Packed Parliamentary debate on National Security Assessment on biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse

Packed Parliamentary debate on National Security Assessment on biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse

he Joint Intelligence Committee's (JIC) National Security Assessment on biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, a report which the Government reportedly refused to release in full, was the subject of a packed Parliamentary debate this afternoon.

The report presents a world where cascading risks from nature loss and ecosystem collapse lead to crop failures, water scarcity, floods and novel diseases, meaning millions of people could face food shortages, inflation, public health risks, supply-chain disruption, loss of livelihoods, mass displacement and conflict.

Adrian Ramsay, MP for Waveney Valley, who secured the debate, said in his speech that "Today, we debate a crucial National Security Assessment report that warns of the rapid depletion of global biodiversity, the collapse of critical ecosystems, and the dismantling of major global food systems.” He continued “Historians will write about our decisions. Future generations will judge us for it. They will recount how we knowingly gambled with global stability, the health of the natural world, and the safety of human life, and call it a Growth Agenda."

Roz Savage, MP for South Cotswolds said  "The Government’s own intelligence assessment is that ecosystem collapse is a security threat. We are not governing it as a security threat, nor funding it as a security threat, nor communicating it as a security threat. Nature has a monopoly on our capacity to thrive. I have rowed three oceans to say this. I brought a Bill to this House to say this. The Government's own report now says it. I spoke in this debate because we need the Government to listen, and we need them - urgently - to respond."

Kerry McCarthy,  MP for Bristol East said “Whether it’s heatwaves and wildfires in Europe or the destruction caused by glacier collapse in Nepal and Tibet, the message is clear. The consequences of climate change and environmental degradation are real, not some distant future threat. And they present immediate economic and security risks too, that we ignore at our peril.”

Ed Jarvis from the Climate Majority Project said “The government has shown itself today to not be taking the threat of global ecosystem collapse to the UK’s National Security anywhere near as seriously as it should - even based on reports by its >own< security services and DEFRA. What we need is clear; immediate publication of both the National Security reports, a televised national ‘covid style’ emergency briefing, a wartime mobilisation of the country around a funded national Strategic Adaptation plan, a Secretary of State for Resilience and Adaptation at Cabinet level, as well as an independent commissioner for Resilience and Adaptation to make sure the Secretary of State and Adaptation Plan is actually delivered. Only then will the government demonstrate that it is treating the climate and nature emergency like the wartime emergency it is.”  

Dr Amy McDonnell, Co-Director at Zero Hour, the climate and nature campaign said in response to today's debate 

“At the start of the year, our top security officials raised the alarms about the serious threat that global nature breakdown poses to people's lives here in Britain. Today MPs finally had the chace to debate their warnings. 

“But after an unbearable summer that saw crops fail, hospitals break down, and fires tear through the country, the government should have gone further and used today’s debate to outline how these issues will be front-and-centre of the 10-year plan for Britain they are currently drafting.” 

ENDS

Notes to the editor. 

You can watch the full debate here: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/d01b4723-b547-472e-a5ca-71809e83bf11