Doomsday Vault Opens To Give Seeds To Syria (cnn.com)

pabloApicco sends word that the The Svalbard Global Seed Vault has opened up in order to give seeds to Syrian scientists who had to relocate their research due to the war. CNN reports: "Known as the 'Doomsday Vault,' this seed bank — operated by the Norwegian government and containing a seed of just about every known crop in the world — is meant to be humanity's backup in the event of a catastrophe that devastates crops. But it was not a natural disaster that has caused scientists to have to dip in and make the first significant withdrawal from the vault. Rather, it was the most preventable of man-made disasters -- war. The bloody conflict in Syria has left scientists at an important gene bank in Aleppo -- where new strains of drought- and heat-resistant wheat have been developed over time -- unable to continue their work in recent years. With no sign of conditions in Syria improving, scientists have begun recovering their critical inventory of seeds, sourced from around the Fertile Crescent and beyond, that have been in safekeeping beneath the Arctic ice."

Comments

... To Give Seeds [Back] to Syria.

[fahrbot-bot]

The seeds are being returned to Syria, who sent them to the Global Seed Vault as a precaution. From TFA:

The ICARDA Aleppo center had sent nearly 80% of the seeds and samples to the Global Seed Vault as a backup by 2012, with its last deposit being in 2014.

Re:If you think war is preventable

[bluefoxlucid]

You assume that, given a land area the size of the earth and a large population, power will not concentrate with individuals, leading to social behaviors producing crime, political arguments, and international interactions which inevitably end in shows of force.

You may as well say you, as a human, have never *wanted* a think your neighbor has, or had sexual desired for another woman before you met or after you married your wife. You may moderate your responses, but they happen; others don't moderate their responses as much.

It is easiest to obtain power by uniting the goals and thinking of a people. It is easiest to increase and retain that power by directing their attention to an external threat and positioning yourself as the source of protection from that threat. Having done so, you can direct their actions to destroy that threat, thus war.