A "doomsday'' seed vault built to protect millions of food crops in case of global catastrophe has opened deep within an Arctic mountain in the remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard.
Described as "the ultimate safety net for the world's most important natural resources", the vault will serve as a backup for hundreds of other seed banks worldwide.
It has the capacity to store 4.5 million seed samples and protect them from man-made and natural disasters, including wars and climate change.
Permafrost and thick mountain rock will ensure that, even without electricity, the samples will remain frozen, and the facility has been built to withstand an earthquake or a nuclear strike.
"The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is our insurance policy," Norway's Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told delegates at the opening ceremony on Tuesday (26 Feb). "It is the Noah's Ark for securing biological diversity for future generations."
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai of Kenya were among the dozens of guests attended the ceremony inside the vault, about 425 feet deep inside the frozen mountain.
Norway owns the vault, which is near the village of Longyearbyen in Svalbard, 620 miles from the North Pole. Construction cost $9.1 million and took less than a year. Other countries can deposit seeds without charge and reserve the right to withdraw them if needed.
Remote by any standards, Svalbard's airport is in fact the northernmost point in the world to be serviced by scheduled flights - usually one a day. For nearly four months a year the islands are enveloped in total darkness.
The seed vault is an answer to a call from the international community to provide the best possible assurance of safety for the world's crop diversity, with the idea for such a facility dating back to the 1980s. However, it was only with the coming into force of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources, and an agreed international legal framework for conserving and accessing crop diversity, that the seed vault became a practical possibility.
MUST CREDIT PHOTOS BY
Rex Features/Mari Tefre/Global Crop Diversity Trust
Story: Dean Murray
