Svalbard Seed Vault Wins International Prize

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway received the Princess of Asturias Award for International Cooperation this Wednesday. Located on the island of Spitsbergen, near the North Pole, the vault holds over one million seed varieties from 6,500 plant species. It functions as a safeguard against global hunger by preserving plant genetic diversity, threatened by declining cultivation of varied crops and events like the 19th-century phylloxera epidemic.

Norway manages the vault with support from Crop Trust and the Nordic Genetic Resource Centre. Countries worldwide contribute seeds, stored at -18 degrees Celsius in sealed packages, with capacity for 4.5 million varieties—currently about 50% of the world’s crop diversity. In 2017, unusually high Arctic temperatures caused permafrost to melt, letting water into the access tunnel, revealing a vulnerability to climate change.

The vault operates like a bank safety deposit box; seed owners retain access rights. Experts estimate it holds around half of the world’s plant diversity, but acknowledge significant losses—the U.S. has lost 90% of its cultivatable plant varieties since the 19th century, and Mexico has lost 80% of its corn types since 1900—and the work to collect and preserve continues.