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Witness History

The Arctic’s doomsday seed vault

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.41.6K Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2024

⏱️ 10 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In January 2008, seeds began arriving at the world's first global seed vault, buried deep in a mountain on an Arctic island, 1,000km north of the Norwegian coast.

The vault was built to ensure the survival of the world's food supply and agricultural history in the event of a global catastrophe.

In 2019, Louise Hidalgo spoke to the man whose idea it was, Dr Cary Fowler.

(Photo: Journalists and cameramen outside the entrance of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in 2008. Credit: Hakon Mosvold Larsen/AFP/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0

I love you and would kill before I would see you taken from me.

0:06.2

Lady Killers is back.

0:08.2

Join me Lucy Worsley to investigate infamous female criminals from the past.

0:13.2

It's really important that we listen to these voices about the society in which they lived.

0:18.0

We're seeking to understand these women from the

0:25.0

21st century feminists. We cannot put women into history on the basis of likeability.

0:26.0

Put all the women back, the sinners and the saints.

0:29.0

Lady Killers, listen first on BBC Sounds.

0:33.0

Hello and welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service.

0:43.2

In January 2008, seeds began arriving at the world's first global seed vault,

0:49.4

buried deep in the permafrost in a mountain in the Arctic Circle on an island north of Norway.

0:56.0

The vault was built to ensure the survival of the world's food supply

1:00.0

and agricultural history in the event of a global catastrophe.

1:05.0

In 2019, Louisa Dago spoke to the man behind the idea, Dr. Kerry Fowler.

1:11.0

We had chartered a plane from the mainland that came in. I suspect it was the

1:17.0

first plane in history to be carrying a load completely of seeds.

1:22.0

Kerry Fowler had been working towards this for years, the world's first truly safe deposit

1:27.1

box for every seed known to man.

1:30.0

What was it like seeing those first seeds arrive?

1:32.8

Just an extraordinary moment.

1:34.8

If you see these boxes from all the different countries in the world and you imagine what's

1:39.8

inside of them, living seeds that have been passed down successfully from one generation

...

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