Norway is to cooperate with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on an initiative to rescue 95% of the biological diversity of the world’s food crops. In Norway, the construction of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is already under way. This will be used to store material from national and international gene banks.
29/04/2007 :: “Cooperation with the Gates Foundation will be a very important means of safeguarding future food production throughout the world,” said Minister of International Development Erik Solheim.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is allocating NOK 50 million in matching funds over a two-year period to an initiative to safeguard the biological diversity of 21 of the world’s most critical food crops. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is providing som NOK 200 million (USD 30 million) to this initiative organised by the Global Crop Diversity Trust.
The grants from Norway and the Gates Foundation will be used partly to enable developing countries to send seeds to the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard.
“I am very pleased that Norway is contributing to the largest single grant ever made to conserve the global biological diversity of food crops. This means that the costs of the developing countries’ use of the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard are guaranteed for the foreseeable future,” said Mr Solheim.
The Seed Vault will serve as a global safety net for food crops whose seeds are already stored in international gene banks. In a number of places these gene banks are vulnerable because of inadequate maintenance capacity, natural disasters or conflicts. Developing countries will be given an opportunity to deposit back-up samples of their seed collections in the Svalbard vault. Because of the climatic conditions in Svalbard, the seeds will survive and retain the ability to germinate for many decades. The funding that has now been secured will make it possible to deposit at least 450 000 distinct seed samples in the Svalbard vault.
“This initiative will rescue the most globally important developing-country collections of the world’s 21 most important food crops,” said Cary Fowler, Director of the Trust. “It will secure at-risk collections in poor countries and document their astonishing diversity, making it available to meet the food needs of the poor.”
The Trust was founded by the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation and Bioversity International for the purpose of conserving the biological diversity of food crops in developing countries.