A report by Ember explains that in 2025 electricity generation from renewables (solar, wind and hydropower) surpassed that from fossil fuel sources.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault works. First withdrawal comes from Syria
“The vault is probably going to be used sooner rather than later, and it isn’t necessarily because of some global catastrophe,” said Cary Fowler in 2012, former Executive Director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, foundation managing the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, Norwegian subterranean seed bank, created in 2008 in order to safeguard the widest range
“The vault is probably going to be used sooner rather than later, and it isn’t necessarily because of some global catastrophe,” said Cary Fowler in 2012, former Executive Director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, foundation managing the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, Norwegian subterranean seed bank, created in 2008 in order to safeguard the widest range of seeds coming from all over the world, and to preserve agricultural biodiversity.
On 23 September, the foundation declared that the International Centre for Agricultural Reserach in Dry Areas (ICARDA), seed bank once based in the Syrian city of Aleppo, has requested the withdrawal of some of the seeds it previously deposited into the Global Seed Vault in order to restart its activities, after it was forced to move its headquarters to Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, as a result of the Syrian conflict. The war has caused 250,000 deaths and has forced more than 11 million people to leave their homes.
ICARDA requested the withdrawal of 130 out of 325 samples, containing a total of 116,000 seeds. Among them, some species of wheat and barley suited to dry areas. “Protecting the world’s biodiversity in this manner is precisely the purpose of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault,” said Brian Lainoff, spokesman for the Crop Trust.
https://youtu.be/BYK11SJzgJk
The underground storage is located on the Spitsbergenin Island, in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, about 1,000 km from Norway. The structure can host up to 4.5 million varieties and is managed in collaboration with the government of Oslo. Today, it has 864,000 samples from almost all nations, safeguarded at a temperature of -18°C. Even if the power were to fail, the vault would stay frozen and sealed for at least 200 years.
We hope that the storage won’t be put to the test, but knowing that there are people using their time, funds, and talent to cope with the lacks of those people using the same resources to destroy, is reassuring.
Siamo anche su WhatsApp. Segui il canale ufficiale LifeGate per restare aggiornata, aggiornato sulle ultime notizie e sulle nostre attività.
Quest'opera è distribuita con Licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 4.0 Internazionale.
The Tyler Prize, considered the “Nobel Prize for the Environment,” has been awarded to Toby Kiers, an American biologist working in Amsterdam.
Belgium is one of the countries most exposed to climate change. Dune–dikes are a solution to curb sea-level rise.
Between October 2024 and September 2025, the average temperature in the Arctic was 1.6 degrees Celsius higher than during the 1991–2020 period.
Undeclared conflicts of interest, paid authors, lack of transparency: one of the most cited studies on glyphosate, published in 2000, has been retracted.
The Copernicus service has released data for the first eleven months of 2025: global warming is set to come close to last year’s record.
The European Council and Parliament have reached an agreement on the European Commission’s proposal to deregulate new GMOs. But farming, organic agriculture, and environmental organizations are calling for it to be stopped.
The world’s second-largest producer has taken a historic decision. However, farms will have until 2034 to shut down.
A Greenpeace report denounces Russia’s political and economic model: a nexus of extractivism, authoritarianism and war that is destroying the environment, with serious repercussions for the global ecosystem.