Nature is no longer just an environmental issue; it is a national security risk, writes Dr Macarena Cárdenas, senior adviser, resilience and nature at the UK Green Building Council
The recently published National Security Assessment is one of the most serious warnings about nature loss ever issued by the UK government.
Its title, Global Biodiversity Loss, Ecosystem Collapse and National Security, seems bland, but the message is stark: biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation are threats to national security, economic stability, food supplies and global resilience.
What makes the report so significant is that, far from being just another environmental warning, the assessment was written by the Joint Intelligence Committee, which oversees MI5 and MI6, and only published (by DEFRA) following a Freedom of Information request from Green Alliance.
Global ecosystem degradation
The assessment identifies six critical global ecosystems on which the UK depends: the Amazon rainforest, Congo Basin rainforest, Boreal forests (North America and Russia), the Himalayan “water towers”, the Southeast Asian coral reefs and Mangrove ecosystems in Southeast Asia – and suggests they are all moving towards collapse.
Three systems are identified as ‘high-risk’ of failure in the assessment, which links the decline of nature to food insecurity, disrupted supply chains, water stress, crop failures, economic shocks, global instability, geopolitical competition and mass-migration.
“Global ecosystem degradation and collapse threaten UK national security and prosperity,” the report says, with the authors adding “we have high confidence in our assessment of global ecosystem degradation trends, and in their biological and physical impacts. We have high confidence that every critical ecosystem is degrading.”
For absolute clarity, it defines ecosystem degradation as “a long-term reduction in an ecosystem’s structure, functionality or capacity to provide benefits to people” and ecosystem collapse as “a critical threshold beyond which an ecosystem is potentially irreversibly changed and can no longer maintain essential structure or function.”
Put simply: the report shows nature failure equals system failure, and the UK is not insulated from this, with the report detailing how biodiversity breakdown abroad directly affects us here in the UK.
Restoring nature
But while protecting those globally interconnected ecosystems requires interventions at multiple levels, restoring nature in the UK is something we can do now.
At UKGBC, we know the built environment is on the frontline of the nature and climate crises, the just launched Framework for a Nature Positive Built Environment, is a timely and crucial step in establishing a shared direction for nature protection across our sector.
For decades, scientists and activists have been warning about biodiversity loss, tipping-points and planetary boundaries. Bodies like the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services have shown that up to one million species are threatened with extinction and that ecosystems have declined by nearly half since pre-industrial times. I was one of those scientists, trying to get people to understand and care.
Warnings about nature loss were often treated as “the environment team’s problem” but surely not now? This assessment changes that framing, using modelling and language typically reserved for threats like terrorism and cyber-attacks.
Within the planning, design and construction and regeneration of the built environment, nature is still too often treated as optional, “fluffy” or something to be monetised, rather than foundational for our survival.
The assessment again highlights that nature is the foundation of our economy, climate stability, public health and societal resilience. It provides water filtration, soil health, flood buffering, pollination, carbon storage are fundamental to how we design the cities, transport and energy systems that support people and communities.
For built environment professionals, this report is the urgent call to action we all need. It reinforces the importance of ongoing UKGBC work around Embodied Ecological Impacts, which explores the global ecological impacts of the building materials we use in the UK. It also speaks to our Climate Resilience Roadmap, which shows how the built environment is vulnerable to increasing climate shocks.
The new Framework for a Nature Positive Built Environment provides a common foundation for ambitious action on nature. As well as aligning with existing policies, international best practice and emerging standards, it also sets out the mindsets, behaviours and design approaches required to deliver nature-positive outcomes.
This government assessment should lead to a fundamental shift in how the sector understands risk, value and resilience – and we need to show government that the built environment sector can help provide solutions to the threat of nature collapse.
The starting point for any conversation? Nature is no longer just an environmental issue; it is a national security risk.
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