第一部分
1．LONGYEARBYEN, Norway — With plant species disappearing at an alarming rate, scientists and governments are creating a global network of plant banks to store seeds and sprouts, precious genetic resources that may be needed for man to adapt the world’s food supply to climate change.

挪威朗伊尔城——随着植物物种正在以骇人听闻的速度灭绝，科学家和各国政府正在创建全球网络性的植物库来储存种子和苗芽。人类可以利用这些珍贵的种芽资源确保充足的食物供应，以应对气候变化。

2．This week, the flagship of that effort, the Global Seed Vault near here, received its first seeds, millions of them. Bored into the middle of a frozen Arctic mountain topped with snow, the vault’s goal is to store and protect samples of every type of seed from every seed collection in the world.

本周，作为这种不懈努力的旗舰机构，“全球种子地库”接收了首批数百万种的种子。该地库建于北极的一座白雪皑皑的大山之中，其目标是储存和保护世界各地收藏的各类种子样本。

3．As of Thursday, thousands of neatly stacked and labeled gray boxes of seeds — peas from Nigeria, corn from Mexico — reside in this glazed cavelike structure, forming a sort of backup hard drive, in case natural disasters or human errors erase the seeds from the outside world.

截至周四，成千上万个堆放整齐且贴有标签的灰色种盒在上釉的洞穴式结构中安家落户，如尼日利亚的豌豆、墨西哥的玉米。这些盒子就如已经备份了的电脑硬盘，以防世界上的植物物种会因自然灾害和人为破坏而消失。

4．Descending almost 500 feet under the permafrost, the entrance tunnel to the seed vault is designed to withstand bomb blasts and earthquakes. An automated digital monitoring system controls temperature and provides security akin to a missile silo or Fort Knox. No one person has all the codes for entrance.

通往种子地库的入口隧道，位于永冻带下约500英尺处，其设计旨在防御爆炸和地震。自动化数字监控系统用于控制温度并提供类似导弹发射井或福特诺克斯军事基地的安全保障。任何人都不单独拥有进入种子库的全部密码。

5．The Global Vault is part of a broader effort to gather and systematize information about plants and their genes, which climate change experts say may indeed prove more valuable than gold. In Leuven, Belgium, scientists are scouring the world for banana samples and preserving their shoots in liquid nitrogen before they become extinct. A similar effort is under way in France on coffee plants. A number of plants, most from the tropics, do not produce seeds that can be stored.

目前，世界上很多人士致力于收集种子及其种子基因的信息并使之系统化，全球种子地库是这种全球性努力的的一个缩影。气候变化专家称，这些信息要比金子还要贵重。在比利时的鲁汶，科学家正在搜集世界上的香蕉样本并将香蕉芽保存在液体氮中，以防其灭绝。法国也正在进行类似的努力，保护咖啡物种。很多植物，大多数是来自热带地区的植物，无法通过种子繁殖，不能产生可供储存的种子。

6．For years, a hodgepodge network of seed banks has been amassing seed and shoot collections in a haphazard manner. Labs in Mexico banked corn species. Those in Nigeria banked cassava. Now these scattershot efforts are being urgently consolidated and systematized, in part because of better technology to preserve plant genes and in part because of the rising alarm about climate change and its impact on world food production.

多年来，很多庞杂的种子库网络一直以随意的方式收集种子和苗芽。例如，墨西哥的实验室收藏玉米种，尼日利亚的实验室收藏木薯种。现在，正对这些分散的努力进行亟需的整合和系统化操作。之所以可以这样做，部分原因是储存植物基因技术的更新，部分原因是气候变化的警钟继续长鸣及其对世界粮食产量的影响。

第二部分

7．“We started thinking about this post-9/11 and on the heels of Hurricane Katrina,” said Cary Fowler, president of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, a nonprofit group that runs the vault. “Everyone was saying, why didn’t anyone prepare for a hurricane before? We knew it was going to happen.

卡里·福勒是一家负责管理种子库的非营利性组织全球作物多样性托管会的总裁，他说：“我们是在‘9·11’事件之后、尤其是卡特里娜飓风之后，开始有这个构想的。” 他还说：“每个人都在问：为什么事先不作好迎接飓风的准备呢？我们明明知道会发生飓风的。”

8．“Well, we are losing biodiversity every day — it’s a kind of drip, drip, drip. It’s also inevitable. We need to do something about it.”

他指出：“喏，我们每天都在损失生物多样性——一点一滴地在损失。这种损失没有止步的迹象，我们必须为此做点什么。”

9．This week the urgency of the problem was underscored as wheat prices rose to record highs and wheat stores dropped to the lowest level in 35 years. A series of droughts and new diseases cut wheat production in many parts of the world. “The erosion of plants’ genetic resources is really going fast,” said Dr. Rony Swennen, head of the division of crop biotechnology at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, who has preserved half of the world’s 1,200 banana types. “We’re at a critical moment and if we don’t act fast, we’re going to lose a lot of plants that we may need.”

本周，由于小麦价格上升到最高纪录水平和小麦储存量下滑到35年来最低水平，更加突出了这个问题的紧迫性。由于一连串的干旱及新的疾病，世界很多地方的小麦产量下降。罗尼·斯文奈恩博士现任比利时鲁汶天主教大学作物生物技术部主任，他保存了世界上1200种香蕉种的一半以上。斯文奈恩博士说：“植物基因资源正在受到快速侵蚀。”他还指出：“我们正处于关键时刻，如果不迅速采取行动，我们将失去很多我们需要的植物物种。”

10．The United Nations International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources, ratified in 2004, created a formal global network for banking and sharing seeds, as well as for studying their genetic traits. Last year, its database received thousands of new seeds.

已于2004年获得批准的联合国国际植物基因资源条约创建了一个正式的全球网络，旨在对种子进行储存和共享并对其遗传特征进行研究。去年，有成千上万的新种子在其数据库安家落户。

11．A system of plant banks could be crucial in responding to climate crises since it could identify genetic material and plant strains better able to cope with a changed environment.

由于植物库系统能够识别出那些对环境变化适应能力较强的基因物质和植物种类，因而这种系统能在应对气候危机中发挥至关重要的作用。

12．Here at the Global Vault, hundreds of gray boxes containing seeds from places ranging from Syria to Mexico were moved this week into a freezing vault to be placed in suspended animation. They harbor a vast range of qualities, like the ability to withstand drier, warmer climate.

本周，数以百计的装有种子的灰色盒子从叙利亚、墨西哥等地运至全球种子地库，藏于这个冷冻库之中。储存在这里的种子具有很多特性，如能够抵御较为干燥和较为温暖的气候。