Floo­ding of Glo­bal Seed Vault attracts inter­na­tio­nal media – eight month after!

Inter­na­tio­nal media repor­ted for seve­ral weeks about a lecka­ge in the Glo­bal Seed Vault, whe­re seeds of all count­ries are stored for thou­sands of years.

The floo­ding actual­ly hap­pen­ed – but alre­a­dy in Octo­ber 2016! An artic­le in the Nor­we­gi­an news­pa­per Dag­bla­det in May 2017 men­tio­ned the leaka­ge with cor­rect date. But on 19th May 2017 an inat­ten­ti­ve jour­na­list of “The Guar­di­an” made a cur­rent mes­sa­ge out of that artic­le. High tem­pe­ra­tures in com­bi­na­ti­on with weeks of rai­ny wea­ther were men­tio­ned, which final­ly led to a flood in the ent­rance area of the Glo­bal Seed Vault. Ever­y­thing cor­rect, just more than half a year ago.

A mes­sa­ge, but no news

Even the big media hou­ses Reu­ters and Vox jum­ped on the band­wagon, appar­ent­ly wit­hout che­cking the source. A pho­ne call to Hege Njaa Aschim would have been enough to cla­ri­fy the misun­derstan­ding. Aschim is press offi­cer of Stats­bygg, a sta­te-run com­pa­ny who mana­ges and main­ta­ins the Glo­bal Seed Vault. But after all, num­e­rous other news­pa­pers, radio and TV sta­ti­ons wan­ted to know more pre­cis­e­ly: Hundreds of press requests rea­ched Aschim in one week! She could cor­rect, that it was a real mes­sa­ge, but not real­ly news.

Decep­ti­ve secu­ri­ty?

The fact that the Glo­bal Seed Vault, which has actual­ly been con­s­truc­ted for eter­ni­ty, must alre­a­dy be repai­red after less than ten years, seems almost less important now. The actu­al camp, which now con­ta­ins near­ly one mil­li­on seed packets from 73 insti­tu­tes and gene banks, was not affec­ted by the water. Howe­ver, a trans­for­mer was des­troy­ed and the fire bri­ga­de had to pump the tun­nel, which leads 100 meters down to the actu­al camp.

Deep­ly locked in in the per­ma­frost, the Glo­bal Seed Vault was belie­ved to be safe from floo­ding. Now inves­ti­ga­ti­ons are to be made as to how the camp can be secu­red against warm peri­ods. 37 mil­li­on crowns (ca. 3,8 mil­li­on Euros) will be pro­vi­ded for that.

Source: Dagens Nærings­liv

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