Svalbard Global Seed Vault

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault (Norwegian: Svalbard globale frøhvelv) is a seed bank (a place where seeds are kept) in Norway. It is on the island of Spitsbergen, near Longyearbyen, in the Arctic Svalbard archipelago. It is about 1,300 kilometres (810 miles) from the North Pole. Conservationist Cary Fowler worked with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), to start the vault. The vault is there to save many different kinds of plant seeds. The seeds at the vault are copies of seeds from other places around the world. Copies of seeds are kept in case the seeds in other places are lost. Three organizations decided how to manage the vault. Those organizations were the Norwegian government, the Global Crop Diversity Trust (GCDT) and the Nordic Genetic Resource Center (NordGen). The Norwegian government paid for building the vault. It cost about 45 million Norwegian kroner (US$9 million) to build. Storing seeds in the vault is free. Norway and GCDT pay to operate the vault. GCDT gets money from organisations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and from different governments worldwide. References Other websites Official website