![]() ![]() ![]() DOOMSDAY VAULT 60 DRIVERAs the taxicab approached along the narrow road to the small parking area the driver asked us again if we were sure someone was going to let us in. Its luminous beacon announcing its presence buried into the mountainside. The vault looked like a wedge of concrete. The taxicab driver drove my wife and I along the switchback road half way up the mountain to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. However, in the interests of transparency, those responsible for managing the vault have been generous to allow limited access to some journalists, artists and social scientists in addition to those who accompany the seed deposits. In order to enter during the brief period when seed accessions are accepted, a number of permissions must be given. The seed bank is intended as a secure facility so for most of the year, it remains completely closed to keep humidity and temperature regulated. In 2015, she returned to Svalbard and Bernie joined her as co-ethnographer for part of the trip. Tracey’s research began here in 2014, to look at efforts toward seed banking and adaptation to climate change. Our global concerns about the Anthropocene take root in places just like this. We will not enter the facility itself, since only maintenance workers and the experts handling the seeds are allowed in, but you will still feel the serenity of the location, and always carry with you the knowledge of what you have seen. When we drive up to the Seed Vault, you will understand that you are in a place of almost unimaginable significance. One recent tourism operation in Longyearbyen even attempted to offer day tours featuring the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Many tourists to Svalbard are fascinated by it, although the building is not open to visitors. There have already been a number of news features and two full-length documentaries produced about it. representatives, suggests that the vault condenses a cultural imaginary that resonates with discourses about climate change and policy responses. ![]() ![]() The considerable press received by the vault, with prestigious photo opportunities for high-level European politicians and U.N. Its founder, Cary Fowler, prefers to describe it simply as “a backup system for world agriculture.” Once described by a European politician as “a Frozen Garden of Eden”, the vault has been called a “Doomsday Vault”, a “Fort Knox of food”, a “new wave bunker” and a “Noah’s Ark of seeds” by journalists. The establishment of the Global Seed Vault in 2008 created a place where existing seed banks around the world can send their samples for long-term storage, in case of mechanical failures related to cold storage and humidity control, or unforeseen circumstances–from violent conflicts to budget cuts–that could threaten the samples contained in their own facilities. Agricultural scientists have long maintained seed bank stores to ensure that genetic materials are conserved for use in research, and these stores are increasingly important in the face of changing climates. Biological diversity is also at risk, as heritage crops and crop wild relatives are lost. Farmers’ crops are at risk from unexpected droughts, floods and storms, as well as altered seasonal patterns that may see new extremes or fluctuations of heat and cold, with plant pests and diseases evolving and moving into different geographic areas. The Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway, is another of the places that has come to symbolize the global concerns of the Anthropocene, because observable impacts of climate change raise vital questions about the future of human food security. In the Anthropocene, seemingly familiar landscapes become alien to us. When we see images of polar bears drowning because ice flows are thawing in the arctic, or images that show the foundations of houses in Shishmaref, Alaska alarmingly tilted by melting permafrost, we are faced with how much we have changed the world we knew. But our ideas about the Anthropocene come not just from science, but also from other public discourses that interpret unfolding events. Changing weather patterns and more examples of extreme weather have become better documented and understood by scientists. We now constantly think and talk of the prospects ahead for a planetary ecology essentially defined, not by the “natural” forces that determined the conditions of earlier ages, but by human activity. The idea of the Anthropocene has helped to focus public attention on the growing environmental problems created by fossil fuel consumption and release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Rori Knudtson, in Bernard’s notes on 3-1-15. “Do you think we will survive climate change?” This is part of our special feature Facing the Anthropocene. ![]()
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