Jack F. Matlock, Jr

Today’s New York Times has an article that points up a positive aspect of Wikileaks… the opportunity for the public to appreciate the cogent analysis and creative writing of the U.S. Foreign Service. But perhaps the future impact of the leaks will go well beyond a new respect for under-appreciated diplomats.

Reading these leaked reports gives me the impression of a world-wide fraternity, as if the diplomatic world was the venue for a global high stakes invitation-only poker game. Wikileaks has meant that one of the players (or was it the dealer?) has just dropped his cards on the table and also opened the blinds to the outside. From the outside looking in, it seems that everyone in the room is talking and joking with each other, posturing as they play their hand. The overall impression of the world of the decision makers is one of competitive fraternity, not a world of irreconcilable uncommunicative factions, as the media or ideological purists might portray it, but a world of players in a shared social space. Contemplating the existence of that common space, I find hope for potential solutions to the world’s “intractable” problems.

“If all human life depends on plants, doesn’t it make sense that perhaps we should try to save them?”

Jonathan Drori

Scientists surely understand. Recent years have seen several large-scale efforts to preserve the genetic diversity of the plants on our planet as it suffers from climate change and habitat loss. For example, two years ago the Norwegians opened the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on Spitzbergen, a place so cold the seeds would remain preserved for weeks even in the absence of power. It has now become the worlds most diverse collection of crop seeds. The rationale and activities of the largest seed bank, the Millenium Seed Bank in England, is described in an informative TED talk: Jonathan Drori: Why we’re storing billions of seeds.

But the first plant genebank was created in Russia, near St. Petersburg, in 1926. The Pavlovsk Experiment Station contains the world’s first and largest field genebank for fruits and berries. The importance of these fields and the variety of plants grown there is such that during the Seige of Leningrad, the scientists tending the plants decided it was preferable to starve themselves to death rather than eat the plants in their care. Now Pavlovsk is under attack again, this time not by Nazis, but by property developers who plan to destroy the beds and build housing. Unfortunately, the plants and varieties grown there cannot be moved easily and do not grow true from seeds.

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