From the London Daily Mail:
25 Feb 2008
A "Doomsday" seed vault opens this week in the Arctic to preserve crops in the face of climate change, war and natural disasters.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is intended as a back-up to the network of seed banks around the world which store, grow and replenish thousands of varieties of crops.

At the vault's official opening tomorrow a quarter of a million samples - totalling around 10 million seeds - from virtually every country in the world will be carried deep into the mountain in Svalbard, to the north of mainland Norway.

EU president Jose Manuel Barroso and Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai will be among those braving the -20C temperatures in the vault at the opening ceremony.

They will be joined by Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, who has overseen the vault's £4 million construction and who describes the diversity of crops currently in existence as the "most valuable natural resource on Earth".

But it is a diversity that is being lost, either as a result of entire seed banks being wiped out by war, civil strife or natural disasters, or more prosaic problems of mismanagement or human error at the network of seed storage facilities around the world, he said.

And with climate change looming, Dr Fowler warns variety will not only be threatened by warming temperatures but will become increasingly important in aiding agricultural adaptation to them.

He said the world was facing a "perfect storm" of challenges ranging from climate change, declines in energy and water availability, development pressures and a burgeoning population.

Humanity has positioned itself so that "to avoid real problems, everything has to go right," he warned.

"Diversity is threatened by climate change. On the other hand we're going to have to be making some major changes in the nature of the crops we have in the fields, which is going to require diversity.

"We should be thinking 'Do we have the resources to make this adaptation', and if we do, it will be found in the gene banks.

"If ever there was a moment in history when conserving this diversity was worthwhile and yielded a great cost benefit ratio, it would be now," he said.

For more, see the London Daily Mail.

Thanks to UN Wire for the link.