Fear of Environmental Meltdown drives Gene Bank build.
Plans are being drawn up to build a gene bank, which by 2010 will allow the world to safely store millions of crop seeds in the event that climate change leads to global environmental disaster.
The £1.67m vault, being hollowed out inside a sandstone mountain on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen (Eng: Svalbard), will provide each nation with a secure 'bank box' in which to store agricultural spices such as rice, wheat and barley.
11th January 2006
carbon-info.org
Only 600 miles from the North Pole, permafrost will ensure that the contents of the seed bank is permanently frozen. Reinforced concrete walls, two airlocks and blast-proof doors will keep the seeds locked up until such time when humanity, in a worst case scenario where climate change has lead to global catastrophe, may have to establish farming and food production from scratch.
Environment organisations have pointed out that the gene bank plans are evidence of how serious the situation has become.
"We are planning for a disaster on an unimaginable scale, rather than avoid climate chaos devastating the planet in the first place", said Carbon-info's chairman Flemming Bermann.
Wera Helstroem, a spokeswoman for Norway's foreign ministry, confirmed that the Norwegian government alone is planning to store two million crop and plant seeds.
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