Is climate change the most fundamental threat to British interests?
Is climate change the most fundamental threat to British interests?
The Big Ask | No. 13.2024
In a speech delivered at Kew Gardens last week, David Lammy, Foreign Secretary, laid out his vision and priorities for British foreign policy, in which he stressed the threat of climate change to the United Kingdom (UK) and the links between climate change and global instability. However, Britain faces many threats in the 21st century, from disruptive technologies to aggressive authoritarian states. Therefore, the question in this week’s Big Ask is: Is climate change the most fundamental threat to British interests?
Director, British Foreign Policy Group
With Russia’s war against Ukraine, the potential for all-out war between Israel and Lebanon, and high tensions between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the United States (US), there are a myriad of threats to national and global security. If one of these, or a similar such challenge, were to escalate dramatically, then there is the potential for a devastating world war. However, this is hypothetical. In reality, such a major conflict remains unlikely, not least because it would not be in the interest of any individual nation and diplomatic solutions remain possible.
Climate change, however, is very much the reality and with nations consistently failing to meet their climate commitments, it is clear we are hurtling towards (and already starting to feel the effects of) major climate change. The impacts of climate change are profound, from the most direct impacts, such as food scarcity, through to increased conflict and migration, with the instability and challenges this brings. At the very least then, climate change poses the most existential, long-term risk to the UK.
However, there is still a way to go in communicating the threat posed by climate change. The British Foreign Policy Group’s recent polling showed that Britons more often view terrorism, continued Russian aggression and cyber-attacks from other countries as major threats to British security, than they do climate change. For many, climate change feels more abstract and removed than the immediate risks of threats such as terrorism and conflict. Clearly, there is more to be done to highlight just how important climate leadership is for UK security.
Lecturer, Defence Studies, King’s College London
The short answer to this question is: yes – for two reasons. Firstly, climate change exacerbates all other existing security threats such as political instability, mass migration, food security, infrastructure security, and competition over resources – to name but a few. Secondly, it is an existential threat to all of humanity. If it is not addressed, the world will suffer catastrophically.
Focusing on the UK more narrowly, the answer is still yes. While the worst effects of climate change will be felt elsewhere first, deteriorating food security, greater political instability, rising costs associated with extreme weather, and increased mass migration, will erode British security and prosperity.
The UK should look to counter these threats from the perspective of seapower. A new conception of seapower is needed, one that focuses not just on the ability of a nation to extract and exploit resources at the expense of other nations. Seapower should instead focus on securing a nation’s ability to face the most daunting security issues such as climate change and prevent, rather than just react to, conflicts and instability around the world.
There is already progress in this direction within the Royal Navy, but it should become the focus of British seapower and the Royal Navy rather than a sideshow. Efforts such as that of HMS Trent in 2023 to support and train West African navies in the Gulf of Guinea, or those of HMS Protector which supports research into climate change in Antarctica, can help nations solve security concerns before they become full-blown crises and before they are further exacerbated by climate change.
Climate change will consistently act as a threat multiplier, leaving Britain and its allies on the back foot, but a new conception of seapower can help prevent insecurity and destabilisation through prevention. This, more than simply reacting and attempting to mitigate security issues and climate change, can place Britain at the forefront of addressing the biggest security threat of our time.
Professor of Global Security Challenges, University of Leeds
In the short-term – and taking the UK as security’s referent object, rather than a broader ‘humanity’/the biosphere – no, climate change is not the most fundamental threat. More pressing, short-term threats are found in the domestic and security politics of the AUKUS states as they react to the current and potential future belligerence of revisionist powers.
The UK’s participation in coalition efforts to maintain the free and open international order is the greater short-term priority. However, that should not preclude the (equally imperative) normative demand to confront longer-term threats to broader referent objects, of which the UK is a part. Climate change is a security threat that requires more, not less, attention and resources.
Associate Fellow, Council on Geostrategy
No, climate change is not the most pervasive and fundamental threat to the UK. That honour goes to an expansionist, nuclear-armed Russia.
But it is nevertheless a serious and direct threat. Without adaptation, it threatens crop yields in Britain and promises to disrupt the international supply lines through which the UK imports at least 40% of its food. It will also damage the country’s infrastructure.
It is a systemic environmental pressure, and environmental pressures exacerbate more acute threats. One of the pre-conditions for the Syrian Civil War was a mismanaged drought response and resultant shock internal migration. The result was Daesh, a very real threat to British citizens. Similar conditions exist today around the Red Sea, a critical area for British interests.
Climate change is a global threat that demands a response, including from the UK. Britain may contribute few greenhouse gas emissions, but the country has a lot to offer, especially in terms of expertise, finance, and research and development. The UK’s diplomatic efforts at the United Nations (UN) are likewise important. An inspiring example is Pete Betts’ legendary intervention, without which the Paris Agreement may have not been established.
But British foreign policy regarding climate should not solely focus on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process, which is necessary but insufficient. As the Council on Geostrategy has proposed, the Commonwealth should be utilised much more effectively than it is.
Non-Executive Director, Climate Change for Defence
The UK currently faces many threats, from the immediate threat from wars against Ukraine and in the Middle East, to the longer term threats from the PRC and the power struggles in the South China Sea. But there are three great crises which the world needs to address that will prove in time more substantial than any of these, unless we end in nuclear war.
The first is climate change, which affects British national security in numerous ways. The UK’s food supply chains are vulnerable to both global price fluctuations, as climatic extremes affect the breadbaskets around the world, and also to straight availability of commodities. Water is another issue, both from the cost of flooding to the damage that water scarcity does to global markets. The increasing scarcity of these resources empowers non-state actors to disrupt communities and damage vulnerable governments. Climate change will also accelerate the number of displaced persons in regions badly affected. Indeed, according to the UN, we will see a huge increase in destitute people trying to get to the more affluent parts of the world, such as Britain, with the knock on effect for the radicalisation of our politics.
The second great crisis is the availability of resources that we use, with many parts of the world using an unsustainable amount of raw materials. Indeed, it is estimated that just 7% of the global raw material use is recycled or reused.
And the third great crisis is the depletion of nature and biodiversity loss, which affects food life cycles, as soils become less productive and animal populations disappear, causing widespread economic distress in parts of the world, and our choices are radically curtailed.
All three great crises are linked and feed into each other, but the climate crisis is the most studied, most understood and has galvanised the most action to combat. But all three together without doubt are the most pervasive threat to Britain’s security.
Cdre. (rtd.) Peter Olive
Senior Adjunct Fellow, Pacific Forum
Yes, no, maybe. Climate change is already directly affecting the UK and contributing to global instability which affects Britain’s economy and security. Even under the most optimistic scenarios, this seems likely to worsen. So, yes, as an existential threat affecting all humankind, climate change could well prove the most fundamental threat we face.
But it joins a long list, including accelerating biodiversity loss, urbanisation and pollution impacting the environment, agriculture and health as the human population reaches ten billion around mid-century, creating growing demands for water, food, resources and energy. The latter could also transform the geopolitics of energy in the coming decades as countries compete for renewable technology dominance and access to rare earths. The digital and Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution could also transform employment, communications and leisure, but also place many traditional jobs at risk while making the world ever-more vulnerable to accidents and attacks along its expanding network of space, land and subsea data bearers.
We can also expect pervasive access to information and misinformation to become the global norm, laying bare growing inequalities that may threaten state authority. All in the context of intensifying global competition, rearmament (including a build-up of nuclear weapon stockpiles), the risk of further wars atop those already impacting many regions, and growing pressures on international treaties and organisations.
Yet, collectively tackling climate change could also prove an antidote to many of these other challenges; the ‘carrot’ of hope alongside the ‘stick’ of strengthened deterrence. Both are going to require global leadership, however, if humankind is to avoid repeating mistakes of the past.
Associate Fellow, Council on Geostrategy
In his Kew Gardens speech, the Foreign Secretary stated: ‘The threat may not feel as urgent as a terrorist or an imperialist autocrat. But it is more fundamental. It is systemic. It’s pervasive.’
In this, he borrows from the UK’s National Risk Register (NRR) framing of climate change as a chronic risk which ‘can make acute risks’ – such as ‘natural and environmental hazards’ or ‘human, animal and plant health’ or ‘conflict and instability’ – ‘more likely and serious.’
Whether this is front-running the government’s new process ‘for identifying and assessing a wide range of chronic risks’, climate change is unlikely to be the only chronic risk facing the country. Those included in previous NRRs included antimicrobial resistance, serious and organised crime and artificial intelligence (AI).
The more important question may well be whether the Foreign Secretary effectively manages the inevitable events which dominate his agenda. As he himself states, ‘Conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have dominated my time in office so far.’ Climate change is unlikely to give more leeway, though it will likely only be one driver of events. His speech cites a World Bank report which outlines a worst-case scenario of 216 million people leaving their homes by 2050 because of climate change.
The Council on Geostrategy examined this in a paper, ‘The climate and migration: Implications for Britain’ and noted that 216 million over 30 years (2020-2050) amounts to approximately 7.2 million people annually and this is barely 20% of the displacement already occurring every year.
If we are indeed entering a period of greater instability, there may be reason to believe that effective responses to shorter-term crises will ultimately trump longer-term preventative schemes and that success should be gauged primarily on that.
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