Nature and landscapes have long been exploited to win battles, protect strongholds, cut off retreats and slow military advances.
More recently, nature has been weaponised at a temporary Ice detention facility in the Florida Everglades, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” because of the supposed impenetrability of the surrounding swamps, home to alligators and snakes.
The detention facility is now embroiled in legal proceedings due to alleged damage to the very same natural resource that was exploited to sensationalise that campaign of detention.
The centrality of nature and biodiversity to national security was made crystal clear in a UK government national security briefing on global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and national security.
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National security assessments are conducted to identify strategic risks, threats and vulnerabilities that threaten national interests. For the first time, biodiversity loss and global ecosystem collapse were systematically assessed through a national security lens.
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Biodiversity experts have long known that ecosystems worldwide are seriously degraded and that biodiversity continues to be lost through over-use, pollution, inappropriate land and sea use, invasive species and climate change.
What this national security assessment showed was the vulnerabilities that nations face due to biodiversity loss within their own borders and, importantly, in other areas of the world.
The findings of the national security assessment are stark. Biodiversity loss is a global threat, with the world already experiencing impacts such as crop failures, intensified natural disasters and infectious disease outbreaks because of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation.
These direct impacts of biodiversity loss lead to conflict between states, political instability, and erosion of global economic prosperity.
Healthy ecosystems maintain food and water security and protect us against diseases. As good-quality natural resources become scarcer in a nature-depleted world, competition increases and conflicts are exacerbated, leading to mass migration and geopolitical instability.
Given our current trajectory, the loss of biodiversity is highly likely to continue to 2050 and beyond. The UK national security assessment stated that if current rates of loss continue, every critical ecosystem is on a pathway to collapse.
Nature restoration, within and beyond our shores, is essential for mitigating the national security risks of biodiversity loss
Examples of ecosystem collapse include our own peat bogs in Ireland. Heavily exploited bogs cease to function as bog ecosystems, with negative consequences for soil erosion, land slips, water quality and flooding.
Degradation of some ecosystems can lead to a damaging feedback loop, meaning low levels of degradation can amplify further degradation. It is estimated that the Amazon rainforest system is likely to collapse at just 20-25 per cent of its area being deforested; it is currently at 17 per cent deforestation.
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The combination of deforestation with temperature rise and increase in wildfires due to climate change could lead to a damaging feedback loop that further degrades the Amazon system. This could happen as soon as 2050.
Food production was identified as both the most significant cause of terrestrial biodiversity loss and one of the sectors most vulnerable to ecosystem collapse due to biodiversity loss. A sustainable food system should not degrade the very systems that it depends on. Food security goes hand in hand with nature security.
The UK and Ireland both rely on global markets for food and fertiliser. In Ireland we import most of our fruit and vegetables, and the dairy industry is dependent on imported grains such as soy and maize from North and South America. Ecosystem collapse outside of our shores will therefore have serious negative consequences for Ireland.
Nature restoration, within and beyond our shores, is essential for mitigating the national security risks of biodiversity loss. There are both direct and indirect benefits of nature restoration for national security. As a direct defence strategy, nature restoration has been proposed to protect countries such as Poland from military incursions across their land border with Russia. Restoration of forests and wetlands along the border could slow down an invasion.
However, the indirect benefits of nature restoration for mitigating risks from geopolitical instability, mass migration, disease, and natural disasters such as flooding will far outstrip the direct defensive benefits.
Nature security must be a national priority. Not because we need fierce animals to surround our prisons or impenetrable swamps to prevent invasion, but because our lives, livelihoods, governance systems and economy depend on it.
Prof Yvonne Buckley is co-director of the Co-Centre for Climate + Biodiversity + Water, and professor of zoology at Trinity College Dublin
