The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe – the rising temperatures, melting sea ice, and thawing permafrost are placing the vault’s future in jeopardy. This is well above the summer average of 5-7℃. In 2020, an Arctic heatwave produced record highs in Svalbard, where the temperature topped 21.7℃. The vault was designed to protect the world’s food supply against a climate crisis it is now being confronted by that very threat. This ensures populations in developing countries have equitable access to more affordable and healthier food, ultimately reducing hunger and malnutrition.Ĭhallenges: The Climate Crisis and the Arctic Circle Developing enhanced crops also improves nutrition and produces a more varied food supply. Gene banks provide genetic diversity to develop new and locally adapted crop varieties able to withstand heat, drought, floods, and disease. Diversity also promotes sustainable agriculture, mitigates environmental degradation, and ensures crops are resilient and adaptable to climate change and disease. Svalbard aims to conserve crop diversity by protecting the world’s food supply, and plays an active role in helping achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG), which is ‘Zero Hunger, Food Security and Sustainable Agriculture.’Ĭrop diversity ensures food security and protects nutritional food sources which in turn helps alleviate poverty. This is compounded by just four companies owning 60% of the world’s seed market.Ĭrop Diversity Matters – The Importance of Seed Saving In the United States alone, over 90% of fruit and vegetable varieties have been lost since the 1900s. According to the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), these crops supply around 60% of the calories consumed daily by the world’s population. Now, crops have grown to become more susceptible to drought, pests, and disease.ĭecreased diversity has led the world’s food supply to become overly dependent on four major food crops: corn, rice, soy, and wheat. This promotes uniform crops and monoculture, which has the capacity to produce higher yields however, it has driven biodiversity loss and soil degradation. In addition to public health concerns, the over-saturation of chemicals has decimated beneficial insect populations, such as pollinators like bees and butterflies.Ĭompanies produce hybrid varieties which only grow a single generation of crops, meaning farmers can no longer save seeds each season and instead must purchase new seeds each year. These plants have been bred to withstand pesticides and herbicides, such as the controversial chemical glyphosate, a potential carcinogen (cancer-causing substance). Another change is t he commodification of seeds by private companies which has standardized and created homogeneous crop varieties. Within the past half-century, industrial agriculture has drastically changed farming practices, with new technology aiding large-scale crop production.
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) “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.”
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