[Comment] Frozen seeds – safeguarding global food supplies

nospam@example.com (Rebecca Evan) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 08:51:17 +0200

Autor: HALLDÓR ÁSGRÍMSSON, Secretary General of the Nordic Council of Ministers and former Icelandic Prime Minister
published: 21.04.2009 @euobserver.com

EUOBSERVER / COMMENT - It is a fact that climate change poses a threat to food supplies, particularly in poorer parts of the world. We are at the same time dependent on rice, maize and other subsistence crops for our very survival, crops that are vulnerable to, amongst other things, desertification and flooding.

It is the responsibility of the developed world to combat this trend. The Nordic countries have put in place a range of measures to tackle the situation, including the creation of a global seed bank and efforts to promote similar gene banks in Africa and Central Asia.

One key Nordic objective is to safeguard global food supplies through the conservation and sustainable utilisation of genetic resources in agriculture.

The Nordic countries benefit from one of the most comprehensive systems of regional partnership anywhere in the world. Official co-operation between Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland and the autonomous territories of Åland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands, dates back to the 1950s. The Nordic Council of Ministers serves as the official body for inter-governmental co-operation and the Nordic Council as the official body for inter-parliamentary co-operation. The initial focus was on integration – the Nordic countries have had a passport union for over half a century. Nordic citizens were entitled to move freely between countries to work or study long before the EU adopted similar principles.

Nordic co-operation has become increasingly outward-looking in the age of globalisation, especially on genetic resources, a field in which NordGen (the Nordic Genetic Resource Centre) takes the practical lead in a well-established partnership.

NordGen manages the Global Seed Vault, located on the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic. Popularly known as ‘Noah's Ark for seeds', this unique facility is capable of storing up to 4.5 million samples. Its purpose is to safeguard the world's seeds and food supplies in the event of natural disasters, war or other threats.

The huge storage capacity makes it possible to store seeds from almost all the crops of the world. The three chambers extend deep into the bedrock, which offers optimal conditions – the permafrost guarantees that the seeds will remain frozen even during a power cut.

The vault is owned by Norway, but operated under a tripartite agreement between Norway, the international Global Crop Diversity Trust and NordGen.

Global interest has been massive, and more than a hundred countries in Africa, Asia and South America have already sent seed samples to Svalbard.

It has also received samples from FAO's International Agricultural Research Centres, which house some of the largest and most important seed collections in the world. One key aim has been to involve developing countries where extreme natural phenomena and political instability pose real threats to biological diversity.

However, Nordic co-operation on genetic resources is not just about the Svalbard seed vault. The Nordic Region also plays an active role in the development of gene banks in Africa and Asia. The Nordic countries have extensive and valuable experience of regional co-operation on genetic resources – they have run a joint gene bank for three decades.

So why is it so important to conserve our genetic resources and use them in a sustainable fashion?

Genetic diverstity

Firstly, the Svalbard vault in particular and gene-bank partnerships in general are ways of restoring important species lost due to events such as natural disasters. Modern agriculture uses advanced plant varieties based on the most productive genetics. The original land races and wild forms produce lower yields, but their greater genetic variation contains a higher diversity in e.g. resistance to disease. High-yielding modern crops are therefore vulnerable when a new disease arises.

The consequences for genetic diversity will be dire if we fail to preserve such valuable genetic resources, especially in an era of massive climate change. It is vital that both ancient and new species are conserved in secure environments, and this applies to the cultivated parts of our biodiversity as a whole – forests and farm animals as well as crops.

However, seed banks are not just a back-up in the event of disaster. One of the aims of our work in Africa, for example, is to encourage researchers, plant breeders and farmers to use them on a regular basis.

The countries of the world will gather in New York in May for the 17th session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development. The agenda will include for example Africa, agriculture and desertification, and the Nordic countries will present their solutions for safeguarding global food supplies.

Superman built an Arctic fortress to protect his possessions. The same thinking underlies the whole of our work on genetic resources, not just the seed bank on Svalbard. We must protect and preserve our global genetic resources in order to promote global food security and help us on the road to a world free from the fear of famine.

- English News

[Comment] Frozen seeds – safeguarding global food supplies