UK Intelligence Climate Security Report Released After Long Suppression

Compiled under the previous Conservative government, the report was produced by the UK's joint intelligence committee — the cross-government ministerial advisory body that oversees the country's spy agencies and monitors national security. It examined scenarios such as the collapse of the Amazon rainforest, which scientists have warned could shift from rainforest to a savannah-like system due to heating and deforestation. It also assessed risks from new pandemics emerging from deforested and overexploited areas, border disputes driven by the climate crisis, growing Russian and Chinese influence over critical mineral supply chains, and civil tensions within the UK itself.

A first-of-its-kind report by UK spy chiefs warning of catastrophic national security risks from collapsing global ecosystems — including food shortages, mass migration, conflict and even nuclear war — has drawn renewed attention after being kept from full public release since October 2025.

The report found that the UK, which imports roughly 40% of its food, could face food shortages as a result of these scenarios. It also considered the Congo basin and warned that collapsing ecosystems could force mass migration from uninhabitable regions, leading to potential unrest, more polarised and populist politics in the UK and allied nations, greater strain on national infrastructure, and conflict over scarce food supplies. The risk of nuclear war, while regarded as small, was listed as a potential outcome. One person who had read the full report described it as 'apocalyptic'.

Suppression and partial disclosure

The report was due to be published in full last October, ahead of the Cop30 climate summit in Belém, in the Brazilian Amazon. Downing Street officials intervened at the last moment to block its release. Key findings became known through leaks reported at the time, and subsequently by other media outlets, but no official disclosure came until January, when a partial summary was released to the Green Alliance thinktank following several refused Freedom of Information requests.

Green Party MP for Waveney Valley, Adrian Ramsay, who has repeatedly called for full publication and led a parliamentary debate on the report earlier this year, said ministers have been able to avoid confronting its implications precisely because it has not been officially released. A parliamentary committee has also sought to persuade ministers to disclose both the findings and their response to them. The government has not issued a formal response.

Cuts to overseas aid and climate finance

The UK has reduced its overseas development aid in ways that affect the vulnerable countries where many of the ecosystems flagged in the report are located. International climate finance was cut from £11.6bn across the five years from 2021 to 2026 to approximately £2bn per year for the following two years, and the previous ringfencing of spending on nature and forests within that budget was removed. Many nature conservation projects in vulnerable countries were among those cut as a result.

This week, however, the government took initial steps toward acting on the report's findings, led by Foreign Secretary and former energy and climate secretary Ed Miliband, with the backing of Prime Minister Andy Burnham. On Wednesday, Miliband briefed foreign ministries from around the world at a closed-door meeting at the UN General Assembly in New York — including those of the EU, Kenya and Australia, which is leading negotiations at the next UN climate summit, Cop31, in November. Ministers were not given full copies of the report but received verbal summaries of its findings.

Miliband, who said he would place the climate at the heart of foreign policy, also announced £330m for the Global Environment Fund (GEF), one of the main vehicles for funding nature protection in the developing world, and £400m for Brazil's Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF). Jonathan Hall, managing director of Conservation International UK, said the decision to drop the longstanding precedent of dedicating a significant share of international climate aid to nature and forests was 'totally unjustified', adding that the spending is 'both scientifically essential and very popular with the UK public, according to polling'. He called on Miliband to build on the GEF and TFFF contributions and reintroduce a clear target of directing at least a third of UK climate aid to natural ecosystems and tropical forests.