The security blind spot: Cascading climate impacts and tipping points threaten national security

This report shows how climate change poses both immediate and long-term threats that are of similar or greater orders of magnitude. These go beyond the traditional defence domain to encompass the full range of human security concerns, including food, economic stability, public health, nature, peacebuilding and geopolitics. The new UK government has initiated a Strategic Defence Review and is undertaking a review of national resilience.

This report argues that cascading risks and tipping points are not adequately considered in, or are simply missing from, national security risk assessments and strategy. This has led to significant underestimation of the climate threat. There are worrying similarities to the situation prior to the onset of Covid-19, although climate threats pose even greater security challenges.