By Murimi Gitari, May 13, 2024, The World Food Prize Foundation announced Dr. Geoffrey Hawtin OBE of the U.K. and Canada and Dr. Cary Fowler of the U.S. as this years’ World Food Prize Laurates.
Dr. Geoffrey Hawtin OBE, Founding Director and Executive Board member at the Global Crop Diversity Trust, and Dr. Cary Fowler, currently the U.S. Special Envoy for Global Food Security, were chosen by the World Food Prize Laureate Selection Committee for their longstanding contribution to seed conservation and crop biodiversity.
The two have been awarded for their pivotal roles in establishing the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, an underground facility in the Arctic Circle that currently holds 1.25 million seed samples from over 6,000 plant species with the aim of protecting global food security. Often referred to as the “Doomsday Vault,” this repository serves as the last line of defense against threats to global food security, including pandemics and climate catastrophes. Their contributions have been critical in advancing global crop biodiversity and conserving culturally important plants, addressing hunger worldwide.
Dr Hawtin and Dr Fowler will share the $500,000 award for their work to preserve the world’s heritage of seeds.
The announcement was made at a ceremony in the U.S. Department of State hosted and presided over by Secretary of State Antony Blinken. World Food Prize Foundation Board Chair Paul Schickler and Chief Operating Officer Mashal Husain gave remarks. Ambassador Terry Branstad, Foundation President, announced the names of the Laureates.
“The World Food Prize is bestowed to individuals for recognition of their achievements in the fight against hunger and food insecurity – one of the most pressing issues of our time,” said Secretary Blinken.
“This year’s awardees, Dr. Geoffrey Hawtin and the State Department’s very own Dr. Cary Fowler, have made extraordinary contributions towards this cause. They have done critical work to advance global crop biodiversity and conserve over 6,000 varieties of crops and culturally important plants which has had a direct impact in addressing hunger around the world. This is the 20th year the Department of State has played a role in this announcement and we are honored to be able to support the World Food Prize Foundation’s recognition of Dr. Fowler’s and Dr. Hawtin’s work.”
Drs. Fowler and Hawtin also played pivotal roles in the development of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, or Plant Treaty, which was adopted in 2001, to facilitate the global movement of plant genetic resources. By codifying international agreements and mechanisms for the sharing of seeds, the treaty laid the foundations for the Svalbard seed vault.
The vault was the brainchild of Dr. Fowler, who wrote to Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to ask them to consider establishing such a facility during his time at CGIAR, the world’s largest publicly funded agricultural research organization. He was later invited to chair a committee to assess the feasibility of such a project and served as the first Chair of the Vault’s International Advisory Council.
“Dr. Fowler’s many contributions to food security are truly global and entrepreneurial in scale, scope and design – changing peoples’ lives. One of his many legacies, the global seed vault at Svalbard in Norway, will benefit generations to come and his name will linger on,” saidAnne Beathe Kristiansen Tvinnereim, Minister of International Development and Minister of Nordic Cooperation, Norway.
Meanwhile, Dr. Hawtin served as a member of the original study team, scoping the viability of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault and drew up its technical specifications. In 2004, Dr. Hawtin created the Global Crop Diversity Trust, or Crop Trust, which now finances the vault alongside the Norwegian Ministry of Agriculture and Food and the Nordic Genetic Resource Center, NordGen.
“Dr. Hawtin has helped shape the global work of the Crop Trust in many ways, and today, as a member of its Executive Board, he is at the forefront of shaping the future of this international organization and its role in the transformation of our agri-food systems,” saidDr. Stefan Schmitz, Executive Director, Global Crop Diversity Trust. “The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is not only the icon, but also the backbone of a growing global network of genebanks. Drs. Hawtin and Fowler have been instrumental in ensuring that all these genebanks, the treasure troves of plant genetic resources, have an ultimate backup in the Seed Vault on Svalbard, and have also paved the way for the diversity of crops in these genebanks to be utilized by researchers, plant breeders and farmers.”
Genebanks, including the Svalbard Vault, are crucial resources for crop scientists, who breed and develop improved varieties of the world’s most important food crops. Material held in genebanks contains beneficial traits with the potential to improve crops’ climate resilience, disease resistance, nutritional value and tolerance to increased salinity, which is increasingly valuable in the face of climate change.
“While creating a global seed vault might seem logical now, people told me at the time that the idea was crazy,” saidDr. Fowler, who began his career in 1978 as program director at the National Sharecroppers Fund in North Carolina. “We’ve since managed to collect and preserve the diversity of all of the major crops, including, for example, 150,000 types of wheat now in storage. But we need more collections, particularly of indigenous crops from regions such as Africa, because the diversity of these hardy crops is the raw material for plant breeding improvements. I’m hoping the World Food Prize will inspire investments in this kind of transformational R&D which is going to be necessary for food and nutrition security for 10 billion people by 2050.”
Dr. Hawtin spent much of his early career and risked his life collecting, preserving and protecting species of legumes such as chickpeas and faba beans from Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Turkey. These collections helped to establish the genebank managed by the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA). When civil war broke out in 1975, he was responsible for moving collections of plant genetic material six times, across a mined road and under weapons fire, from Lebanon to Syria.
Dr. Hawtin, former Director General of the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI), now part of the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, said: “The genetic diversity of crops and their relatives is as important to biodiversity as it is to food security, and much of it is as endangered as pandas and rhinos. In receiving this honor, I would like to make a call to arms for urgent and sustained funding for the more than 1,700 genebanks around the world that are working tirelessly to make sure the material that farmers and plant breeders need is conserved and remains available. The work of crop genebanks underpins our ability to feed the world today and will do so long into the future.”
