As Jonathan Drori reminds us in his Why We’re Storing Billions of Seeds TED Talk, the world and every facet of our existence on it, relies on plant life. Think that’s overstating the case? Try breathing without oxygen.

Drori’s presentation is a brief but powerful reminder that we are losing our biodiversity very quickly and that projects such as the Millennium Seed Bank are a must if we expect to one day undo some of the damage we’ve done to this planet.

Current financial crises are affecting initiatives worldwide, and the Millennium Seed Bank is no exception. The Reuters report headline Seed bank for the world threatened by financial crisis from earlier this year sums it up.

“A third of the planet’s plants are categorized as threatened with extinction, which could have dramatic effects on human life, trade and the environment.”