovate and improve crop strains.
Or, in a worst-case scenario, to protect
a variety that would be otherwise
lost forever.
Many of the collections of the seed
banks in developing countries are
thought to exist precariously. They're
at risk from factors that range from
underfunding to political instability,
war and natural disasters. The need
for safe storage of duplicates of the
most valuable samples in a seed bank's
collection was recognized decades ago.
With more than 60 percent of the
landmass covered by glaciers, Svalbard
is cold, dry and remote. Its coal
mines - mined by settlers since the
early 1900s and since abandoned -
provide optimum conditions for seed
preservation. In fact, during the 1980s,
seeds from Nordic countries were
stored in abandoned mine shafts near
Longyearbyen.
As concerns for the preservation,
safety and security of seed bank
collections began to mount, the idea of
a global seed vault that could act as a
safety deposit box for duplicates of the
world's seed collection was envisioned.
The Norwegian government bore
the $9 million construction cost, and
on February 28, 2008, the Svalbard
Global Seed Vault opened to an
unexpected and rather overwhelming
media frenzy. Time magazine ranked it
number six in its 50 " Best Inventions
of 2008. " Scott Pelley dubbed it " The
Doomsday Vault " on " 60 Minutes. "
It was designed and built to last for
tens of thousands of years, withstand
bomb blasts and sustain lengthy power
outages. It is 130 meters above current
sea level should global warming raise
the sea level.
Previously, I'd only ever spoken with
PHOTOS BY LIV DAHL
http://www.sonsofnorway.com
Viking Magazine - July 2016

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