In other words, the accessions in ICARDA’s possession already have the genetics required to survive on a hot planet. The specific ecological and environmental conditions in the Fertile Crescent from early on have optimized wild relative species in the region to be genetically resilient to drought, increased temperatures, heatwaves, and disease outbreaks - the very same adverse threats brought on by climate change. The genebanks managed by ICARDA aren’t only the world’s biggest they also hold a large number of unique wild accessions - seed samples held in a genebank for conservation - from the Fertile Crescent, where agriculture first evolved over 7,000 years ago. In 2015, 30 years after fleeing to Syria from Lebanon’s civil war, ICARDA relocated its genebank back to the relative stability of Lebanon, this time in full flight from Syria’s war. ICARDA’s objectives are numerous, but they all boil down to improving the livelihoods of the resource-poor across the world’s dry areas, from utilizing limited water resources to improving the production of staple food crops.īut the Levant region, where ICARDA’s presence is essential to its mission, keeps delivering its own turmoil. The International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) emerged from and expanded the former Arid Land Agricultural Development (ALAD) Program of the Ford Foundation that operated in Lebanon in the 1960s and 1970s. The move was actually a return to Lebanon, where ICARDA was first headquartered, before Lebanon’s civil war forced their move to Syria in 1984. Then the war came, and the seeds were relocated to Lebanon for safekeeping. Let’s take a look at the seeds they’re stockpiling, the polar bears that totally DO guard the place and the mysterious Black Box system they’ve put in place.The seeds that could save humanity were in a vault in Syria. Somewhere in the chilly snows of Svalbard stands the Doomsday Vault. To safeguarding us from any future disasters, natural or of our own darn making. I do worry that my as-yet-unconceived children will inherit a world where they can’t even breathe on the surface without special apparatus.Īs bleak a picture as I’m painting here, though, here’s something else important to bear in mind: some of us are working towards ensuring our futures. I do get a little worried about the future at times. That’s one of the main factors that gives us our impetus to travel, really: seeing some of the world’s most incredible sights and attractions before we ruthlessly sell them, flatten them and build a McDonald’s and a couple of apartment blocks in their place. Heck, you can hardly hop onto social media anymore without seeing something that makes you fear for the future of humanity and our planet. It’s easy to get totally down about that sort of thing. I passed a newsstand on my way to the store just this morning, and saw about six different headlines that made me want to just crawl under the blankets and never come out. Pollution, deforestation, people generally doing super unfortunate things to each other. We often hear that things have gone all the way to heckola, in the bad old world of 2018.
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