“The First Step Is to Bring It Into Our Hands:” Wild Seed Conservation, the Stewardship of Species Survival, and Gardening the Anthropocene at the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership

Abstract

Conserving wild plant seeds at the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership (MSBP) provides insurance by facilitating the reintroduction of threatened species. However, seed bank collections also provide an easily accessible resource for research into innovative conservation approaches and the adaptive management of natural resources and landscapes. In this regard, the MSBP corresponds with an emerging body of practice dubbed "New Conservation" that responds to the environmental implications of the Anthropocene and introduces the prospect of "gardening" nature. By examining the attitudes expressed by seed bank staff in the UK and United States. This article illustrates their awareness of the tension between the need to mitigate species extinction and the anthropocentrically governed, or gardened, form that the species' survival might subsequently take. Those within the MSBP were often thoughtfully engaged with the ideological questions their practice raises. However, external expectations of what seed bank collections facilitate, such as those of funders, will also impact how these collections are used. These expectations present selective pressures that risk limiting and thus filtering which species are reintroduced from the bank and the form in which their place in the world is forged.

Grid-scale batteries and the politics of storage

“…In the US, the Cold War precipitated unprecedented, variegated stockpiling (Folkers, 2019; Kaiser, 2002; Radin, 2017). Today, seed banks, mostly in the Global North, insure biodiversity against the risks of land use and climate changes (Chacko, 2019; Harrison, 2017; Lewis-Jones, 2019). Like other iterations of storage, batteries operate at multiple registers, alleviating future uncertainty as much symbolically as materially (Lakoff, 2007).…”

The eternal return: Imagining security futures at the Doomsday Vault

“…Each imaginary discussed here – apocalypse, hope and escape – represents an influential understanding and expectation about a security future that is collectively held, institutionally stabilised and publicly performed via security technologies. They are crucial to making the SGSV operable as a security apparatus and no doubt recognisable to those familiar with IR debates about the Anthropocene (Chandler, 2020; Lövbrand et al, 2020; Rothe, 2020; Simangan, 2020).…”

“…This article contributes to growing academic interest in security stockpiles, seedbanks and other forms of cryopreservation that has emerged across disciplines such as critical humanities, heritage studies, and science and technology studies (STS) (Alpsancar, 2016;Breithoff and Harrison, 2020;Chacko, 2019;Curry, 2022;Fenzi and Bonneuil, 2016;Hartigan Jr., 2017;Lewis-Jones, 2019;Peres, 2016Peres, , 2019Radin and Kowal, 2017;Van Dooren, 2009). It also reflects an accelerating focus on climate imaginaries and how visions of future worlds are entangled with political, cultural, scientific and technological developments (Benner et al, 2019;Harper and Specht, 2022;Milkoreit, 2017;Luke, 2015).…”

Bloody Marvels: In Situ Seed Saving and Intergenerational Malleability

“…Such seed banks use cryopreservation and specially engineered equipment and buildings that prioritise the preservation of genetic traceability and biological audit trails (see Chacko 2019b ). As Kay Lewis-Jones (2019 ) writes, ex situ conservation cannot conserve the contexts in which plants grow, so is better suited to a “post-natural” future.…”