When it comes to climate security be careful what you wish for

The UK government has just appointed Madeleine Alessandri as the world’s first special representative for climate security. With a remit to “support ministers to champion UK leadership on climate and nature security”, Alessandri will report to the Foreign Secretary.

This is interesting for two reasons. First, the security implications of climate change are already within Katie White’s remit as the UK’s Minister of State in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. Why does climate security need a new role? The second reason is that while White is a long-time climate campaigner with stints at Friends of the Earth and WWF, Alessandri is a career civil servant and diplomat who was previously the Chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) which oversees the UK’s secret and intelligence services. The two could not be cut from different cloth.

While White was co-leading the drive for climate justice that eventually led to the landmark 2008 UK Climate Change Act, Allesandri was working at a number of overseas diplomatic and security posts. She has since served as the director of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and then worked directly with the Prime Minister on security issues via the Cabinet Office. After her three-year term of the JIC ended, Prime Minister Burnham appointed her into this new climate security role.

Why her, and why now? It is perhaps no coincidence that it was the JIC that commissioned the now infamously suppressed report on the national security implications of climate change. While published by the Dept for Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, it is widely acknowledged that National security assessment on global ecosystems was produced by the JIC while Allesandri was leading it. Then Prime Minister Keir Starmer held up the publication of the report only to release a heavily redacted version. Presumably its conclusion that the impacts of climate change could be on par with those resulting from a nuclear war were considered to be too alarming for general consumption.

Climate change has long been considered as a ‘threat multiplier’ because it compounds and increases many risks. Unfortunately, governments have thus far failed to acknowledge such threats, and so a dangerous blind spot has opened up. For example, a warmer world will produce more erratic weather that will impact harvests. Less food produces price spikes. In order to try to ensure food security, governments implement export controls. This can cause globally traded food prices to spike driving people into food poverty. Hungry people can not only take to the streets but take down governments.

The 2026 UK harvest is the worst on record. Four of the worst fifth harvests have happened since 2020. This will pile further pressure on UK farmers, and while farmers are very effective protesters, it is the state of national food security that will be exercising Alessandri. That’s because the UK imports the 40% of the food it consumes and so is extremely exposed to the tightening of global food supply.

Given that this year’s monster El Nino is already creating havoc around the world, Alessandri may soon find herself embroiled in efforts to ensure that the responses to climate impacts do not make the situation worse, an outcome that can produce derailment risks where efforts to reduce climate change get blown off course by escalating climate and social destabilisation.

Alessandri will now be in a position to negotiate directly with other nations and organisations specifically about the food and wider security impacts of climate change. I would expect other governments to create similar roles in the near future because climate change is rapidly rising up the ranks of issues that are relevant to national security. These would be positive developments, but we must be aware of new risks they produce.

Having climate change represented at the top table of government will mean that more attention will be paid to the impacts humans are having on the Earth system. But the decisions and values underpinning those decisions could be vary far away from you may consider to be climate justice. A climate security lens means more border security and tighter immigration rules in response to climate-driven migration. Droughts and water scarcity means mobilisation of armed forces to secure vital water sources or disrupt upstream dam construction. Protests over food and energy prices means increased surveillance and draconian punishment. This opens up new avenues for derailment risk with more resources being diverted from climate mitigation to defence and security.

I see no indication that climate security will not remain subservient to national security and national interests. Until we get the interests of nations to change, then climate policy outcomes will remain not just insufficient but unjust.