A Climate Security Plan for the UK Home Office

The report identifies that climate change creates systemic stressors for the UK Home Office, ranging from direct threats to public health and infrastructure to indirect risks like societal polarization and organized crime. It argues that the Home Office must move from a reactive to a proactive posture by establishing a high-level climate security policy initiative. The proposed Action Plan is built on four pillars: exercising sustained leadership, understanding and anticipating risks through better data and literacy, collaborating with domestic and international partners, and implementing specific preventative measures to protect citizens and maintain social cohesion.

• Climate change poses direct threats to UK public health and safety, including an increase in heat-related deaths—with 2,985 recorded in 2022—and a projected substantial increase in hazardous fire weather and extreme storms.
• Essential UK infrastructure and supply chains are vulnerable to climate-driven failures, such as power outages and water shortages, with the country importing over 40% of its food, a portion of which comes from climate-vulnerable regions.
• Climate change is exacerbating societal polarization and extremism in the UK, where misinformation is being used to blend climate issues with far-right ideologies and conspiracy theories to stoke outrage against government policies.
• Climate shocks and the energy transition increase risks of gender-based violence by exacerbating economic precarity and housing insecurity, while female climate activists face targeted sexualized disinformation.
• Inadequate responses to climate-driven migration may empower criminal networks; for example, migrant smuggling in the English Channel is a lucrative business, with an estimated $140 million in revenue from approximately 30,000 arrivals in 2023.
• Climate policies and the energy transition create new opportunities for economic crime, including fraud in carbon offset markets—which may grow to $40-50 billion by 2030—and corruption in climate finance flows to the Global South.
• Climate-driven instability overseas can indirectly impact the UK Home Office by creating operating space for transnational terrorist groups or by increasing demands for refugee protections from affected communities, such as those from Sudan.

APA

Ellison, T., & Wong, E. (2024). A Climate Security Plan for the UK Home Office. The Council on Strategic Risks. https://councilonstrategicrisks.org/2024/04/04/a-climate-security-plan-for-the-uk-home-office/

Chicago

Ellison, Tom, and Ethan Wong. A Climate Security Plan for the UK Home Office. The Council on Strategic Risks, 2024. https://councilonstrategicrisks.org/2024/04/04/a-climate-security-plan-for-the-uk-home-office/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Ellison |first1=Tom |last2=Wong |first2=Ethan |title=A Climate Security Plan for the UK Home Office |publisher=The Council on Strategic Risks |date=4 April 2024 |url=https://councilonstrategicrisks.org/2024/04/04/a-climate-security-plan-for-the-uk-home-office/ |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{ellison2024climate, author = {Ellison, Tom and Wong, Ethan}, title = {{A Climate Security Plan for the UK Home Office}}, institution = {The Council on Strategic Risks}, year = {2024}, month = apr, url = {https://councilonstrategicrisks.org/2024/04/04/a-climate-security-plan-for-the-uk-home-office/}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }