Stupider and Stupider. The Story of the Svalbard Global Seed Bank.

Scientists recognised that the world was changing.  Careful monitoring of weather patterns and their effects showed patterns that did not look good.  Trends in weather patterns showed that it was going to get worse.  Animals can migrate - sometimes! But what about plants and trees?  These would be helpless if the habitat that gave rise to them ceased to exist.  

It was time to do something epic. Seeds needed to be gathered from around the world and stored in a purpose-built Global Seed Bank, in permafrost to keep the precious store safe, forever. but who would do it?  No argument. Norway's government saw the need and had the perfect spot, so their Ministry of Agriculture and Food funded and ran the whole project. Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago between mainland Norway and the North Pole, was chosen to house this addition to the wonders of the world. 

In Svalbard, permafrost is typically about 100m thick in major valley bottoms and up to about 400-500m thick in the high mountains. (Liestøl 1976).  In 2003, glaciers covered 60% of the total land area of Svalbard, with the remaining 40% being periglacial and permafrost. The total permafrost surface area was aboutr 25,000km²  - the largest permafrost area in Europe outside of Russia.

So, since 2008, and 1300 kilometers beyond the Arctic Circle, the world's largest secure seed storage has been keeping a million precious plant seeds safely stored deep beneath the permafrost.  

Did I say 'secure'?

In the world of politics outside of Norway, things have been much less decisive.  Political dithering and inaction over greenhouse gas emissions - the gases that trap the sun's rays and warm up the atmosphere - is continuing to affect the climate.  Droughts are lasting longer, floods are becoming more frequent, heavier and more destructive, glaciers have begun to shrink backwards up the valleys they created thousands of years ago.

And alarm bells have begun to ring.  A massive ice shelf, twice the size of Wales, is poised to break off from Antarctica and large cracks are forming in the Petermann Ice Shelf in Greenland.  The ice is melting.

Everyone learned  at school that pure water freezes and melts at 0°C.  at +1°C, it can't be ice.  at -1°C, it's all ice. That's the physics. So, a year or two ago, when the permafrost began to soften around the Global Seed Bank, it was serious!

And it just went critical. 

After record warm temperatures in Svalbard last winter (7°C above normal), the Global Seed Bank has been breached.  A river of meltwater gushed in through the entrance tunnel threatening the million different seed varieties stored within.

As recently as 2008, when the vault was completed, it was inconceivable that a vault buried deep inside a mountain of permafrost would not survive.  It was designed to continue safely without any human intervention; but now it is being watched night and day while measures to protect the precious herbal ark are hastily drawn up.

This is double jeopardy.  The global rise in temperatures that is threatening plant species around the globe is now also threatening the one facility that could save the million species stored there, ready for a saner world, should that ever occur.

My title for this piece was "Stupider and Stupider" because it's what I think when I see the leaders of our world walk away from summit talks having signed lukewarm deals that pay lip service to climate change action whilst really protecting commercial interests that might suffer a loss of profit if we got serious about arresting climate change.  This is Nero fiddling while Rome burns, only it's not that local!  We need to put the fiddles down and start putting out the fire.  It may be already too late, but this is the only world we've got.  Let's try to keep it habitable.

More information:
Svalbard Global Seed Vault
The Guardian - Arctic stronghold of worlds seeds flooded after permafrost melts
Newsweek - Cracks in Petermann Ice Shelf
Antarctic Ice Shelf hanging by a 12-mile thread