Biodiversity and national security

 I recently read the government report ‘Global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and national security’ [1]. This was published in January so I am a bit behind in getting to it. It makes for grim reading. The national security issues of concern include migration, conflict and competition for resources.

Biodiversity loss triggers habitat destruction in a feedback loop.

Climate change is not the only threat to our food systems: biodiversity loss is also important. Biodiversity loss makes our ecosystems more unstable. It combines with habitat destruction to make a feedback loop: biodiversity loss damages habitats which leads to more loss of species …. It is also bad for agriculture, for example by loss of pollinators.

The current rate of species extinction is many times the average over the past 10 million years, suggesting we are in a sixth mass extinction event [1].

Crop failures can trigger migration and conflict in another feedback loop.

The impacts on food systems can have serious indirect consequence. When crops fail people migrate precipitating intense competition for land and sometimes conflict which leads to more migration, so another feedback loop. Crop failure can be due to pests and diseases enabled by extreme weather. For example, coffee harvests in central America failed during 2012-14 due to coffee leaf rust disease. Yields dropped catastrophically – down to zero in some places. Then in 2018 extreme droughts and flooding led to more crop losses and farmers were forced to migrate. Many went to the USA [1].

The SFI ensures that tenant farmers have an incentive to look after the land.

When farmland is owned by the farmer, they have a strong incentive to maintain it in good condition but when the farmers are tenants, especially with a short lease, there is less motivation as someone else is likely to reap the long term benefit. As of 2005, 46% of farmland in England was rented for a year or less [4].  Targeted grants that bring immediate benefits to the farmer such as the Sustainable Farming Incentive [3] go some way towards correcting for this.

Global trade means that crop failures have global impacts and the UK is vulnerable.

Many crops, such as grains, oils, coffee, cocoa (for chocolate) and sugar are traded globally which means that the effects of crop failure are not just local. Crop failure in one part of the world leads to global shortages and price rises everywhere. The UK is nowhere near self sufficient in food and relies heavily on imports so is vulnerable in this way. As well as food we import the means to grow it such as fertiliser. Growing food also requires land and in some countries fertile land is at a premium – even from foreign buyers. This is called land grabbing.

Fertiliser is made from natural gas – supplies are currently disrupted by the Middle East Crisis.

Making fertiliser requires methane which is used as a chemical ingredient as well as an energy source. The cost of methane makes up 60% of the cost of fertiliser [5]. The hydrogen in methane and steam is separated out (requiring high temperature) and used to convert nitrogen in the atmosphere to ammonia. Finally ammonia is combined with carbon dioxide to make urea, a fertiliser high in nitrogen (NH2)2CO. This reliance on methane (natural gas) means that farmers are vulnerable to disruption to supplies. Methane prices are currently high due to the Middle East crisis.

Scientists are working on nitrogen fixing for wheat and rice so they need less fertiliser.

However,  we need less fertiliser for crops that naturally support nitrogen fixing bacteria. Legumes such as beans and lentils do this but they are not our staple foods. Developments are ongoing to develop rice and wheat with this ability with some success [6]

Electrification reduces emissions

Apart from reducing our energy consumption, switching to electricity for energy is the simplest way to reduce emissions because electricity is lower emissions per kWh than any fossil fuel and is usually more efficient too (meaning less energy is wasted: an internal combustion engine produces a lot of waste heat. Unfortunately it is still the case that electricity is more expensive than gas or diesel/petrol but the government has already begun to address this by shifting policy costs away from electricity [7]. This makes electric heating using heat pumps more financially attractive as well as cleaner.

UK emissions have halved, and many industrial countries are on a downward trend.

UK emissions have halved since 1991 on a territorial basis (not including emissions from making imported goods) Consumption based emissions (based on consumption of goods and services by UK residents) have not reduced quite so much but are still down more than a third since 1996 [8]. Globally the news is not so good but many industrialised countries such as Australia, Canada, South Korea and the USA are on a downward trend. [9]

[1] National security assessment on global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and national security (Jan 2026) DEFRA

[2] Grants & Schemes (Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group).

[3] Sustainable Farming Incentive (Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board)

[4] Agricultural land use in England at 1 June 2025

[5] Middle East conflict: Impacts and implications for UK farmers (AHDB March 2026)

[6] Wheat that makes its own fertilizer (Science Daily) Aug. 2025

[7] Energy UK Explains: The ‘Spark Gap’

[8] Measuring UK greenhouse gas emissions (ONS)

[9] Ranked: Where Emissions Are Rising Fastest (May 2026) Visual Capitalist.