A team of scientists on the frontlines of climate change is helping nature heal itself. But as wars rage around them, it's making their efforts to feed an increasingly hungry globe that much harder.
Double doors stand at the end of a gang plank that takes people deep inside the permafrost. From here, it's just 120 metres into the frozen mountain to reach the foundations of global food supplies. ICARDA's mission is to reduce poverty and enhance food, water and nutritional security in the face of global challenges. Its focus is on the developing world, where it hopes its research can help bolster crop yields, farmer incomes and ensure people have access to food where they live.
It wasn't just their homes they'd left behind. The seeds they'd spent decades collecting were now stranded in a war zone. "Working inside Svalbard was very difficult. I couldn't feel my fingertips after some time," he says with a grin.It would be weeks before feeling returned to Tsivelikas's fingers. But a different feeling would linger, one of pride knowing he "was the only one privileged to enter this doomsday vault".
It's work that can take years — introducing new traits into plants that both allow them to better tolerate harsher conditions, while still yielding crops that can be farmed. The country's economic stability has been further disrupted by the global shock waves of the Russia-Ukraine war. That was until Russia invaded. The early days of the war saw 20 million tonnes of Ukrainian crops ready for export held up in ports. With time, paddocks would be destroyed and one of the busiest ocean passages would become a treacherous voyage, the Black Sea littered with mines.With no clear path to get crops out of Ukraine, it sparked fears that food-insecure and poorer nations would deteriorate further.
Now, if a crop is travelling by sea, the ship hugs the coastline past Romania and Bulgaria, through the Bosporus Strait and beyond. According to the World Bank,Alternatively, so-called solidarity lanes were established with European support to allow Ukrainian grain to head to international markets via land.
It's a sentiment shared by Tadesse Degu, a principal scientist at ICARDA who oversees spring bread wheat breeding programs. He says he lives on the frontline of climate change.