Research by Alison Smith, Senior Research Associate at the Environmental Change Institute, is examining how biodiversity loss and environmental degradation can create risks for national security.
This research has now fed into a new Forward-looking Research Agenda, which sets out priorities for further research into environmental risks to national security.
The agenda brings together findings from an Agile Initiative research sprint involving researchers from across the University of Oxford. The work builds on the Global Biodiversity Loss, Ecosystem Collapse and National Security report, which examined the implications of biodiversity and ecosystem loss for national security and helped prompt the research sprint.
The research is already reaching policy audiences. One of the sprint’s summary reports, The Role of Critical Natural Infrastructure in Supporting UK National Security, was cited in a House of Commons Library briefing on Global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and UK national security, published ahead of a Westminster Hall debate on 3 September.
The summary report examines the role that natural systems play in supporting national security, and the risks that can arise when critical natural infrastructure is degraded.
Alison Smith said:
We hope these reports will contribute to the growing awareness that national security depends not only on military defence, but also on protecting the natural and social systems that we need to survive, which give us food, water, a stable climate and a resilient society. No-one can be secure in a world where everyone is fighting over declining resources and safe places to live.”
The wider significance of this work is also being recognised internationally. UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband recently highlighted findings from the Global Biodiversity Loss, Ecosystem Collapse and National Security report at a meeting of UN foreign ministers, bringing the issue into discussions at the United Nations.
The Forward-looking Research Agenda builds on this growing body of research, identifying where further evidence is needed to understand the implications of environmental change for national security.
This interdisciplinary effort involved ECI staff working on food, energy, nature, climate and behavioural science alongside colleagues across the University working on health, social justice, conflict and migration. Other ECI contributors included Dr John Ingram, Dr Monika Zurek, Dr Tina Fawcett, Ewan Archer-Brown, Prof Jim Hall, Dr Johannes Lumma, Dr Diogo Veríssimo, Thomas O’Callaghan Brown and Prof Yadvinder Malhi.