The next big challenge for Kew's Millennium Seed Bank partnership

View on map: UK - Wakehurst Place,

26 Oct 2009

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Students stand in a 10% formation at Kew's MSB

Two hundred students from St Judes school in London help Kew celebrate the Millennium Seed Bank's 10% achievement at Wakehurst Place

The next phase of Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank partnership will run from 2010 to 2020.

Our focus is on issues which threaten human wellbeing, including food security, sustainable energy, loss of biodiversity and climate change. We will achieve this by safeguarding wild plant diversity and enabling its use.

Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank partnership will continue to focus on those parts of the world which are home to some of the world’s poorest people, and where plant diversity is tightly bound to people’s livelihoods. The target of our collection programme is to conserve a further 25% of the world’s plant species by 2020.

Cliff-face collecting in the Republic of South Africa Photo: Ernst van Jaarsveld

How are we going to do it?

We will work with mega-diverse countries such as Madagascar, the Republic of South Africa, Mexico and China. Our seed collection projects will prioritise plant species from alpine, dryland, coastal and island ecosystems, which research shows, are most vulnerable to climate change.

The cost of this next phase is estimated to be £140 million over 10 years, of which we have already raised £40 million.

Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank partnership is now working hard to raise the extra funds needed to support this vital global conservation work. We need your help to reach our target of £10 million a year, over the next ten years. It costs around £2,000 to save a plant species for the future in the Millennium Seed Bank.