El Niño poses critical threat to nations’ defences, says Ed Miliband in presentation to global foreign ministers
The UK has warned countries around the world that the climate and nature crises and the coming El Niño threaten their national security and defence, presenting foreign ministries with the findings of an explosive report suppressed under Keir Starmer.
Ed Miliband, the UK’s foreign secretary, made a presentation to the foreign ministers of the EU as well as Kenya and other countries on Wednesday night at a private meeting during the UN general assembly in New York, based on the report by the UK’s spy chiefs that found the collapse of natural systems around the world would lead to conflict, migration and food shortages.
Miliband told the meeting, the first such discussion among foreign ministers, that the coming El Niño, which has been supercharged by climate breakdown, would test the world’s food systems as never before.
“We face an El Niño that is already set to be the most intense in living memory,” he said. “This will intensify climate shocks that compound and cascade across borders, threatening food and water security, displacing communities, putting pressure on markets and scarring economies.”
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With the backing of Andy Burnham, the UK prime minister, Miliband presented the research that found the collapse of global ecosystems such as in the Amazon and Congo rainforests, driven by the climate crisis and the destruction of nature, would have impacts on national security around the world.
The joint intelligence committee (JIC) report, revealed by the Guardian, was scheduled to be published last October, but was suppressed on the eve of its launch by Downing Street. A redacted version was issued in January under the Freedom of Information Act, but ministers have continued to resist calls for the full report to be made public.
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and reality then.