An assessment of climate threats to UK national security has highlighted climate tipping points as a severely overlooked danger, according to a new report from the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR), Chatham House, the University of Exeter, and the Strategic Climate Risks Initiative.
The researchers drew parallels with the Covid-19 pandemic, highlighting that national security threats can stem from non-hostile actions – like climate change – and not just from malicious intent, like wars and terrorism.
The authors of the report say the government has a blind spot: major climate threats are not adequately addressed in its national risk register or other security assessments and planning processes, while some threats – like dangerous climate tipping points – are not included at all. Climate change is not considered a key national security issue, something which the report urges the government to change.
Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti CB, former UK Special Representative for Climate Change, said, “The impact of a changing climate is already affecting our prosperity and wellbeing; our national security. Both the onset of long-term trends and extreme weather events are increasing the risks posed by traditional and non-traditional threats. This report highlights some of those risks and, more importantly, identifies what needs to be done if we are to better understand and manage them as an integral part of our National Security Strategy; action that needs to be taken now.”
The report points to the fact that climate change is already playing a significant role in several threats to UK national security, including threats to energy security, threats to public health, and threats to food supplies. These will only get worse, particularly as the world is expected to soon breach the international goal of keeping the global temperature rise below 1.5C.
An urgent threat that is rapidly evolving is the risk that climate tipping points are triggered. These are moments when parts of the climate system can no longer cope with the stress being inflicted by human action and abruptly break down. Tipping points in the Atlantic Ocean pose particular threats to the UK. The report finds evidence that suggests up to a 45 per cent chance of the North Atlantic subpolar gyre (SPG) collapsing this century and happening as early as 2040, if not before. Such an event could destabilise national and global security.
The SPG is a northern component of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a large system of rotating ocean currents in the Atlantic Ocean that plays a crucial role in regulating regional and global climate.
Consequences of the SPG collapsing – triggered by melting Arctic ice – could include fundamental changes to the UK’s weather; creating more extreme weather patterns with hotter summers and colder winters; impacting the ability to farm and grow crops; and damaging infrastructure and public health.
After being triggered, the collapse of the SPG could happen within 10 years, if not less.
The UK would be one of the worst affected countries due to its geographic position in relation to the North Atlantic. The impact on UK food production would be devastating. The next hardest hit would be the UK’s key trading partners. Yet these threats have not been properly assessed by previous governments, something the report urges the new government to address.
Even more concerning than the SPG collapse would be the breakdown of the entire AMOC, which would effectively wipe out crop growing in the UK and severely damage the global food system.
Laurie Laybourn, associate fellow at IPPR and lead author of the report, said, “Climate change isn’t just an ‘environmental’ issue. It already poses severe threats to our security. This is not widely appreciated. But like Covid, severe climate impacts can come out of nowhere, with effects that cascade across society, creating a bigger overall problem than the sum of its individual parts.
“Previous governments did not adequately address climate change in their national security assessment and planning. The UK is poorly adapted even to current climate threats. The echoes with the situation prior to the pandemic are uncanny and worrying. But the consequences could be far greater.
“The new government has an opportunity to learn the lessons from our unpreparedness for the pandemic. It should undertake a rapid national security risk assessment to analyse key climate threats to security, and develop plans to better prevent and mitigate the consequences.”
The report says this would create unmanageable outcomes for economic stability, geopolitical cohesion, and all other parts of society. The breakdown of the AMOC this century cannot be ruled out without urgent international action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The authors say the government must learn from the mistakes of the Covid-19 pandemic, specifically the UK’s lack of preparedness. The report recommends that the government undertakes a rapid national security risk assessment of climate change, to identify the most critical threats and develop options to manage the risks better.
The report also suggests that the government:
- Uses the upcoming review of national resilience and the ongoing Strategic Defence Review to put climate risks at the heart of its national resilience and security plans
- Creates an independent Centre for Climate and Nature Security to improve the UK security community’s understanding of climate and nature threats and develop better early-warning systems for major threats
- Acts on the UK Covid-19 inquiry’s recommendations for rebooting UK preparedness for, and resilience, to emergencies
Professor Tim Lenton, Chair in Climate Change and Earth System Science, University of Exeter, and co-author of the report, said, “We need a policy tipping point to better prepare us for the risks from climate tipping points. For too long we have treated climate change as if it were some slow-burning long-term issue that will only really hurt our children or people living elsewhere. We show that climate tipping points can unfold fast and soon, hit the UK and our allies hard, and that we are woefully underprepared for that. Now is the time to act to get prepared.”
Professor Sir Ian Boyd FRS, former Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government on Food and the Environment, said, “Why is the UK national debt currently at a crippling level? This is because we have failed to insure ourselves against risks which have materialised as a sequence of recent crises. This is not bad luck; it is bad planning. The UK prides itself in its scientific prowess but makes precious little use of our knowledge to build mechanisms to achieve national resilience.
“This important report highlights these problems. It contains a warning that unless we become much more serious about responding to climate change, existential economic challenges will continue and most probably worsen. It says that we must solve these problems by improving the National Security Risk Assessment, and then we need to take it seriously. I wholeheartedly agree.”