Doomsday Seed Vault Opens in Arctic Feb 26, 2008 – By VOA News
Snow blows off the Svalbard Global Seed Vault before being
inaugurated at sunrise, 26 Feb 2008.
A vault built to safeguard seed samples of the world's
important food crops has opened in the remote Norwegian archipelago of
Svalbard.
Norway's Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and Nobel-Prize
winning environmentalist Wangari Maathai on Tuesday placed the first seeds
inside the vault, built in caverns 130 meters inside a frozen
mountain.
The repository is designed to shield plant seeds and
preserve crop diversity in the event of disaster such as climate change,
epidemic or nuclear war.
The vault has the capacity to store 4.5 million seed
samples.
The Norwegian government spent $9 million to build the
vault. Other countries can deposit seeds without charge and reserve the
right to withdraw them upon need.
Courtesy VOA. Some
information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and
Reuters.
