If anything, the goal of the seed vault is not enough. What We Can do to Slow Species ExtinctionĪs our planet becomes more and more imperiled by industrialization, deforestation, and war, it’s important now more than ever to safeguard the diversity we have, including that of our sources of food. It’s also cold … very cold, and the permafrost around the vault never melts, which means the seeds are protected from the effects of climate change (at least for now), even if the power in the building fails, and the secluded location, far removed from political unrest, protects the vault from the destruction of war. The vault itself is located deep beneath a mountain, making it safe even from small asteroid impacts. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was built with the premise of centralizing the world’s supply of crop seeds in a place where they’d be safe from virtually any threat. But there are several problems with the Genebanks we currently have, one of the biggest being that some of the most important ones are located in politically unstable regions, such as Colombia, Ethiopia, and Syria. It may, therefore, be pivotal for the survival of our species to preserve as much diversity as we can. With increased human development and the threat of rapid global warming, species all around the world are already going extinct at an alarming rate. Organizations and countries all around the world have been doing it for years according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, there are currently around 1,700 Genebanks in different parts of the globe that store seeds from crops in case they go extinct. The idea of safeguarding the world’s supply of crop diversity is by no means a new one. Its construction was funded by the country of Norway with the sole purpose of preserving the seeds of various crops from around the world. This is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, or the “Doomsday Vault,” as it’s come to be known by some. If you were to approach this building at night, you might be somewhat startled by the appearance of what looked to be a luminescent crystal protruding from the side of a frozen mountain, it’s refracted light entwined with the sinuating colors of the aurora borealis overhead. Svalbard is home to the world’s northernmost city, Longyearbyen, and while otherwise unremarkable, the island has recently taken to the world stage due to a facility built back in 2008. During the winter, the sun hangs low in the southern sky before finally dipping beneath the horizon, leaving the island in a perennial twilight for several months. The furthest distance you can travel north on a scheduled flight is the island of Svalbard, located in a small archipelago above the Arctic Circle and part of the country of Norway.
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