A 'doomsday' seed vault to protect the world's diversity: an interview with Cary Fowler.

• Position: Interview

In a glacial mountain on Norway's remote Svalbard archipelago, a vast underground vault stores more than 800,000 samples of food crops from all around the world. The collection ranges from red okra seeds from the Cherokee Indians of Tennessee to Japanese barley seeds used in miso soup. The Norwegian Government and the international organization, the Global Crop Diversity Trust, built this multinational seed vault in 2008 to protect national gene banks across the world from natural or man-made disasters. In an interview with the Journal, senior advisor to the Trust, Cary Fowler, spoke about the importance of agricultural diversity and the contributions of this unique seed vault.

Journal of International Affairs: The Svalbard Global Seed Vault protects seed collections from natural or man-made disasters. But what are the scenarios that are actually being considered? Can you give us some examples?

Cary Fowler: There are two different categories of problems that it addresses. The first is mostly natural disasters, such as the recent events in the Philippines. The Philippine national gene bank has had strange bad luck recently. It had a typhoon, it was flooded a couple of years ago, and later on, it had a fire. Of course, you also have man-made disasters stemming from military actions and civil wars. Gene banks are rarely the target of any kind of war or terrorist attack, but sometimes they are caught in the middle, as is the case in Iraq, Afghanistan, Burundi, and Rwanda. The second category would be problems that are associated with lack of funding and capacity in gene banks, in particular in developing countries, but not exclusively. If you have a gene bank that is not operating properly because of these kinds of situations, then the seeds deteriorate more quickly than in ideal conditions. If the equipment fails and the temperature rises, then the seeds cannot be conserved. In these cases, gene banks typically have to take their seeds out and grow them in order to obtain fresh, new supplies before they die. This is a complicated issue because often countries that do not have the money to keep the equipment running also do not have funds to take the seeds out and grow them again. Because of poor equipment and poor conditions, we have a lot of seed diversity verging on extinction. The global seed vault protects us against that and provides ideal conditions where the seeds do not deteriorate as quickly.

Journal: The Global Seed Vault opened in 2008. What was the driving factor in its creation? Did something specific happen that led to this initiative?

Fowler: Yes and no. The history is that some of the big international agricultural research centers were taking part in a program financed by the World Bank where they were improving and upgrading their equipment and processes to abide by certain standards. I was indirectly involved in that program, and at the end of this process, we were pretty happy about the quality of the facilities. However, we realized that these facilities were located in...