Nature magazine reported Friday that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has agreed to donate $37.5 million to a project undertaken by the Global Crop Diversity Trust and the United Nations Foundation. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is planned as a central repository to preserve the genetic diversity of 21 essential food crops needed to sustain humanity. In the event of catastrophic natural disaster, nuclear war, or plant epidemic, the vault, dug into the side of a mountain in the far north of Norway, would serve as a “last-resort depository of agricultural diversity,” a “doomsday” seed bank including a database of genetic information and a library of seed samples preserved at low temperatures.
One can only applaud the foresight of those responsible for such an undertaking, although in the light of recent forecasts by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and this UN Foundation scientific panel, not to mention the continuing proliferation of nuclear technology, it’s chilling to consider the need for it. Architectural renderings (here and here) on the GCDT website depict a facility bearing a startling resemblance to the North American Aerospace Defense Command headquarters in the hills above Colorado Springs. NORAD was a colossal undertaking built in a remote location to prepare for the possibility of a Soviet nuclear attack on the United States and Canada. The BBC has reported that the security needs of the Global Seed Vault have also been taken into consideration. One shudders to speculate about what the vault might need to defend itself against.
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