Giving Compass' Take:

• Rising temperatures are impacting the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago. The vault holds nearly 1 million seeds and is built to withstand natural disasters. 

• What other food system structures could be affected by climate change? What can philanthropy do to stop the damage?

•  Read more about the Global Seed Vault. 

Embedded within a mountain not far from the Arctic Circle, accessible only by a water-proof concrete tunnel, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago holds nearly 1 million seeds.

Built to insure the world’s crop collection, the vault was once thought to be indestructible. But in recent years, temperatures throughout Svalbard have been rising three times faster than the global average and rainfall has intensified, according to a new report by the Norwegian Environmental Agency.

The rising temperatures have caused the permafrost surrounding the vault to melt. In 2016, heavy rain and melting permafrost flooded the vault’s entrance, forcing the organizations overseeing the seed bank to overhaul its design.

“The permafrost is not to be trusted anymore,” said Hege Njaa Aschim, communications manager for Statsbygg, which oversees the vault’s infrastructure. “It’s not like rock, like it used to be — it’s like soil.

After a reconstruction cost of $11.7 million, double the project’s initial price, the seed bank  was eventually stabilized. The rapidly changing conditions in Svalbard, however, highlight how the the seeds inside the vault could become needed sooner than expected.

It’s often referred to as the “doomsday vault,” but Neil Palmer, head of communications at Crop Trust, which oversees the vault, told Global Citizen that “doomsday,” with its apocalyptic connotations, is misleading.

“It’s more of a safety policy for the seed vaults of the world in case they suffer a mini doomsday,” he added. “It’s not there in case of a global meltdown; it’s there to provide a specific protection to different gene banks around the world.”

The Global Seed Vault holds duplicates of seeds found in the more than 1,700 other seed banks around the world. It’s there in case these particular vaults fail or face challenges.

Read the full article about temperatures rise near Global Seed Vault by Joe McCarthy at Global Citizen.