Cary Fowler outside the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Hemis/Alamy

Cary Fowler is the American visionary who established the Svalbard Global Seed Vault to ensure the security of all our crop seeds come war, famine or plague. Such future-proofing is ever more important, he tells Andrew Saunders

Appearances can be deceptive. The modest steel and concrete protrusion jutting out from the side of a mountain on the remote Norwegian Svalbard archipelago may not look like much, but it’s actually the entrance to one of the most valuable facilities on earth. Within the vaults behind it, tunnelled 120m into the rock and isolated by layers of both physical and biosecure protection to prevent contamination from the outside world, lies neither gold, gems nor fine art but something much more precious – a collection of seeds of the world’s food crops that we all rely on for our daily nourishment.

It’s the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, and it was built to help protect the world from the growing threat of biodiversity loss, particularly arising from climate change. Loss of biodiversity may not be as well-known as other risks associated with global warming such as higher temperatures and rising sea levels, but it is at least as important, says Cary Fowler, biodiversity specialist and a member of the team that co-founded the vault in 2008. Because, he asks, where would we be without food to eat?

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“We are in the midst of the greatest and quickest change in climate in the history of agriculture, and our future food security is totally dependent on biodiversity. How likely is it that all the varieties of all the food crops we rely on will be able to adapt and continue to grow in conditions that they as species have never experienced before? We need to preserve diversity so that we can help our crops adapt to these new conditions.”

But how exactly does keeping a collection that so far comprises 1.1 million seed samples (with each sample containing an average of 500 seeds) from more than 230 countries literally on ice at 78 degrees north help manage climate change? As Fowler explains, different varieties of rice, wheat, millet and so forth have specific traits that suit them for specific environments. Short-stemmed cereals are less susceptible to damage from wind and rain, for example, while others may be more tolerant of heat or drought. Samples of plants with those types of traits are a crucial hedge against the uncertainty of the future. The research done by bodies such as the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico is critical in our understanding of which varieties are resilient to changing environments.

The entrance to the seed vault.

“Climate change will advantage some crops and disadvantage others,” he says. “If I had a time machine and could go forward 100 years, I am confident that some of the important crops we grow now will have become much less important, and others will have come to the fore. The seed vault collection makes that kind of adaptation possible.”

So, Svalbard is really a kind of global insurance policy, a backup resource to help maintain food production and preserve lives, societies and economies in the event of any natural or human-made disaster, including, but not limited to, climate change. Many of the varieties it contains are no longer grown because they have been replaced by new varieties that are more productive or easier to cultivate, but preserving them is no less important from a biodiversity point of view. “You might have a sample of wheat, say, that by modern standards is just terrible, but it could have one vital trait that is not found anywhere else – resistance to a disease that we don’t even know about today, for example. We can then crossbreed it to get that trait into the modern variety,” explains Fowler.

Read more: Markus Müller on the Importance of Global Sustainability Standards

The Seed Vault was set up as a partnership between the Norwegian government, the Nordic Genetic Resource Centre (NordGen) and the Crop Trust (of which Fowler was previously executive director and where he is now a senior adviser) to conserve crop diversity in perpetuity. He well remembers the scale of the task that faced him and the team he was leading in the early days. “I’d been in the field for a few decades and I knew what was necessary to conserve crop diversity, but to do it in perpetuity? That was an interesting challenge. There are not too many jobs on the planet that involve doing something in perpetuity.”

One of the tunnels inside the vault

The vault’s construction and location were carefully chosen with that longevity in mind. Carved into the Arctic mountain, it is both physically secure – it could withstand a substantial bomb blast – and naturally cold and dry, the ideal conditions for preserving seeds. The ambient temperature inside the vault is approximately -4˚C, and mechanical cooling pulls that down to the optimum storage temperature of -18˚C. But even if the cooling system should fail, the collection would remain safely preserved for several decades. “There would be plenty of time to get up there and fix the equipment. There are no guarantees in this world, but we did the best we could with it.”

The hardest work, however, lay elsewhere, he says. “The management structure – that was the real challenge. I wanted a facility that involved as few human beings as possible, and that more or less ran itself. So that’s what there is – there are no staff located on site and the facility is naturally frozen.”

Read more: Dimitri Zenghelis on Investing in the Green Transition

Former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called the Seed Vault an “inspirational symbol of peace and food security for the whole of humanity”, and there is a strong social justice element to its role. “I am very aware that when we do have a world food crisis, it will be the poorest of the poor who are the first to suffer,” says Fowler. “I grew up in the time of the civil rights movement in the US and have a strong interest in social justice as well as agriculture. My home is in Memphis, Tennessee, where Martin Luther King was assassinated on 4 April 1968. I was at his last speech the night before he was killed; it was very emotional.”

The next job for the Svalbard team – and for Fowler himself – is to raise the profile of biodiversity, both with the public in general and with philanthropists in particular. “Biodiversity is the greatest world problem that we face that we can actually resolve. If I ask you ‘What’s your solution for climate change?’, that’s really big and complicated. But we do have an answer to the question of how to preserve the biodiversity of food production – we know how to do that.”

What’s required is greater awareness and a willingness for institutions and wealthy individuals to recognise the importance of funding biodiversity, he adds. “If I was a wealthy individual and I wanted, for example, to save the whales forever, that would be a great thing to do but how much would it cost and how would you go about doing it? There’s no organisation in the world which could tell you that.”

Maize plants in a greenhouse at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, Mexico. Photo courtesy of The Global Crop Diversity Trust. Juan Arredondo/Reportage by Getty Images for The Global Crop Diversity Trust

By contrast, saving crop diversity is both practical and relatively affordable. Smaller crops could be saved for around $5m, Fowler calculates, and the cost of preserving even the most important global crops is less than you might expect. “I can tell you the answer for rice, which is our biggest crop with the most samples and therefore the most expensive. Somewhere between $35m and $50m in an endowment fund would generate enough income to save all the rice diversity in perpetuity.”

In short, his pitch is that food is the bedrock of human existence, and crop biodiversity is a great way to maximise food security in a time when climate change and a host of other potential calamities are threatening it. “Those sums are well within the scope of a number of wealthy people, and they would be the first to do something quite extraordinary and inspiring. Can you name any other major world problem that we have solved, reliably and forever, within the lifetime of someone living today? Well, we can do it with this one.”

Additional research by Candice Tucker
Find out more: caryfowler.com; seedvault.no

This article was originally published in the Autumn/Winter 2021 issue.

Professor Peter Newell made waves earlier this year with a report describing how the wealthy have a disproportionate impact on climate change – and a particular duty to change their habits. The lead author of the Cambridge Sustainability Commission report on Scaling Behaviour Change speaks to Candice Tucker about the power of protest, how duty increases with wealth, and the need for radical action

Professor Peter Newell

LUX: What is the single most effective non-philanthropic act ultra-high net worth individuals can do to help combat climate change?
Peter Newell: There are many things ultra-high net worth individuals can do to combat climate change. These range from, firstly, reducing emissions associated with their lifestyles, from flying less, avoiding unnecessary travel and changing the way they travel (switching to electric cars, for example) to owning fewer and smaller homes; secondly, withdrawing investments in the fossil fuel economy and investing in low carbon alternatives and thirdly, using their political influence (through access to politicians and donations to political parties) to push for more ambitious climate change.

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LUX: To encourage a shift towards a low-carbon economy, should charitable institutions including museums and universities reject donations from companies with poor environmental profiles?
Peter Newell: Yes, companies driving the climate crisis are increasingly losing their social license to operate and so museums, arts institutions and universities refusing to give them a platform or association with which to push their products or enhance their brands is an important contribution.

LUX: How effective are protests demanding action on climate change (such as the FridaysForFuture strikes) in instigating meaningful change?
Peter Newell: Incredibly effective. If we look to the past, few big and progressive shifts in society have come about without social protests and struggle. The battle to address the climate crisis is no different. Without the school strikes, governments, cities and some corporations would not have declared a climate emergency. Protests always force the issue and offer a gauge of how a society feels because they will only be successful if enough people support them directly and indirectly.

LUX: What will it take to reach a political tipping point, where climate change becomes the top priority for politicians globally?
Peter Newell: Climate change impacts everything and increasingly, people are understanding that more and more. It is a health issue, a security issue, an economic issue as well as a human rights and environmental issue. The more people connect their wellbeing and quality of life to climate, the higher up the agenda it goes. Ask people in the midst of forest fires, droughts and record temperatures if they are worried about climate change. For change at the speed and scale now required, we need lots of things to come together at the same: shifts in technology, behaviour, the falling costs of renewables and political shifts including greater representation for younger people and excluded groups. Luckily, some of these things are happening now.

The highest consuming and wealthiest groups in society need to radically address their lifestyle habits, says Peter Newell

LUX: Can global governments be persuaded to put climate issues above fractious relationships?
Peter Newell: No one country is immune from the effects of climate change. So, on the one hand everyone has an interest in addressing it. On the other, countries would rather someone else moves first and powerful interests resist more ambitious action. As noted above, climate is also a security and trade issue, a welfare and work issue, a health and human rights issue and governments do pay more attention to those issues. Governments have worked together to address Covid, the key now is to address the causes of threats like that in the destruction of the natural world. Now is a marginally better time for multilateral solutions than a few years ago.

LUX: What can be done to encourage governments to campaign on low carbon policies which may only lead to a benefit long after they have left office?
Peter Newell: There are near-term benefits from low carbon policies in terms of lower fuel bills, jobs, energy security, health and many other things. These bring benefits to consumers, businesses and of course governments themselves in terms of lower health costs, energy independence and a resilient economy. These are the things governments need to emphasise to bring people with them. Some benefits will come after they have left office. That is a good legacy to leave!

Read more: Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava on light and space

LUX: Having worked with the governments of the UK, Sweden and Finland as well as NGOs including Friends of the Earth and Climate Network Europe, how would you contrast their approach to mitigating the effects climate change?
Peter Newell: For more than 25 years, I have worked with most actors in the climate space from governments, local councils, businesses, NGOs and cities. They all have different approaches to reducing emissions and enhancing their resilience to the effects of climate change. This is unsurprising given the different mandates and resources they have and the diverse constituencies they have to respond to. Right now, we need action from all of these actors. Each has a vital role to play in accelerating and deepening change.

LUX: What aspects of international governmental cooperation have surprised you in protecting the environment?
Peter Newell: International cooperation of the environment is generally very slow as countries seek to manage different interests and priorities and agree on the details of negotiating a legal text. It is often a very frustrating process, but occasionally you get significant outcomes such as when governments rapidly phased out ozone-depleting CFCs as part of the Montreal Protocol in 1987, or when the Paris Agreement on climate change in 2015 set an ambitious target of keeping warming below 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels.

LUX: How can governments be incentivised to prioritise a low-carbon economy when it may be detrimental to their medium term economic interests?
Peter Newell: Any policy pathway creates costs for some and opportunities for others. With climate change though, we will also lose everything unless we respond in a way that corresponds to the scale of the threat. That also means we have everything to gain. In the short term, we need a just transition to manage and reduce disruption and negative impacts on those sectors that inevitably need to be wound down, while shifting resources and support to sectors and industries whose future is compatible with addressing the climate crisis.

LUX: Will the pandemic effect governments’ approach to climate policies moving forward?
Peter Newell: The pandemic has had a detrimental impact on government finances, so one level this is an even more challenging time to address the climate crisis. On the other hand, the pandemic has shown how quickly governments can mobilise finance, repurpose industries and shift behaviours. These are all things we need to do to tackle climate change. There is also a chance to re-set the economy: how we travel, shop, source our food and how we work. There are opportunities to radically decarbonise all of these areas if governments are bold enough to rise to the challenge. It really is the case that we can build better – and in any case going back to business as usual is not an option because it was leading us towards a climate disaster.

Source: Hertwich & Peters 2009

LUX: How much of the problem is a lack of education in combatting climate change?
Peter Newell: The question of education is often raised in the context of educating younger generations or those with less scientific literacy about the dangers of climate change. In reality, younger people and poorer people often understand only too well the threats associated with climate change and feel a sense of injustice that they are not the ones who caused the problem yet live with its worse effects. So, it is actually richer and more privileged the people the world over that need to re-educate themselves in the need for radical action to address climate change.

LUX: Can changes made by individual citizens, such as eating less meat, have a genuine impact on climate change?
Peter Newell: There is no question that we cannot reach ambitious climate goals without behaviour change. This needs to be led by the highest consuming and richest groups in society and it also needs to address key behaviour “hotspots” around unnecessary travel, diet and housing, for example. But, we also need to think about behaviour change more broadly, beyond what individuals and households do: to consider what we do at work, in our communities and in public life where we often have more ability to shape things in a positive direction.

LUX: Are there reasonable grounds to hope we will avoid the worst-case scenarios caused by climate change?
Peter Newell: At the Rapid Transition Alliance, we talk about “evidence-based hope.” This showcases change taking place around the world today in relation to energy, transport, housing, finance and many other areas, as well as shows how we have met some of these challenges before. This shows how we can meet this challenge. But as well as tapping into all the opportunities I have described here, we need to make tough choices like urgently leaving large swathes of fossil fuels in the ground and standing up to vested interests. We need to make the right choices and the difficult decisions for all our sakes. This will only come from pressure and action on all fronts and on a scale that we have not yet seen, but things are happening, so I remain optimistic.

Peter Newell is a Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex and a key member of the Rapid Transition Alliance, which supports research and campaigning to tackle the climate emergency. Find out more: rapidtransition.org