The Global Seed Vault, the impregnable deep-freeze to protect the world’s most precious seeds from any global disaster and ensure humanity’s food supply was breached after global warming sent melted water into the entrance tunnel.
The vault on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen has a million packets of seeds, each a variety of an important food crop. Opened in 2008, the deep permafrost through which the vault was sunk was expected to provide “failsafe” protection against “the challenge of natural or man-made disasters”.
“A lot of water went into the start of the tunnel and then it froze to ice, so it was like a glacier when you went in,” a Norwegian government official said. Fortunately, the meltwater did not reach the vault itself, the ice has been hacked out, and the precious seeds remain safe for now at the required storage temperature of -18C.
The breach has questioned the ability of the vault to survive as a lifeline for humanity if catastrophe strikes. “It was supposed to [operate] without the help of humans, but now we are watching the seed vault 24 hours a day,” the official added. “We must see what we can do to minimise all the risks and make sure the seed bank can take care of itself.”
The vault’s managers are now waiting to see if the extreme heat of this winter was a one-off or will be repeated or even exceeded as climate change heats the planet. The end of 2016 saw average temperatures over 7C above normal on Spitsbergen, pushing the permafrost above melting point.
The vault managers are now taking precautions, including major work to waterproof the 100m-long tunnel into the mountain and digging trenches into the mountainside to channel meltwater and rain away. They have also removed electrical equipment from the tunnel that produced some heat and installed pumps in the vault itself in case of a future flood. “The question is whether this is just happening now, or will it escalate?” the official added.
