Cover; Recently-cleared forest in Bolivia, where more tropical forest is lost every year than almost any other country. Credit: David Hill
David Hill || Late last month the UK government finally – and oh-so-quietly – published a “national security assessment” of the potential impacts of global biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse. It was supposed to be out in October last year but was considered so alarming that it was blocked by the Prime Minister’s office, according to The Times.
The 14-page assessment, released in January following a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by the NGO Green Alliance, is indeed deeply alarming, if not particularly surprising. It states that around the world “every critical ecosystem” is “on a pathway to collapse”, that impacts are already being felt, that “cascading risks” are likely to include “geopolitical instability, economic insecurity, conflict, migration and increased inter-state competition for resources”, and that the UK’s “national security and prosperity” is therefore threatened.
“Severe degradation or collapse of [critical ecosystems] would highly likely result in water insecurity, severely reduced crop yields, a global reduction in arable land, fisheries collapse, changes to global weather patterns, release of trapped carbon exacerbating climate change, novel zoonotic diseases and loss of pharmaceutical resources,” the assessment states.
Although published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the BBC states the assessment was “put together by the Joint Intelligence Committee, which oversees the security services, in addition to input across government.” Arguably its main thrust is that in the coming decades the UK won’t be able to feed itself, given that it imports so much of its food, that it can’t currently be self-sufficient because of diets and prices, and that its own food production systems are vulnerable too.
“The UK relies on global markets for its food and for fertiliser,” the assessment continues. “The UK imports 40% of its food from overseas, with over 25% coming from Europe. The UK is heavily reliant on imports for fresh fruit, vegetables and sugar. Animal farming at current levels is unsustainable without imports – soy from South America makes up 18% of produced animal feed. Nearly 50% of packaged products contain imported palm oil.”
The assessment identifies six “critical ecosystems” around the world that are “particularly significant” for the UK, “given the likelihood and impact of their collapse.” These are: the Amazon rainforest, the Congo basin, the Himalayas, south-east Asia’s mangroves and coral reefs, and the boreal forests of both Canada and Russia.
Deeply alarming as this assessment is, it is apparently not as bad as a full, longer version which still hasn’t been made public. According to The Times, which has had access to that “unabridged” document, it says that “disappearing forests and rivers drying up could drive people to Europe and lead to conflict in Asia.” More specifically: that the degradation of forests in the Congo basin and rivers fed by the Himalayas running dry could fuel migration to Europe, with the UK being a particularly “attractive destination.”
“I’ve asked the government to clarify whether the report published [in late January] is, in fact, the version that existed at the time I made my initial [FOI] request,” Green Alliance’s Ruth Chambers has written in a blog. “This requires a new freedom of information request so is not a quick process. But I believe it is worth the effort.”
Chambers says her first FOI request was “initially refused, ironically citing reasons of national security.” The subsequent decision to release the assessment “caught everyone by surprise, including me”, she writes, and arguably its “framing is as significant as its content, as it treats ecological breakdown as a direct and escalating threat to national and international stability. . . It warns that ecosystem collapse could have catastrophic implications, including the collapse of major food sources and fundamental changes to global weather patterns and the water cycle.”
All this – especially given the fact that four of the six ecosystems deemed most important to the UK are predominantly forest regions – is yet another reminder why it is so important that the UK takes urgent action to combat the destruction of forests around the world and, in an attempt to do that, bring in strong legislation to curb its own, outsized global deforestation footprint. If the government is now acknowledging how the devastation of forests across, say, the Amazon, the Congo, Canada and Russia could have disastrous consequences for UK citizens and security, shouldn’t it, as one obvious step among many others, ban trade and imports of any products that have been grown or produced as a result of those forests being razed? Think beef and soy from South America, palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia etc.
As I’ve reported numerous times over the last few years, the UK Environment Act, which received Royal Assent in late 2021, includes a section on “forest risk commodities” that was ostensibly intended to curb the UK’s contribution to deforestation in other countries. But that section of the Act – weak as it is – hasn’t ever come into law because, more than four years later, the secondary legislation required to enact it hasn’t been introduced.
Numerous UK-based NGOs agree the report recently released by DEFRA is yet another reason why that legislation needs to come in. In response, the NGO Forest Coalition – which includes organisations like Friends of the Earth UK, WWF and the Environmental Investigation Agency – issued a statement describing the assessment as underscoring a “stark reality: accelerating nature loss is not just an environmental issue, it is a foundational threat to global stability and UK security.”
“This report must be a wake-up call for the UK government: biodiversity loss is a clear threat to national and global security,” a representative from Earthsight – another of the NGOs in the Coalition – is quoted as saying. “The UK must act urgently to strengthen and implement the Environment Act in order to protect the world’s remaining forests by addressing the part UK consumption plays in their destruction.”
“Global forests are being driven to collapse by industrial food production, which the UK government report warns is risking our national security,” says Gemma Hoskins from Mighty Earth, another Coalition NGO. “The delays in a robust legislative mechanism are now unacceptable given what the report says is coming down the track. There has to be a clear and urgent plan to keep forests standing and end deforestation consumption in the UK.”
The Coalition statement is clear in its demands. It calls on the UK government “to implement Schedule 17 of the Environment Act, which will prohibit the use of commodities grown on illegally deforested land, and to go further by ending imports of commodities grown on all deforested land. Action must also ensure the rights of Indigenous and local communities who depend on forests for their livelihoods are protected, and stop UK financial flows from driving deforestation, safeguarding forests as a national and global security priority.”
DEFRA tells me it doesn’t have any updates to share on Schedule 17, but instead provided a canned statement saying the recently-released report “will inform the action we take to prepare for the future.”
“Nature underpins our security, prosperity, and resilience and understanding the threats we face from biodiversity loss is crucial to meeting them head on,” DEFRA states. “The UK has a resilient food system and remains one of the most food-secure nations in the world, producing around 65% of all the food we eat. We have access through international trade to food products that cannot be produced here, which supplements domestic production and ensures that any disruption from risks such as adverse weather or disease do not affect the UK’s overall security of supply.”
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