Tag Archives: agriculture

Preserving Seeds that Feed the World: the Svalbard Global Seed Vault

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Six hundred miles from the North Pole, on an island the size of West Virginia, at the end of a tunnel bored into a mountain, lies a vault filled with more than 1 million samples of seeds harvested from 6,374 species of plants grown in 249 locations around the globe.The collection, the largest of its kind, is intended to safeguard the genetic diversity of the crops that feed the world.  If disaster wipes out a plant, seeds from the vault could be used to restore the species. If pests, disease or climate change imperil a food source, a resistant trait found among the collection could thwart the threat.

While some countries have their own seed banks—Colorado State University houses one for the U.S.—the Svalbard Global Seed Vault serves as a backup. The vault, built in 2008 at a cost of about $9 million, is owned and maintained by Norway, but its contents belong to the countries and places that provide the samples.  “It works like a safe-deposit box at the bank,” said Cary Fowler, an American agriculturalist who helped found the vault. “Norway owns the facility, but not the boxes of the seeds.”

In 2015, after the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas was destroyed in the Syrian civil war, scientists who had fled the country withdrew seeds to regenerate the plants in Lebanon and Morocco.  “It had one of the world’s biggest and best collections of wheat, barley, lentils, chickpeas, faba beans and grass pea,” Dr. Fowler said. “It was the chief supplier of a disease-resistant wheat variety for the Middle East.”  In 2017, the group returned copies of its seeds to the vault.

The 18,540-square-foot seed vault includes three rooms with the capacity to house 4.5 million samples of 500 seeds each—a maximum of 2.25 billion seeds. The environment’s natural temperature remains below freezing year round, but the seeds are stored at a chillier -18 degrees Celsius, or around -0.4 degrees Fahrenheit. They’re expected to last for decades, centuries or perhaps even millennia….

While dwindling diversity might not seem like an imminent threat, four chemical companies now control more than 60% of global proprietary seed sales…That concentration of power, some worry, could lead to less agricultural variety and more genetic uniformity…In the meantime, the seed vault (which doesn’t store genetically modified seeds) will continue to accept deposits in an effort to preserve all of the options it can.

Excerpts from Craven McGinty, Plan to Save World’s Crops Lives in Norwegian Bunker, WSJ,  May 29, 2020

Defenses Against the Sea: Bangladesh

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Facing the bleak prospect of millions of its citizens being displaced in coming years due to storms and sea level rise caused by climate change, Bangladesh is building up existing coastal embankments in a bid to protect coastal lands and people. On November 2015, the Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB) signed a deal with the Chinese firm First Engineering Bureau of Henan Water Conservancy to start work on the Coastal Embankment Improvement Project-1… And as per the agreement, the Chinese firm is helping rebuild four polders in two coastal districts – Khulna and Bagerhat.

Bangladesh is a low-lying delta, making it one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change. The coastal region adjoining the Bay of Bengal is characterised by a vast network of active tidal rivers. The strength of the tides and the flatness of the delta causes the tides to influence river processes a long way upstream in the southern estuaries. And climate change has intensified the tides in recent years.

“We will repair all 139 coastal polders considering the climate-induced changes presumed to take place by 2050 to protect coastal people from recurrent climatic disasters like cyclone and storm surge,” Water Resources Minister Anisul Islam Mahmud told IPS.  He said the water development board is currently working to rebuild 17 coastal embankments in its first phase, and the remaining polders will be repaired gradually.

The Coastal Embankment Improvement Project Phase-1 (CEIP-1) involving 400 million dollars to rebuild 17 polders in six coastal districts – Khulna, Satkhira, Begerhat, Pirojpur, Barguna and Patuakhali. The height of 200-kilometre-long embankments will be increased by one to two metres and 58 regulators will be set up in the first phase.

Since the 1960s, Bangladesh built 139 polders to protect about 1.2 million hectares of land from seawater…

Excerpts from Rafiqul Islam , Raising Walls Against the Sea, IPS News Service, May 12, 2016

Amazon Protected Areas: 215 Million Fund

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Brazil’s government, the World Wildlife Fund and various partners are expected to unveil an agreement that would establish a $215 million fund for conservation of protected jungle in the Amazon rainforest.  The fund, which seeks to ensure conservation of over 90 protected areas in the Amazon, comes as renewed developmental pressures mount in the region, resulting last year in an uptick in deforestation figures after years of record lows.

Under the terms of the agreement, partners in the fund will make annual contributions to help Brazil meet financing needs for the protected lands, whose combined area totals more than 60 million hectares, or an area 20 percent larger than Spain.  Contributions, partners said, will be contingent upon conditions required of Brazil, including audits of the government body that will administer the fund and continued staffing and financing of government offices required to administer the rainforest areas.

Money from the fund would be used for a range of basic conservation measures, including fences and signs to delineate protected areas and to pay for vehicles used to patrol them…

Brazil’s government through 2012 made large inroads against deforestation, largely through strict environmental enforcement and financial measures that blocked credit for companies and individuals caught doing business with loggers, ranchers, farmers or others known to exploit illegally cleared land.

In recent years, however, the government has made changes to environmental agencies and regulations that critics say make it easier for would-be developers to target protected areas. The government has also altered borders of some parkland to make way for infrastructure projects, including hydroelectric dams on various Amazon tributaries.

Financing for the new fund, expected to pay out over 25 years, was secured from private and public sources including the German government, the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, philanthropists and the Amazon Fund, an existing facility financed mostly by the Norwegian government and administered by Brazil’s national development bank.

Together, the forest zones targeted by the fund are known as the Amazon Region Protected Areas, or ARPA, a program established in 2002 to coordinate financing and conservation strategy in the region.

Whereas previous financing for the effort relied on cumulative fundraising efforts, partners this time agreed to an all-or-nothing approach, borrowed from private-sector financing practices, to build momentum toward a target total. The $215 million is the amount calculated as necessary to help the Brazilian government, over the 25 years, become self-sufficient in terms of financing the rainforest areas.

Excerpts from  PAULO PRADA, Donors commit $215 million for Amazon conservation in Brazil, Reuters, May 21, 2014

Cyberwar: Attacking the Pipelines

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The vast U.S. network of natural gas and hazardous liquid pipelines is integral to U.S. energy supply and has vital links to other critical infrastructure. While an efficient and fundamentally safe means of transport, this network is vulnerable to cyber attacks. In particular, cyberinfiltration of supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems could allow successful “hackers” to disrupt pipeline service and cause spills, explosions, or fires—all from remote locations.

In March 2012, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported ongoing cyber intrusions among U.S. natural gas pipeline operators. These intrusions have heightened congressional concern about cybersecurity in the U.S. pipelines sector. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is authorized by federal statute to promulgate pipeline physical security and cybersecurity regulations, if necessary, but the agency has not issued such regulations. TSA officials assert that security regulations could be counterproductive because they could establish a general standard below the level of security already in place for many pipelines…. While the pipelines sector has many cybersecurity issues in common with other critical infrastructure sectors, it is somewhat distinct in several ways:

• Pipelines in the United States have been the target of several confirmed terrorist plots and attempted physical attacks since September 11, 2001.

• Changes to pipeline computer networks over the past 20 years, more sophisticated hackers, and the emergence of specialized malicious software have made pipeline SCADA operations increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks.

• There recently has been a coordinated series of cyber intrusions specifically targeting U.S. pipeline computer systems.

• TSA already has statutory authority to issue cybersecurity regulations for pipelines if the agency chooses to do so, but it may not have the resources to develop, implement, and enforce such regulations if they are mandated….

In March 2012, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported ongoing cyber intrusions among U.S. natural gas pipeline operators. The incidents drew new attention to an Al Qaeda video obtained in 2011 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reportedly calling for “electronic jihad” against U.S. critical infrastructure.  These cybersecurity events coupled with serious consequences from recent pipeline accidents have heightened congressional concern about cybersecurity measures in the U.S. pipelines sector.

Excerpt, Paul W. Parfomak, Pipeline Cybersecurity: Federal Policy, CRS Report for Congress, Aug. 16, 2012