A failure at a fail-safe vault.
The irony is delicious, but that’s not the whole story.
On its website, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is described by
Crop Trust—the nonprofit that runs it—as “a fail-safe seed storage
facility, built to stand the test of time—and the challenge of natural
or man-made disasters.”It holds backups of seeds from seed banks around the world, with the goal of preserving a legacy of crop diversity in the face of changing climate, natural disasters, and human conflicts.
It’s operated for a little over nine years.
Then, on Friday, news spread that water from melting permafrost had gushed into the tunnel and frozen, making the floor slick with ice but not impacting the seeds.
It would seem the fail-safe had failed.
Or had it?
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