6/7/2023 0 Comments Norway doomsday vault defenses![]() Here they are stored in sealed bags at a temperature of -18☌. Banks collect and store seeds from all over the world, and spare samples are sent to Svalbard. This is the government of Norway through the local administration of the Svalbard archipelago (“Statsbück”), the Global Crop Diversity Trust (Global Crop Diversity Trust) and the Scandinavian Seed Bank (NordGen).Ĩ60,000 types of seeds are received from more than 60 different organizations, national or international (there are 11 such international banks in the world, and most have already sent seeds to the repository). The $9 million Norwegian-sponsored Svalbard bank project in Svalbard is managed by three organizations. I remember her enthusiastic remarks on Facebook about this trip. Whether an asteroid hits the Earth, a nuclear war breaks out, or “just” a flood and an earthquake happen, the plants necessary for human existence will survive here, behind explosion-proof doors.Ĭorrespondent RFI and our good friend Helia Pevzner visited there recently. ![]() "Storage doomsday”, equipped at a depth of 120 meters in permafrost, is designed for global catastrophes. Includes files from Network staff.In 2006, in the vicinity of the northernmost city on the planet, Longyearbyen, the World Bank was opened - a repository of planting material for all agricultural plants existing in the world. Alister Doyle is an environment correspondent for Reuters based in Oslo. While USC Canada said it “supports Svalbard as a seed bank of last resort,” USC Canada’s other co-executive director Jane Rabinowicz said “there is no single solution to conserving the genetic diversity we need to feed the planet.” In the long term, how safe are the seeds?” “Climate change has already broken through the vault’s defenses, and these are the early days of permafrost melt. “It is a relief to hear that none of the seeds in the collection were harmed, but these events are far from reassuring,” USC co-executive director Martin Settle said. USC Canada, a charity supporting “ecological agriculture” and seed diversity, said in a release Friday the flooding incident “reaffirms more than ever the critical importance of keeping seed diversity in farmers’ hands.” “That is an extremely cheap insurance policy for the world,” she said. Haga said the trust had so far raised just over $200 million towards an $850 million endowment fund to help safeguard seeds in collections around the globe (all figures US$). “But we had not expected it to melt around the tunnel.” “There’s no doubt that the permafrost will remain in the mountainside where the seeds are,” said Marie Haga, head of the Bonn-based Crop Trust that works with Norway to run the vault. Svalbard has sometimes had rain even in the depths of winter when the sun does not rise. Temperatures in the Arctic region have been rising at twice the global average in a quickening trend that climate scientists blame on man-made greenhouse gases. Some of the water that flowed in re-froze and had to be chipped out by workers from the local fire service.Īn underlying problem was that permafrost around the entrance of the vault, which had thawed from the heat of construction a decade ago, has not re-frozen as predicted by scientists, Aschim said. The number of visitors would be reduced to limit human body heat, she said. Spokeswoman Hege Njaa Aschim said Statsbygg had removed electrical equipment from the entrance - a source of heat - and was building waterproof walls inside and ditches outside to channel away any water. “The seeds in the seed vault have never been threatened.” “Svalbard Global Seed Vault is facing technical improvements in connection with water intrusion,” Norwegian state construction group Statsbygg, which built the vault that opened in 2008, said in a statement on Saturday. It seeks to safeguard seeds from cataclysms such as nuclear war or disease in natural permafrost. Still, water was an unexpected problem for the vault on the Svalbard archipelago, about 1,000 km from the North Pole. The water, limited to the 15-metre entrance hall in the melt late last year, had no impact on millions of seeds of crops including rice, maize, potatoes and wheat that are stored more than 110 metres inside the mountainside. Oslo | Reuters - Norway is repairing the entrance of a “doomsday” seed vault on an Arctic island after an unexpected thaw of permafrost let water into a building meant as a deep freeze to safeguard the world’s food supplies.
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