The global Doomsday Seed Vault at Svalbard, Norway is exactly what the name indicates. It is a repository of 865,000 seeds and is protected in an underground facility that can withstand a nuclear bomb, climate change, disease and all sorts of catastrophes. Recently, however, it was opened to withdraw a small amount of seeds for the first time due to the current conflict in Syria.
The request for seeds was made by the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA). The regional seed bank was previously headquartered in the country, but it was forced to relocate to Lebanon due to the ongoing conflict.
ICARDA is withdrawing almost 130 boxes from the 325 it had deposited in the seed vault. It is being made because the seed bank could no longer keep up with requests for seeds in war-torn Syria, particularly in Aleppo, according to The Huffington Post. The war, which killed about 250,000 and displaced more than seven million people, has affected the capability of the organization to grow seeds and to distribute them to other countries in the Middle East.
ICARDA's request was promptly approved by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, the group running the seed vault. The seeds will be sent once paperwork is completed, reported Al Jazeera.
"Protecting the world's biodiversity in this manner is precisely the purpose of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault," Brian Lainoff, spokesperson for the Global Crop Diversity Trust, told TIME. "If something were to happen to one of those collections around the world, they can always come back to the seed vault and retrieve what might have been lost," Lainoff added.
