On this frozen Island, Seeds from Parched and war-torn nations go to live another day

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Way up north on a glacier-encrusted Norwegian island is a little-known deposit box that has seen increase activity and could help the world as it faces the challenges of climate change.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, the world’s largest backup and seed storage facility, has been called the “world’s safety deposit box” and holds seeds for 930,000 crops. It has just received 32,000 samples from 23 nations, including war-ravaged Palestinian areas and drought-ridden East African nations.

The researchers who oversee the vault recently announced that “climate change and conflict threaten infrastructure and impact food security for over 700 million people in more than 75 countries worldwide.”

“Inside this building is 13,000 years of agricultural history,” Brian Lainoff, lead partnerships coordinator of the Crop Trust, which manages the vault, recently told Time magazine. The seeds are frozen for use in a future where many plants and crops will have been destroyed by war or environmental conditions.

Sounds great, but there is an underlying problem: If parts of the world where crops are usually grown are destroyed by man-made activity, where can the seeds be planted? Additionally, in a world where people are at war over food and cropland, food produced by the seeds may become part of the reason for violent wars. As Scientific American recently pointed out, “climate change can tear societies apart.”