Svalbard: Securing the world's food supply - optimism or faint hope ?

Svalbard - Courtesy: Norwegian Ministry of Food and Agriculture

Svalbard is not a name which evokes much recognition apart from the novels of Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials trilogy) and polar bears, however it has special significance being the largest and most ambitious of the world's seed banks, located at this desolate spot managed by the Norwegian Ministry of Food and Agriculture as part of the arrangements under the UN Convention on Biodiversity. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a backup for all the world's seed banks (around 1,400 of them) and holds samples of all of the planet's food crop seeds stored in vaults deep inside the permafrost of a sandstone mountain, where even global warming cannot reach them.Svalbard has an isolated position far out in the ocean, between 74° and 81° N and only 1000 kilometres from the North Pole. and the archipelago is characterised by an undisturbed nature. Of note, the vault was originally established by conservationist Cary Fowler and is still supported by a not-for-profit foundation which has redoubled its efforts this year to search the earth for the last remaining wild relatives of wheat, rice, barley, lentils and chickpeas to arm agriculture against climate change.

How important is Svalbard? Immeasurably. The world's population will cross the 7 billion mark in September 2011 and food security (and 'scarcity') has never been more pronounced. Coupled with this continuing demand is the sobering fact that the number of plant species available for food sources has been in near catastrophic decline with fewer and fewer varieties of fruit and vegetable available. In 1983 the Rural Advancement Foundation International concluded, after surveying listings of seeds sold in commercial seed houses in the US, that 93 % of varieties had gone extinct. Humans are now dependant on a handful of commercial varieties of fruit and vegetables and many of these are susceptible to changes in climate.