How the UK government suppressed, then ignored, its own report on how ecosystem collapse threatens national security

Instead of increasing support to protect ecosystems, the UK government is cutting climate finance.

In October 2025, Adam Vaughan, environment editor at The Times, reported that UK government officials had blocked publication of the government’s “global ecosystem assessment” report.

Government insiders told The Times that the report had not been published because it was “too negative”. And the report just might raise too many questions about the government’s failure to address the crisis.

The Times noted that the report was due to be published not long before COP30 in Belém, where the Tropical Forest Forever Facility would be launched. The day before the launch, the UK announced that it would not contribute anything to the TFFF.

Ruth Chambers is a senior fellow with Green Alliance, a London-based think tank. She made a freedom of information request to release the report. “The request was initially refused,” Chambers writes on Green Alliance’s website. The government argued that releasing the report would be an issue of national security. Chambers asked them to reconsider. The government did, and the deadline for the internal review of its decision was 20 January 2026.

Much to her surprise, the government published the report. “I wasn’t expecting this one to succeed,” she writes, “as the government had been very reluctant to release the report.”

“Every critical ecosystem is on a pathway to collapse”

The report is terrifying. It’s no wonder the UK government didn’t want anyone to read it.

Titled, “Global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and national security”, it was published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). But the BBC reports that the Joint Intelligence Committee played a key role in producing the report.

The Joint Intelligence Committee oversees the security services. The heads of MI5, MI6, and GCHQ sit on the Committee. This, then, is not a report churned out by a bunch of sandal wearing hippies.

The report warns that “Global ecosystem degradation and collapse threaten UK national security and prosperity.” Critical ecosystems that support food production areas and global climate, water, and weather cycles are “most important for UK national security”.

Severe degradation or collapse of these 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.

Ecosystem degradation is happening across the world. “Every critical ecosystem is on a pathway to collapse.” Food security in the UK is at risk. The UK relies on imports of food and fertiliser and “cannot currently produce enough food to feed its population based on current diets”.

The report states that, “it is unlikely the UK would be able to maintain food security if ecosystem collapse drives geopolitical competition for food”.

And it warns that “Conflict and military escalation will become more likely, both within and between states, as groups compete for arable land and food and water resources.”

Only part of the story

But the report that the government released is only part of the story. Three days after the government released the report, The Times reported that it had seen a “full, internal version of the report” which suggests that,

[T]he 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”.

The internal version of the report warns that boreal forests in Russia and Canada could pass a tipping point by 2030. Glaciers in the Himalayas could also start shrinking significantly, meaning reduced flow in rivers on which 2 billion people depend. This would “almost certainly escalate tensions” between China, India, and Pakistan, increasing the threat of nuclear war, The Times reports.

Last week, ITV News reported on what it calls the “secret report”. The secret report warns that,

The total annual value of ecosystem services to the UK was £87 billion in 2022 (3% of GDP). Damage to the natural environment is slowing UK growth and productivity, and could lead to annual GDP being 12% lower than it would have been otherwise by 2030.

The secret report also states that the UK could be “increasingly exposed to state threats particularly if our food system becomes a more vulnerable or desirable target”. And it warns of “The risk of NATO being drawn into escalating conflicts over arable land (e.g. breadbaskets in Ukraine, Russia).”

ITV News reports that,

The risk of naturally trapped carbon being released is acknowledged, but again those worst case projections have been removed. Take the Amazon rainforest, for example. Projections we have seen show that the potential amount of carbon which could be released is equivalent to between 15 and 20 years of global CO₂ emissions.

The government response? A 20% cut in climate finance

On 29 January 2026, the NGO Forest Coalition, a coalition of UK NGOs working on forests, wrote to Emma Reynolds, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The letter requested a meeting and a response setting out the timeline for legislation to end the UK’s role in global deforestation.

The letter states that,

As the national security assessment makes clear, failing to tackle deforestation in UK supply chains undermines the national interest, fuelling the cost of living crisis, worsening geopolitical instability, accelerating nature loss and driving climate change, with consequences felt across the UK. This failure also directly drives well-documented human rights abuses, including land grabs, displacement and the disenfranchisement of forest peoples, despite the UK Government’s stated priority to uphold Indigenous Peoples’ rights.

When the shortened version of the report was released, a Defra spokesperson told The Guardian that,

“Nature underpins our security, prosperity, and resilience and understanding the threats we face from biodiversity loss is crucial to meeting them head on. The findings of this report will inform the action we take to prepare for the future.”

However, instead of putting in place actions to support the protection and restoration of threatened ecosystems, the UK is cutting climate finance by 20%.

In May 2025, eight UK-based environmental and human rights organisations wrote to the UK Government urging the government not to cut aid to protect tropical rainforests.

The government ignored them.

Given that the government is ignoring its own report on the dangers to UK national security of ecosystem collapse, perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised.

Mohamed Adow, the director of Power Shift Africa, told The Guardian that,

“For vulnerable countries, UK climate finance isn’t an abstract budget line — it’s the difference between resilience and disaster. Cutting it at this moment will cost lives and livelihoods.”