Global Biodiversity and Ecosystems: National Security

Martin Wrigley Excerpts

Thursday 3rd September 2026 Westminster Hall

[Martin Wrigley (Newton Abbot) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. Like many Members, I have been inundated by constituents writing to me about this issue and explaining at great length their concerns about climate change and their fears for the future. The existential risk of ecosystem collapse and biodiversity loss at home and abroad is a common feature of those concerns.

Wildfires across Devon, as well as in Stourbridge, have caused a catastrophic loss of biodiversity. It is therefore no surprise that my constituents have told me that reading this biodiversity report has made them worry for the future. They fear what will happen to the world as a whole, and to our national security, if what is set out in the report is allowed to come true.

I have been consulting people across my constituency for many months to hear their concerns face to face, including by attending as many screenings as possible of the “People’s Emergency Briefing”, which I encourage the Minister to see. I also held a local climate assembly with my constituents, which was an important step in hearing how I can work with them to share their concerns, and how we can work together on long-term and sustainable solutions to biodiversity and ecosystem collapse, albeit only locally.

The report makes for very worrying reading. One constituent told me that the briefing went “far beyond” anything she had “feared for the future”, and that she was frightened by the real and imminent global risks that we face from climate change and biodiversity loss. Although the report is a worst-case scenario, about what could happen without action, the very suggestion that this is a possibility should worry us all.

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

We both live near the University of Exeter, and Professor Neil Adger has talked about the risks and limits of a securitisation framing of nature and biodiversity, and the idea that this is a global problem of our biosphere but not a national security problem. What does my hon. Friend think? Does he see this as a people’s emergency or a national emergency?

[Martin Wrigley]

I think that this is an emergency on every level: it is a local, regional, national, international and global emergency, which is happening in the climate and in biodiversity at the same time. That is why we need action now.

The report mentions making radical change to farmland usage, but farmers need Government support for that. I recently discussed the issue with a constituent who has great knowledge of sustainable farming initiatives. He proposed a joined-up approach, with farmers working together on a 1000-acre challenge to research and develop sustainable farmland programmes. That is the kind of initiative that we must be developing now, before it is too late, and I urge the Minister to work on it.

I hope the Minister will listen to the concerns that I and many other colleagues have raised today and take urgent action to protect our ecosystems and promote sustainability globally for years to come.