- Future of Food
‘Doomsday Vault’ Protects Earth’s Food Supply—Here’s How
Designed to be insulated from a cataclysm, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault sprang a leak last year. Now it’s being retooled for climate change.
Longyearbyen, SvalbardThe windshield wipers on the SUV work overtime as Åsmund Asdal zigzags up the fog-covered mountain to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
“The main reason we have civilization is that humans developed ways of using seeds,” says Asdal, the operations and management coordinator of the facility, as he peers over the steering wheel through the haze.
Today the wide range of plants that humans have relied on throughout history is threatened by the clones of modern industrial agriculture, new diseases, and climate change. The storage vault—in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago 800 miles above the Arctic Circle—was designed to ensure that nature’s vast array of genes is not lost.
At the entrance tunnel to the warehouse, the wind is drowned out
