Engineers last week finished work on one of the world's most ambitious conservation projects: a doomsday vault carved into a frozen mountainside in the archipelago of Svalbard, a few hundred miles from the North Pole. Over the next few weeks, the huge cavern - backed by the Norwegian government and the Gates Foundation - will be filled with more than a million types of seed and will be officially opened in February next year.

    'This will be the last refuge for the world's crops,' said Cary Fowler, of the Rome-based Global Crop Diversity Trust, which is building the vault. 'There are seed banks in various countries round the globe, but several have been destroyed or badly damaged in recent years. We need a place that is politically and environmentally safe if we are going to feed the planet as it gets hotter.'

    About 500 seeds from about 1.5 million types of crop - donated by individual countries - will be placed in envelopes and about 400-500 of these envelopes are stored in a single box. Boxes will then be stacked like library books along shelves inside the vaults. 

    這是世界上最宏偉的保護工程之一：在距離北極幾百英里的斯瓦爾巴群島一個冰凍的山坡上開鑿一個世界末日儲藏室。工程師們已在上周完成了相關工作。今后幾周，這個巨大的洞穴將裝滿100多萬種種子，并將在明年2月正式開放。開鑿這個儲藏室得到了挪威政府和蓋茨基金會的支持。 

    建造這個儲藏室的是總部設在羅馬的全球農作物多樣化基金會。該基金會的卡里·福勒說：“這將是世界農作物最后的避難所。世界上許多國家都有種子庫，但是有幾個種子庫近年來遭到了毀壞或嚴重破壞。隨著氣候變暖，如果我們想養活地球人，我們就需要一個在政治上和環境上安全的地方。”

    據悉，個別國家捐贈的大約150萬種農作物的種子將被裝在信封里，而大約400到500個這樣的信封被貯存在一個箱子里。然后，箱子將像圖書館里的書籍一樣，被堆放在儲藏室里的貨架上。