Is Kew the sole participant? There are plenty of other botanic institutions
throughout the world with equal prestige and capability, and I would have
thought that some of them should be partners.
The site of the seed bank could be better - Europe is not exactly politically
stable and we have had two major and countless minor wars in the last 100
years, which is the sort of timescale they are thinking of to collect and
store seed of "everything". I thought of the Antarctic - at least freezing
would come cheap, but several countries are allegedly interested in
annexing it for mineral resources.
I don't think UN control would be desireable. The UN runs things by
consensus eg the dog's breakfast called CITES, which frequently acts
contrary to the interests of conservation. The UN actually runs several
seed bank projects but at the level of technology in the participating
countries, hence seed of cereal crops can end up stored in a domestic
freezer in a power-cut ridden area of tropical Africa.
I have more concerns, but I don't want to initiate a new round of flame
mail. One last thing though: I understood that CITES had blanket
coverage of Sarracenias because the USA want to stop imports of
hybrids in case they get released into the wild, further decimating the
species by their enhanced vigour. Reading the report of a single
impurity rapidly corrupting a stand of previously pure Sarracenias,
are there actively managed reserves where 'ethnic-cleansing' is
carried out to ensure species purity?
Good Growing, NigelH