Environmental Activists Sued To Get UK National Security Assessment; Even Then, It Was Redacted

[hatrack]

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Why are they not salient? Partly because countries – and not just Trump’s – seem determined to keep us in the dark. The most important document published by the UK government since the general election emerged last week only through a freedom of information request. The national security assessment on biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse was supposed to have been published in October 2025, but the apparatchiks in Downing Street sought to make it disappear. Apparently there were two reasons: because its conclusions were “too negative”, and because it would draw attention to the government’s failure to act.

When the report at last appeared, thanks to an FoI request lodged by the Green Alliance, The Times reported that it had been significantly “abridged”, I expect by the same goons. Some of its starkest conclusions had been omitted. Even so, the assessment – believed to have been compiled by the joint intelligence committee (on which the heads of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ sit) – is not exactly reassuring.

It echoes warnings some of us have made for years, only to be dismissed as nutters, doomsayers and extremists. It tells us that “ecosystem degradation is occurring across all regions. Every critical ecosystem is on a pathway to collapse (irreversible loss of function beyond repair).” This presents a threat to “UK national security and prosperity”. It says “the world is already experiencing impacts including crop failures, intensified natural disasters and infectious disease outbreaks. Threats will increase with degradation and intensify with collapse.” The results will include geopolitical and economic instability, increased conflict and competition for resources. “It is unlikely the UK would be able to maintain food security if ecosystem collapse drives geopolitical competition for food.” It also warns that “conflict and military escalation will become more likely, both within and between states, as groups compete for arable land and food and water resources”.

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It’s not hard to see how inconvenient this report is for Starmer’s government, which has repeatedly sought to invent a conflict between prosperity and environmental protection. Its war on the living world (a world it reduces, according to the “cauldron principle”, to bats, newts, spiders and snails) is a major element of its appeal to the “hero voters” on which it believes its success depends. Never mind that these voters might not actually exist: we’ll bring our ghost army back from Reform UK by attacking wildlife, which everyone in Britain famously hates. That’s bound to work. So when the security services say that environmental protection is in fact essential to prosperity, their report must be suppressed.

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/27/uk-government-report-ecosystem-collapse-foi-national-security