What's happening? At the UK’s first National Emergency Briefing, experts warned urgent action is needed to protect the UK’s economy, food security and national stability from escalating climate and nature risks. Scientists, economists, military leaders and health experts highlighted converging threats – from 2C warming by 2050 to collapsing biodiversity, failing harvests and compounding shocks across food, energy, migration and infrastructure. Technological optimism was dismissed as insufficient without strong governance, rapid deployment of proven solutions and major market reform. Speakers stressed that food system fragility poses acute social and political dangers. The overarching message – the UK has solutions, but lacks the political courage to act at emergency speed. (Forbes)

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Why does this matter? On Thursday 27 November, the first ever UK National Emergency Briefing was held, bringing the threat of climate change to the forefront of risks to the UK’s future prosperity. Professor Mike Berners-Lee, session chair , warned World War II levels of leadership are needed to put necessary measures in place. Similarly, University of Oxford Professor Nathalie Seddon emphasised that we need to accept that “Nature is critical, national infrastructure”. To protect our nation, we must protect nature.

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Disconnect of humans and nature – Humans and nature are often presented as two distinct and separate categories in capitalist society.  This can be seen in the creation of National Parks and Nature reserves, protecting a form of “pristine wilderness” separate from humans. People tend to travel out of their immediate area to experience nature,  escaping the city to “touch grass”. The fact is that nothing is separate. We are fundamentally connected to our environment, as it provides the building blocks we, along with all other organisms, live off and participate in. The UK has one of the lowest ratings for biodiversity in the world, a fact at odds with imagery of rolling fields of green, and demonstrates that our understanding of what nature means and our role within it needs to be much deeper.

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The agricultural paradox – Biodiversity was one of the key talking points of the briefing.  The biggest contributing factor to declining biodiversity in the UK is agriculture. The intensive use of pesticides and chemicals after the industrial revolution has lead to mass decline of insects. In 2020 alone, the UK treated 56 million football pitches worth of land with pesticides at different points in the year. In the  past 20 years, this has led to a 60% decline in flying insects, responsible for pest control, pollination and soil fertility in agriculture. This creates a paradox as without insects our agricultural system would collapse, yet ,the system itself is the reason populations are declining.

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The bigger picture – Furthermore, these insects form the bottom of a complex food-web, as a  food source for fish, bird and mammals, which humans in turn depend on for nutrients and other environmental services. Scarce food sources would lead to both economic collapse and limit access to healthy foods, making the human population more vulnerable to amplifying  climate risk. On top of this, other climatic threats are compounding on our agricultural system such as drought, acidification and soil degradation. The faster we understand we are part of an interconnected system and do something about it, the more likely we are to be able to mitigate climate problems.

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Technological solutions science fiction – The briefing warned that technological innovations were not the answer. This is echoed by many scientists emphasising that the science is too slow to catch up with the problem of climate change and too much budget allocation to experiments  could regress society. We already know immediate steps that could be taken to curb climate change, we are just lacking the awareness ,or willingness, to accept the urgency of the crisis.

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Getting the message across – After COP30 ended with no formal adoption of a fossil fuel roadmap, which would have been a step towards regulating green house gas emissions globally a documentary is currently in production based on the emergency briefing to be televised in spring to provide the general public with access to the information. This is in an effort to counter misinformation, often attributed to oil lobbyists with big budgets, and reprioritisation of climate change discussions.

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Small but mighty – A book written by Sussex University Professor Dave Goulson on the importance of insects stated “Just because they are small does not make them unimportant”. We should also apply this to our actions as humans in the climate crisis. The more awareness we have with things both big and small around us, the more we realise how interconnected we are, and how we need to consider all things to move forward in the climate crisis.