Trend Governments framing ecological breakdown as a security risk

Summary

In its chapter on solutions, the report identifies national response capacity as a central task. Several major government assessments released in 2025 and 2026 explicitly treat environmental degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change as interconnected, systemic risks to national and financial security. The report argues that countries need stronger institutions to interpret and respond to the growing risks from multiple simultaneous boundary transgressions. A number of studies already try to quantify how much individual countries contribute to those transgressions. Yet most governments, the report finds, lack the capabilities and systems to integrate the nine interlinked life-support systems into policy across relevant ministries. To close this gap, it recommends an independent Chief Planetary Scientist in every country to bring Earth-system science into budgets, policy and national security planning.