Visitor guides describe the Svalbard archipelago, located midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, as the rugged domain of polar bears. The territory is a three-hour flight from Oslo and sparsely populated save for the apex predators who roam outside the islands' small settlements.
This remote location is home to the Arctic World Archive, described as a repository of global memory by Piql, the Norwegian company at the heart of a project to establish an underground digital treasure trove for eternity.
Today the AWA received new deposits for the first time since the onset of the global coronavirus pandemic, which delayed a previous data drop earlier this year.
Last year, the World Economic Forum estimated that 463 exabytes of data will be created per day by 2025, as our digital world grows ever larger and more complex. Each day a portion of that data is lost, damaged or compromised. Established in 2017, the archive is, according to Piql, a response to the increasing risks around long-term data integrity.
The company's method for storing data is to transfer digital files onto 35mm photosensitive film. Once the film is developed it is put onto reels which can't be hacked and become a self-contained back-up that is not reliant on proprietary software for its retrieval. The data is then cold stored in Svalbard. A similar venture, an archive for global seeds on the archipelago, accepted its millionth deposit in February.
Piql’s disaster-proof vault on the archipelago is located in a decommissioned coal mine belonging to Store Norske, a state-owned mining company, and is accessed via a 300m walk into darkness, past dormant seams of coal.
Rune Bjerkestrand, Piql’s managing director, says the environment is “completely passive” and calls the project a “nice fit” between mining and security expertise and data preservation proficiency. No cooling or electricity is required to keep the vault running. The company says its film will survive for at least 500 years underground.
“It's an immutable medium,” Mr Bjerkestrand said during a video call from Norway, referring to Piql’s radiation-proof film.
“Svalbard is a very unique place,” he adds, in reference to the secure nature of the vault and the fragile beauty of the terrain above it.
The complete works of Poland's Olga Tokarczuk, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2018, were among the deposits made on Wednesday, as well as high resolution images of the Ajanta Caves in India, a Unesco world heritage site.
Mr Bjerkestrand said at a small ceremony to mark the archive's reopening that the deposits contributed to a “richer picture of our era for the generations to come”.
Several Norwegian museums have also put parts of their catalogue in the vault since 2017. The National Museum of Norway made its third deposit this week, preserving the works of several cultural figures, including Harriet Backer, Britta Marakatt-Labba and Eline Mugaas.
GitHub, the software developer, put source code for the Linux and Android operating systems into the vault earlier this year, as well as copies of a number of programming languages and AI tools.
They took their place alongside a copy of the UN Convention on the Rights of a Child from Unicef and tranches of documents by cultural institutions such as the National Archive of Mexico, the European Space Agency and the Vatican Library.
The AWA, which is a commercial operation, places few restrictions on what can or can’t be kept for eternity, but the organisation is especially interested in preserving heritage and culture. It does not currently store private legacies and personal collections, but says it can see there is a clear interest in that type of service.
“We offer a very attractive location to keep the world's most important information,” Mr Bjerkestrand said.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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