Prime Minister Erna Solberg (Høyre/Conservative Party) will travel to Svalbard on a “climate-trip” with colleagues in the UN’s sustainability group.
The visit runs over two days from Tuesday to Wednesday, and both seeds and climate are on the agenda.
On Tuesday, a large conference will be held where representatives of around 30 gene banks from around the world will gather to deposit seed samples to the global seed vault on Svalbard.
The seed vault is already the world’s largest and has so far stored more than a million samples.
“Climate change and a dramatic decline in species diversity makes it more important than ever to preserve the genetic variation among the world’s food plants,” says Solberg in a press release ahead of the visit.
Also attending will be several members of the UN Sustainable Development Goals Group, including Ghana’s President Nanna Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, who heads the group with Solberg.
On Wednesday, Solberg will take the UN group on a boat trip to take a closer look at the rapid climate change on Svalbard.
The visit takes place a few days after the Foreign Ministry in Russia accused Norway of violating the terms of the Svalbard Treaty by imposing too strong restrictions on Russian business activity and scientific activity on the archipelago.
© NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today
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