Climate security

Threat of Climate Change Is Forcing Norway to Drop Millions on Its Doomsday Vault

Today’s addition of 70,000 new seeds to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault brings the total number of crops stored at the Arctic facility to over one million. It’s an important milestone—but to keep the vault running, and to protect it from the effects of climate change, the Norwegian government is going to have to spend upwards of $13 million in upgrades.

The Estonian onion potato, black-eyed peas, Bambara groundnuts, and Hunter barley used to brew Irish beer are among the 70,000 deposits made today at Svalbard. That brings the total number of seeds deposited at the facility to a whopping 1,059,646, according to the BBC.

The Doomsday Vault, as it’s been dubbed, opened exactly ten years ago today, and it’s there on Svalbard Island—halfway between the mainland of Norway and the North Pole—to protect the world’s seeds in the event of cataclysmic climate change, mega-droughts, nuclear war, or whichever apocalypse-inducing event we might be able to think of. Only one of the vault’s three chambers are full, but that’s not stopping the Norwegian government from contemplating some much-needed upgrades. There are still well over a million unique varieties of crops that still need to be stored at the site.