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Rimmer, Matthew --- "The Doomsday Vault: Seed Banks, Food Security and Climate Change" [2012] ELECD 143; in Rimmer, Matthew; McLennan, Alison (eds), "Intellectual Property and Emerging Technologies" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Intellectual Property and Emerging Technologies

Editor(s): Rimmer, Matthew; McLennan, Alison

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849802468

Section: Chapter 13

Section Title: The Doomsday Vault: Seed Banks, Food Security and Climate Change

Author(s): Rimmer, Matthew

Number of pages: 31

Extract:

13. The Doomsday Vault: seed banks,
food security and climate change
Matthew Rimmer

Hunger allows no choice
W.H. Auden1

It could easily provide the back-drop for a James Bond movie. Deep inside a
mountain near the North Pole, down a fortified tunnel, and behind airlocked
doors in a vault frozen to -18 degrees Celsius, scientists are squirreling away
millions of seed samples. The samples constitute the very foundation of agri-
culture, the biological diversity needed so the world's major food crops can
adapt to the next pest or disease, or to climate change. It's little wonder that the
Svalbard Global Seed Vault has captured the public's imagination more than
almost any agricultural topic in recent years. Popular press reports about the
`Doomsday Vault,' however, typically mask the complexity of the endeavor
and, if anything, underestimate its practical utility.
Cary Fowler2

There has been concern about the threat posed to plant genetic resources by
global warming and climate change.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has long been
concerned with seed banks, food security and climate change. There have
been perennial debates in this forum about the underlying questions of
intellectual property rights. In a 1981 conference, the Mexican delegation
proposed an international seed bank. As John Seabrook noted, `it would
contain seeds from national and international seed banks, and patented
seeds created by private seed companies. The North could have free access
to the seeds from the centers of diversity only if the South ...