It is in 1984 that the idea of a bank of seeds for alimentary interest was born, gathering very common species along with disappearing ones. As a matter of fact, if the awareness of the risks regarding biodiversity is less important than water rise for instance, the vanishing of species strikes minds. It is well-known that with the evolution of the agricultural methods to intensive agriculture, many plant varieties disappear from the Earth at a rhythm a hundred times superior than before, whereas their uniqueness could, one day, turn out to be important. The problem being identified, it seemed obvious to bring a solution.

But the beautiful idea of a universal conservatory could not find its way through, stuck for years in the middle of the conflicts of interests between the North and the South, and the stagnation of international negotiations. It is in 2004 only, that the barriers got opened with the action of the FAO (1) which had just amazingly succeeded in making ratify by 55 countries the International treaty on phytogenetic resources (2). Norway then took the advantage of the opportunity to restart its initiative under the label of the Global Crop Diversity Trust (3) in an international jurisdictional frame for conservation and access to the diversity of cultures, gathering a good hundred of countries which undertake to provide seeds that will be conserved in appropriated facilities, except the GMO though.

Without that being said, it is surprising to see that the underground building dug in the permafrost (4) connects well with the matrix cave that appears in every original myth of many peoples of the world. Its signification, in every ancient civilization, is cosmic, ethic, moral and very often the one of a return to the egg. Without really knowing it, the National Fund for Diversity gets attached to the cosmological tradition of humanity.

Universal and singular, it is the only world financial organ dedicated to the conservation of such a diversity of seeds and only aiming at being a durable ecological reservoir of alimentary supply for the future. The maximum capacity of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault can reach up till 4.5 millions of samples (that is 2 billion seeds), twice as many as the number of existing species in the world today. Indeed, we already know that the global demand of cereals will have a growth of 50% for the next 25 years and even more than that forty years from now, when the population of the Earth will be of about 9 billion inhabitants. During the 20th century, no less than 1,500 cereal reserves were to be counted in many States but unfortunately they were not always satisfyingly equipped. A few even think that some of them could contain outdated seeds, due to carelessness, lack of money and decay of the collections.

Privileged actors, many of these centres, scattered across the planet, are going to collaborate to the federator project as partners, while keeping their status at the national level. They will have to control the quality of the provided samples, renew them if their germination power decreases: the final goal being to guarantee continuity in the secure conservation with no significant cost for them (5).

Moreover, they will remain, for the centuries to come, the owner of the given deposits that they will be able to retrieve, if they feel the need to, for the vegetal diversity can be at any time threatened by wars, global warming or natural disasters. We know examples of cereal banks recently eradicated in Iraq or in Afghanistan, or destroyed by a typhoon like the ones in the Philippines in 2006. The “Green Noah’s Ark” will work like a global biodiversity life-insurance.

The Svalbard facility, entirely financed by Norway (6) which remains the owner, was dug on the flank of a frozen mountain in the Norwegian archipelago of the Spitzberg, 500 miles from the North pole, on a territory twice as big as Belgium, for a populated by 2,300 people. It is an all-year-long frozen desert which is politically stable, isolated yet not landlocked. One hundred and thirty meters above the sea, it should not have to worry about the most terrifying perspective of the total ice melting of the North Pole and the water rise that would follow.

The only part of the facility that can be seen from outside is the timbered door and the armed guardian who protects it. Inside, a hundred-meter-long tunnel, plunging 120 meters under the ground, leads to 3 rooms of 25x10 meters. Each of them, in their volume of 1,500 cubic meters could contain, at the end of the program, 1.5 million of samples, kept at a temperature of -18°C, thanks to a compressor of 10 KW. If the latter should stop working, the frozen ground would maintain at -6° the viability of the seeds for about 200 years. This kind of natural freezer, whose linings are in reinforced concrete, will be managed by the Nordic Gene Bank. Without any damage, it just went through the craziest live experience: an earthquake of a 6.2 magnitude in mid-February this year. Everyone rejoices at its invincibility, indeed some say it was built to resist a nuclear explosion and its designer Cary Fowler affirms that “At those temperatures, the seeds for important cultures such as corn, barley and peas can survive 1,000 years”.

The Universal Seed Bank of the Spitzberg would be the last resource in case of a disaster. It is the infinite material growth, in our limited-resourced world, which highly risks to endanger the planet and should make it hungry in the next decades. “We hope and act for the best but we must prepare for the worst…” the President of the European Commission José-Manuel Barroso declared, during the inauguration ceremony, the last 26th of February. Echoing him, the Norwegian Prime Minister even said: “The biologic diversity is threatened by the forces of Nature and by the actions of Men” whereas, in company of the 2004 Nobel Prize for Peace Wangari Maathai, they symbolically dropped mini bags of rice coming from 104 countries in the underground building. “It is one of the most innovating and impressive actions for Humanity” the General Director of FAO Jacques Diouf underlined.

The entire global agronomic community indeed applauded the safety net which allows to keep in a giant freezer the species in two exemplars. Gert Kleijer, the Swiss Supervisor of the Gene Bank of Agroscope-Changins, was proud of the huge storage capacity of the Svalbard facility with which he has a partnership. The protection of biodiversity could be the key to a reinforcement of the food production, with the varieties of the main alimentary bases of Africa, Asia and the Southern American continent like wheat, rice, corn, sorghum, black-eyed bean or rustic species of vegetables.

The initiative is found useful by the French teacher at the Agronomic Superior School of Montpellier Jean-Marie Prosperi who never the less doubts that this strong room can keep seeds intact for several hundred years. He points out that the project excludes species which tend to multiply such as potatoes, fruit-trees, vine, coffee or cacao which cannot resist the cold.

As an ecologist, Wangari Maathai, in his inaugural speech, qualified the project as “visionary” and as a “precaution for the future”. But many, like the Canadian astrophysicist Hubert Reeves, declare that they rather grant it a symbolic value than an actual usefulness. According to him, “it is a good idea at the origin, but it will not necessarily work since species cannot be reused without their environment. In time, the climate and the environment evolve and the seeds, blocked by the freezing, will not be able to adapt themselves anymore. The seeds need to enrich their genetic heritage in order to survive. “The best way to safeguard them is probably to cultivate them, not ice them” the spokesman of the Kokopelli association for preservation of ancient species Raoul Jacquin pointed out.

So here we are. Can the myth of Noah’s Ark resist to modern times and the future? Does the Svalbard global reserve represent the last attempt of Mankind to own a life attic? And how can anyone know who will own its keys in the future? Is it possible to imagine a planetary disruption and the stability of this frozen piece of land at the same time?

“The world is a safer place today” Cary Fowler declared the morning of the inauguration. Of course it is not, some sceptical people may say. But so Manichean… Or perhaps simply romantic…

(1) Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO)
(2) The Global Crop Diversity Trust was created by the FAO and Biodiversity International.
(3) Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources, ratified in 2001
(4) Frozen soil
(5) 54 million euros is the estimated amount of the contributions given by about 15 international organisations (the Bill Gates Foundation, the agrochemistry giant Monsanto, Syngenta, the private Rockefeller Foundation…) and countries such as Germany, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Egypt, India, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom… These sums concern general organisation: classifying, packaging in packets and delivery on site.
(6) Financed by Norway, the installations cost more than 6 million euros