How the Svalbard Seed Vault Safeguards Global Food SecurityHow the Svalbard Seed Vault Safeguards Global Food Security

Devastating weather events, such as Hurricanes Helene and Milton and the floods in Spain, remind us of the frailty of life. Besides natural catastrophes, war and climate change wreak havoc on the environment and stress the food supply. Add to that an increase in bioengineered food, and the purity of our crops is at risk.

Founded in February 2008, the Svalbard Global Food Seed Vault in Norway is an insurance policy for world agriculture. While gene banks exist around the world, the Seed Vault — also known as the Noah’s Ark of Seeds — offers free, long-term storage of seed duplicates. Currently, within the frozen vault, 123 depositors have entrusted nearly 14 million seed samples representing 6,297 species. Protection is assured in part because it is in a desolate area of the country. The vault lies deep inside a mountain mass. Seeds are stored just below 0°F. A thick layer of permafrost ensures seed preservation if there is ever a power failure.

The Seed Vault has:

While the Norwegian government established, funded and is responsible for the vault, two agriculturalists were instrumental in its founding.  Dr. Geoffrey Hawtin is a renowned geneticist who helped establish the Crop Trust. And Dr. Cary Fowler is currently the US Special Envoy for Global Food Security in the U.S. State Department.  Both men were awarded the 2024 World Food Prize.

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In a recent interview with Food Tank and World Food Program USA, Dr. Fowler said, “We're not taking the climate crisis seriously enough. I think it's going to have multiple impacts on our farming systems that we haven't fully appreciated. Yes, our crops are going to have to adapt to higher temperatures and higher extremes, but they're going to have to adapt to fluctuations.”

He observed that with climate change, species are on the move. “That means pests and diseases,” he said. “We are engaged now in the largest agricultural experiment in history. We're throwing different species together that have never lived together before.”

As if that’s not troubling enough, he mentioned that soil degradation and the depletion of aquifers further reduce crop sustainability. He predicts that by 2050, half the cropland in Africa will be unusable.

Here is a look inside the vault and the work that goes into keeping it and its contents safe:

Video by the Norwegian Ministry of Agriculture and Food

According to the World Meteorological Organization, Africa bears an increasingly heavy burden from climate change and disproportionately high costs for essential climate adaptation. 2023 was the world’s hottest year on record to date. “Over the past 60 years, Africa has observed a warming trend that has become more rapid than the global average,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo.

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In October 2024, the Seed Vault accepted seeds from 21 countries, including several from African nations: Morocco, Ethiopia, Chad, Zambia, and Tanzania. Sudan, a country in the midst of a civil war, shipped seeds to the NordGen (Nordic Genetic Resource Center) which will sort, catalogue, and dry the seed samples before the final transfer to Svalbard in February 2025. Seeds are also coming from other areas of intense conflict. The Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) in Palestine delivered seeds of 21 species of vegetables, legumes, and herbs.

The 13-year war in Syria highlights the importance of the Seed Vault. The ICARDA (International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas) gene bank in Aleppo has been unable to operate in Syria since the beginning of the fighting.  In 2015, 2017, and 2019 ICARDA withdrew seeds to establish new gene bank facilities in ICARDA units in Lebanon and Morocco. New seeds produced by using this seed material have been returned to Svalbard for safe keeping.

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The Svalbard Seed Vault is sometimes called the doomsday vault; however, its inception was based on other realities. According to a press release regarding the World Food Prize, Dr. Fowler said the motivation behind the construction of the Seed Vault was not the possibility of a global catastrophe, an asteroid crashing into Earth, a devastating world war or anything like that. “We thought of more common problems faced by gene banks around the world, such as operating errors, budget cuts, wars and natural catastrophes.”

Gene banks are important to maintain biodiversity of crop species. “It’s genetic diversity that underpins agriculture, and always has,” Hawtin said. “If we didn’t have a lot of different varieties, if we didn’t have a lot of different crops, each one adapted to a different niche around the world, we wouldn’t have agriculture. Genetic diversity is necessary for the agriculture of the future.”

Food security is a worthy investment. In their FAQs  NordGen pointed out that Norway has spent more than EUR 28 million in construction and technical upgrades.  The annual cost to run the Svalbard Seed Vault is about EUR 1 million.

The Svalbard Seed Vault is part of the international system for conserving plant genetic diversity guided by the UN organization for Food and Agriculturen (FAO).