March 23 2008

Svalbard Global Seed Vault

The long sighted Scandinavians have done it again. In an effort to plan for major global food crises, planetary catastrophe, or species extinction, the Nordic ministries have built the Svalbard Global Seed Vault to safeguard specimens of the world's seeds. A Noah's Ark for plant species. The Vault is located on the extremely secluded Spitsbergen Island in the Svalbard Archipelago of Norway, just over a thousand kilometers from the north pole. The location was chosen because of its relatively low tectonic activity, remoteness, and extremely cold temperatures. The organization claims that seeds can be preserved for hundreds if not thousands of years in these conditions.

The vault itself is a simple and elegant design. It is comprised of an entry, a long access corridor and two large seed storage rooms. The storage center is buried 393 feet inside a sandstone mountain. Here, in the center of the mountain, temperatures are at near permafrost conditions which in combination with a ventilation system keeps the seeds at a temperature of between -20°C and -30°C. In total the vault is capable of storing in excess of 4.5 million seed varieties.

Supporters of the seed vault include the Norwegian government, the Global Crop Diversity Trust, the Nordic Gene Bank and the Gates Foundation.

Initiatives such as these are evolutionary in terms of the perspective on the future which they project. These governments, organization and individuals are not thinking about the world in one year, five years, even fifty years, their considerations stretch into the millennia. The seed vault project shows that concerned groups are considering a world vastly different from the one we inhabit today and have arrived at that realization through an understanding of how population growth, global warming, and species depletion are related. If the seed vault is predicated on an understanding of the future, or possible future, then what implications does that have for other decisions being made by these groups of people. Sounds like full life cycle analysis. Sounds like sustainability. Now if only this perspective were predominant in the global psyche, imagine the possibilities for our built environment.

I, for one, am glad that they pulled it off and still created a pretty cool looking entrance into the vault!

For more information on the Svalbard Global Seed Vault please visit wikipedia or two complimentary articles in the NYT and at CNN.

March 23rd, 2008 at 8:36 PM. Posted in Industry + Practice. Share this post.