TVE Press Release - Earth Report Doomsday Vault

 
Earth Report – Doomsday Vault

 
 
 
22 February 2008: The ultimate global safety net to safeguard the world’s seeds opens next week on the Arctic island of Spitzbergen. ‘The Doomsday Vault’ – officially the Svalbard Global Seed Vault – is stored in an underground bunker built deep inside a frozen arctic mountain by the Global Crop Diversity Trust with support from the Norwegian Government.
 
Store for a vast and irreplaceable collection of seeds from thousands of crop varieties, the Doomsday Vault’s role is to safeguard seeds from future global catastrophes - nuclear war, asteroid strikes, or the growing impact of climate change. The seed collection is an insurance policy, enabling scientists and farmers to start up food production again in any country, in the event of regional or global disasters. This week’s Earth Report follows the construction of the Vault, and talks to the scientists involved.
 
Earth Report – Doomsday Vault will be broadcast on BBC WORLD:
 
Friday 22 February - 20.30, with repeat broadcasts on Monday 25 February 10.30, Tuesday 26 February 15.30 and Wednesday 27 February 02.30 and 08.30 (All times quoted as GMT)
 
For more information on programme schedules in local time zones visit www.bbcworld.com
 
Svalbard is small group of islands lying 1,000 kilometres from the North Pole. Icy and pristine, they occupy a remote corner of Norwegian territory, with temperatures during the long Arctic winter dropping to minus 16C. This freezing climate, and Svalbard’s isolation, are the reason the Norwegians have selected the islands as the most secure location for the Seed bank.
 
The vault itself is essentially a 120 metre tunnel bored into the mountainside - big enough to hold over four million seed samples. Refrigeration guarantees a temperature of around minus 18C in the vault. But even if the cooling systems should fail, the ambient temperature in the vault’s mountain tunnel means the seed collections will be preserved for months, or even years. Norway has footed the US$9 million bill for the Doomsday Vault construction, which will then be run by the Global Crop Diversity Trust.
 
Now the building is complete, genebanks from all over the world are starting to send duplicate seed collections to be stored in the Arctic vault. Countries sending these will retain ownership of all the samples - but under an international treaty, have agreed to share them internationally.
 
“This is the world cheapest insurance policy. There are art museums and they’re going to spend a lot more money this year on protecting those art collections than we’re going to spend on protecting the biological foundation of agriculture.”
Carey Fowler, Global Crop Diversity Trust
 
“We’ve got good reasons to send our seeds to Svalbard. Of course we’ve got nice facilities here but this facility is very close to the River Rhine.  We don’t know what will happen in the future, what the chances are for the River Rhine to flood this area –we might have problems with fire, whatever... This place is a relatively safe place, but other places in the world have much more risks.”
Dr Bert Visser, Centre for Genetic Resources, Wageningen University
 
 

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Doomsday Vault was produced with the support of the Lillian Goldman Charitable Trust
 
TVE and its Partners distribute Earth Report programmes for broadcast and educational and campaigning use in countries across Africa, Asia & the Pacific, and Latin America & the Caribbean – to schools, colleges, universities, NGOs, environmental agencies and other ‘multiplier’ organisations.

 

For further information on the programme, production team and issues raised look up www.tve.org/earthreport