"vault" is probably a familiar word for you, but what is a seed vault? Well in Norway, more specifically on Svalbard there is a seed vault and I'm going to tell a bit more about it.
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The seed vault is located on Svalbard near Longyearbyen, the biggest city on Svalbard. Svalbard is a part of Norway, but Norway doesn't fully control it (its complicated). Svalbard is however an island in the far north and its very peaceful there since military activity is not allowed. This is important because the reason why seed vaults are being built is to protect seeds that has been able to adopt to the climate in different regions. If those seeds disappear there might not be any seeds that can adapt to the climate in the region.
BUT seed vaults aren't immune to wars and so on. The seed vault in Syria was destroyed and it reminded us about the vulnerability that the vaults have. So that's why a seed vault was built in the far north, far away from any conflicts, and most important it is built into the mountain so that the seeds are protected by the permafrost. You can see on the map where its located.
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The vault was built in 2008 and the vault quickly started filling up with seeds from the whole world and there are now almost 1 million different seeds in the vault. 236 countries have seeds stored in the vault. You can actually check what species that different countries have stored in the vault on this site: https://www.nordgen.org/en/global-seed-vault/search-seed-vault/
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In 2015 the first seeds got withdrawn, and it was Syria that had to bring some of their seeds back. During the civil war their seed vault got destroyed and 148 000 seeds got destroyed. Luckily Syria had saved 80% of the seeds on Svaldbard.
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