Men behind Arctic Doomsday Seed Vault win World Food Prize

(DES MOINES, Iowa) – When Cary Fowler and Geoffrey Hawtin started thinking about ways to prevent famine and protect the world’s food supply, they came up with what Fowler called “the craziest idea they ever had” – a global seed vault built in in the side of an Arctic mountain.

About 20 years ago, Fowler, now the US Special Envoy for Global Food Security, and Hawtin, an agricultural scientist from Britain, envisioned the so-called “doomsday vault” as a reserve for seeds that could be used to grow new seeds. . crops if existing seed banks would be threatened by wars, climate change or other unrest. On Thursday, officials in Washington announced that Fowler and Hawtin would be named laureates of the 2024 World Food Prize for their work.

“To a lot of people these days it sounds like a very reasonable thing to do. It is a valuable natural resource and you want to provide robust protection for it,” he said in an interview from Saudi Arabia. “Fifteen years ago, transporting a lot of seeds to the nearest place you can fly to the North Pole and putting them in a mountain – that’s the craziest idea anyone ever had.”

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen opened in 2008 and now contains 1.25 million seed samples from almost every country. The largely concrete structure, built into the side of a mountain, provides genetic protection for more than 6,000 varieties of crops and culturally important plants.

Fowler and Hawtin were named winners of the annual award at the State Department, where Secretary of State Antony Blinken praised the men for their “critical role in preserving crop diversity.”

They will receive the annual prize this fall in Des Moines, Iowa, where the Food Prize foundation is based, and will distribute a $500,000 reward.

Hundreds of smaller seed banks have existed in other countries for decades, but Fowler said he was motivated by concerns that climate change would throw agriculture into turmoil, making an abundant seed supply even more important.

Hawtin, a member of the board of directors of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, said there were numerous existing crop threats such as insects, disease and land degradation, as well as political unrest, but climate change was increasing the need for a secure backup. seed vault. In part, that’s because climate change has the potential to make those previous problems worse.

“You get a whole new spectrum of pests and diseases under different climate regimes,” Hawtin said in an interview from south-west England. “Climate change adds a lot of additional problems to the problems that have always been significant.”

Fowler and Hawtin said they hope their selection as World Food Prize laureates will allow them to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funding from seed banks around the world. Sustaining these activities is relatively inexpensive, especially considering how vital they are to ensuring an abundant food supply, but the financing needs remain in perpetuity.

“This is really an opportunity to get that message out there and say, look, this relatively small amount of money is our insurance policy, our insurance policy that will feed the world 50 years from now,” Hawtin said.

The World Food Prize was founded by Norman Borlaug, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his part in the Green Revolution, which dramatically increased crop yields and reduced the threat of famine in many countries. The food award will be presented during the annual Norman E. Borlaug International Dialogue, held Oct. 29-31 in Des Moines.