Since 2008, the Svalbard seed vault and its guardians have been entrusted by the world’s governments with the safekeeping of the most prized varieties of crops on which human civilisation was raised. That morning, it contained the seeds of nearly 4,000 plant species – more than 720,000 individual plastic-sheathed samples. The site was built to be disaster-proof: 130 metres up the mountain in case of sea-level rise, earthquake resistant, and with a natural insulation of permafrost to ensure the contents were kept frozen for decades to come.
About 60% of Svalbard is glacial. There exist no signs that it was settled by humans before whalers and hunters built small communities along the coast, and coal was found. Nothing grows there apart from wildflowers and grass. But in the early 1980s, Nordic countries began using an abandoned mine shaft, down the hill from the vault, as a safe house for seeds. At a time when industrial-scale farming was perceived as a threat to crop diversity, it was the first experiment in using the permafrost as cold storage for seeds.
...
Seed banks are vulnerable to near-misses and mishaps. That was the whole point of locating a disaster-proof back-up vault at Svalbard. But what if there was a bigger glitch – one that could not be fixed by borrowing a part from the local shop? There is now a growing body of opinion that the world’s faith, in Svalbard and the Crop Trust’s broader mission to create seed banks, is misplaced. Those who have worked with farmers in the field, especially in developing countries, which contain by far the greatest variety of plants, say that diversity cannot be boxed up and saved in a single container – no matter how secure it may be. Crops are always changing, pests and diseases are always adapting, and global warming will bring additional challenges that remain as yet unforeseen. In a perfect world, the solution would be as diverse and dynamic as plant life itself.
