As part of our blog series responding to the National Emergency Briefing on Climate and Nature, we are exploring each of its key themes between now and the end of January. The briefing makes clear that responding to the climate and nature emergency requires rapid, coordinated action across many siloes, and we’re here to show you how it can be done.
I was horrified to hear that our government is warning us that we need to prepare for war and we need people to be prepared to fight.
The world order is shifting from a unipolar one – where, since the dismantling of the former Soviet Union, the USA was the sole superpower – to a multipolar one. This is not just in terms of military might, but also in terms of the economic centre of gravity. Calculated on Purchasing Power Parity, the GDP of BRICS now exceeds that of the G7. South-to-South economic trading is set to dominate the coming decades.
New dynamics are kicking in. Cultural norms are having to adjust. The old order is falling apart. Described as the Rules-Based Order, in reality, it is easy to make the case that the rules only applied as far as the sole superpower, the USA, thought they should. We have not upheld international law consistently. The BRICS countries are not willing to accept the old rules, but we have yet to agree the new ones. This is contributing to rising geopolitical tensions in many parts of the world.
National security is being compromised at a time when climate change is impacting and exacerbating tensions: forcing migration through drought and flood, creating conflicts around water rights and disrupting farming leading to food price inflation and social unrest.
As we showed in our work with Cabinet Office in support of the National Strategy Project, and as the National Emergency Briefing for parliamentarians in November 2025 clearly laid out, national security, economy and climate are all interconnected.
Let’s join the dots. It’s not rocket science. Peace, negotiation, diplomacy and reasonableness are what we need. As a global society we need to pull together rather than pull apart. We share one planet and we simply can’t afford to fight on it, particulary at this time.