The UK Government has quietly published a long-suppressed intelligence report examining global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and national security. Produced by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) and supported by DEFRA research, the report was originally presented last year at COBRA (the cabinet committee convened to handle matters of national emergency). Despite its gravity, it was withheld from the public – until now.
Its sudden appearance on a government website, without announcement or explanation, strongly suggests an attempt to minimise attention. Released amid the international crisis of Trump’s Greenland aggression, the timing appears calculated to bury the story. That must not be allowed to happen.
From environmental issue to security emergency
The report’s title, Global Biodiversity Loss, Ecosystem Collapse and National Security, marks a decisive shift in official framing. Ecological breakdown is no longer treated as a distant, ‘merely’ environmental, concern, but as a direct and escalating threat to national and international stability.
The report warns that multiple ecosystem collapses are now likely, not merely hypothetical. These failures, it states, will have “dire implications” for national security and will require serious strategic adaptation merely to limit the damage. Such language is measured, but the message is unmistakable: the risk is immediate, systemic and severe.
Just one of the ways British national security is threatened by ecological breakdown as outlined in the report is through migration pressure. As ecosystems degrade, food systems fail, water scarcity increases and livelihoods collapse, “development gains begin to reverse.” This restrained phrase points to mass human suffering – entire communities pushed back into poverty and instability. The report makes clear that these dynamics will drive large-scale displacement, creating cascading pressures on regional stability and on countries such as the UK.
Where’s the rest?
While the report is significant, it’s pretty clearly not the full version and is strikingly thin in key areas. There is little detail on the geo-regional analyses that presumably underpin its conclusions. The links between specific regional ecosystem failures and concrete national security risks to Britain are not clearly explained. Even the report’s ‘Key Judgements’, which are normally the core of any JIC assessment, are presented without adequate justification or depth.
This strongly suggests that what has been released is only part of a larger piece of work. The omissions appear deliberate, consistent with an effort to satisfy Freedom of Information requirements while withholding the most politically sensitive and disturbing findings.
The Government seems to be acknowledging the problem in principle while concealing its true scale and immediacy; in other words, withholding precisely the information citizens need in order to understand how to adapt to a declining global ecosystem.
First suppression, and now silence
That this report was suppressed at all is deeply concerning. Its existence became public last October only through investigative journalism (based probably upon one or more officials taking risks with their own jobs), followed since then by sustained pressure from campaigners including notably Ruth Chambers, whose FOI work has been exemplary here.
Back in October, reporting was necessarily extremely limited; journalists had not been permitted to read the report itself. Now that the document has emerged, it is clear that earlier coverage barely captured its significance. This was not merely a warning about climate damage. It was a strategic assessment of how ecological collapse could destabilise entire regions, intensify conflict, disrupt economies and directly threaten the UK’s security.
Its presentation at COBRA underscores this point. COBRA is convened for the most serious national threats. That ecosystem collapse featured there should have triggered urgent public debate. Instead, the report was buried.
Why this moment matters
The quiet publication of this report may nonetheless mark a turning point. Once ecosystem collapse is formally recognised as a national security threat, the implications could be profound. Security threats demand preparation, strategic planning and decisive action. They also demand honesty.
The report exposes a widening gap between the scale of the threat and the inadequacy of current responses. Incremental policy measures and rhetorical commitments are clearly insufficient if multiple ecosystem collapses are likely within the foreseeable future. Strategic, nature-based adaptation will be unavoidable, and delay will only increase the human and economic cost.
This may explain the Government’s reluctance to publicise the findings. Once citizens understand that ecological collapse threatens food security, migration stability, economic resilience and peace, pressure for meaningful action becomes unavoidable. This only bolsters the necessity for the Climate Majority Project’s campaign calling on the government to fund (with mission-like deep pockets) a National Climate Resilience Plan; with military national security threats, we are always able to find the money to fund a response. It should be no different when the threat to national security is climate/ecological breakdown.
The case for full disclosure
There is now a compelling public interest case for releasing the full report. Democratic societies cannot respond effectively to threats that are only partially disclosed. Nor can citizens prepare for profound disruption if key information is withheld to avoid political discomfort.
Those who pursued the report’s release through Freedom of Information requests deserve credit, as do those who commissioned it in the first place. But partial transparency is not enough. If the state holds detailed assessments of regional collapse, cascading risks and timelines, the substance of that knowledge must be shared. Anything less is a disservice to its citizens.
This is not about inducing panic. It is about enabling resilience, informed decision-making, and collective adaptation.
Facing the reality
Finally, it must be said that the report’s implications are emotionally difficult. To confront the likelihood of widespread ecosystem collapse is deeply distressing. That reaction is both rational and human.
When I first learnt what was really in this report, I suffered a serious episode of climate/polycrisis anxiety. Partly perhaps because I live on the edge of the Broads, in East Anglia, and so am intensely aware already of the (figurative and literal) rising tide of threats we now face.
If engaging with this material provokes anxiety or grief in you, it should not be faced alone. Talk with others. Seek support. Take time to process, and where possible, take action.
The attempt to bury this report has failed. The question now is whether we choose to face its warnings honestly, demand the full truth, and act accordingly, or allow one of the most consequential intelligence assessments of our time to slip quietly back into obscurity.
The stakes honestly could not be higher.
Postscript…
Green Party MP for Waveney Valley, Adrian Ramsay, asked in Parliament on Thursday why the critical report was delayed and called for a debate on what the government is doing to prepare for the risks it outlines. The leader of the House responded by committing to making time for the debate (He also claimed that the Government had intended all along to publish the report…).
Crucially, on 23 January The Times also published a major new story about the report, which it observes is not the full version: agreeing with what I have written above.
The story reads in part: “…a full, internal version of the report, seen by The Times, goes further [than what the Government published last week], suggesting that the degradation of rainforests in the Congo and the drying up of rivers fed by the Himalayas could drive people to flee to Europe, leading to “more polarised and populist politics in the UK” and putting “additional pressure on already strained national infrastructure”.
There is much more to come out…
Do pressure YOUR MP to get the full security assessment released.
Thanks to Joe Eastoe for crucial editorial assistance in the writing of this piece.
Rupert Read is Co-Director of the Climate Majority Project.
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