Ministers suppressed a report after intelligence chiefs warned that climate change could drive mass migration to Britain and trigger a nuclear war in Asia.
The study, entitled Global Biodiversity Loss, Ecosystem Collapse and National Security, was put together with the help of the joint intelligence committee, which oversees MI5 and MI6.
Initially due to be published last autumn, it was blocked by No 10 for being too negative.
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But a full, internal version of the report, seen by The Times, goes further, suggesting that the degradation of rainforests in the Congo and the drying up of rivers fed by the Himalayas could drive people to flee to Europe, leading to “more polarised and populist politics in the UK” and putting “additional pressure on already strained national infrastructure”.
It noted that Britain’s large south Asian diaspora could make it an attractive destination to people from the region.
The internal version also warned that collapsing ecosystems could motivate acts of eco-terrorism in Britain, as well as drawing Nato into conflicts over remaining breadbaskets in Russia and Ukraine.
Described as a “reasonable worst case scenario”, the report said that many ecosystems around the world were so stressed that they could soon pass a tipping point, after which they would inexorably degrade no matter what humans did to protect them. Forests in Canada and Russia might pass a tipping point by 2030, as might glaciers in the Himalayas that fed rivers on which two billion people depended, the report suggested.
Full report [PDF}:
Global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and national security