Social Justice Policy Clinic students attend the National Emergency Briefing on Climate and Nature

25 February 2026

Through the kind invitation of the organisers and the QMLAC’s supervising solicitor, Katy Robinson, we attended the UK’s first National Emergency Briefing on the climate and nature crisis on 27th November 2025 at Central Hall, Westminster. The event brought together ten of the nation’s foremost experts to deliver a single, unfiltered account of the risks confronting the country and the solutions now required. The invite-only audience of 1,250 people (including politicians and leaders from business, culture, faith, sport, and the media) received what is now the clearest and most comprehensive picture of Britain’s ecological and climatic reality. This briefing establishes a new baseline for national dialogue: evidence every policymaker must engage with, and the point from which our collective response must finally begin.

This article offers a concise overview of the key takeaways from each of the briefing’s speakers, followed by reflections on the day from our perspective as law students.

Introduction

The event was opened by broadcaster and environmental campaigner Chris Packham CBE, who chaired the National Emergency Briefing and set the tone for the urgency ahead. Packham described the moment as a “D-Day” for environmental action—drawing on the symbolism of Remembrance Sunday to call for a national mobilisation proportional to the scale of the climate and nature emergency.

On nature

Professor Nathalie Seddon, Professor of Biodiversity at the University of Oxford, opened with a stark reminder that “nature is critical infrastructure.” She outlined the scale of the UK’s ecological decline: the nation has already lost half of its biodiversity since the Industrial Revolution and now ranks in the bottom 10% globally. This, she stressed, is not a peripheral environmental issue but a direct threat to national security.

Degraded ecosystems increase flood risk for over five million homes, threaten food security through failing soils and pollinators, harm public health, and could trigger an economic shock on the scale of a major financial crisis. In this way, the UK is subsidising systemic risk.

Her message was clear: the UK must build an economy that values nature not as a resource to extract, but as a partner in prosperity. As she concluded, “This isn’t about choosing between the economy and the environment. It’s about recognising that the economy is embedded within the environment, and that the health of the nation depends on the living systems that sustain us.”

On climate

Professor Kevin Anderson, of the Universities of Manchester, Uppsala, and Bergen, painted  a stark picture of the climate emergency. CO₂ concentrations are rising at unprecedented rates, with the world on track for 2°C of warming by 2050 and a small but real chance of 4°C by century’s end—far beyond the “safe zone that has nurtured our civilisation,” risking societal collapse, geopolitical instability, and economic failure. While the UK claims to have cut emissions by 50% since 1990, this excludes aviation, shipping, and imports, meaning true reductions are closer to 20%. Anderson warned that reliance on unproven “delay technologies,” like carbon capture and storage, blue hydrogen, and bioenergy with CCS, has failed, storing just 0.03% of fossil-fuel CO₂. Urgent deployment of proven “timely technologies”—retrofitting homes, electrifying transport, rolling out zero-carbon electricity, and cutting aviation—is needed, alongside social change targeting high-income, high-emitting households to ensure fairness and equity.

Tipping points

Professor Tim Lenton, Chair in Climate Change and Earth System Science at the University of Exeter, warned that continued warming could push the UK into a national emergency by crossing critical climate tipping points. Some, like coral reef decline, have already passed, while glaciers, ice sheets, and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) remain at risk—its collapse could bring winters of -20°C to London while summers grow hotter, leaving the UK fully dependent on food imports. Lenton stressed that limiting the time above 1.5°C is essential, while positive tipping points also offer a chance for rapid, beneficial change if decisive action is taken.

Food security

Professor Paul Behrens, British Academy Global Professor at the University of Oxford, highlighted the fragility of the UK’s food system. He noted that drought-driven agricultural collapse has historically preceded civil unrest (Syria) and warned that climate change is dramatically increasing the risk of major crop failures: what once affected a corn harvest every 16 years could occur every three years at 1.5°C of warming, and every two years at 2°C. With 54% of food consumed in the UK grown domestically and 25% imported from climate-vulnerable regions like the Mediterranean, rising food prices threaten both livelihoods and social stability. Behrens emphasised that 85% of UK farmland is devoted to animal agriculture, which is neither resilient nor sustainable, and called for a shift toward healthy, plant-rich diets—a transition he termed the “Great Food Transformation”—to strengthen food security while delivering health, economic, and climate benefits.

Health

Professor Hugh Montgomery, Director of the Centre for Human Health at University College London, gave a particularly striking speech in which he applied the structure he uses with patients to the climate crisis: honest conversation, emergency, risk, hazard. He asked: Do we have an honest conversation? Yes. Is this an emergency? Yes. Is the risk certain? Yes. Is the hazard catastrophic? Yes. His point was clear: if we take action, we might survive — climate change is a health emergency and must be treated as one.

Weather extremes

Professor Hayley Fowler from Newcastle University spoke on the impacts of the harmful continued use of fossil fuels on extreme weather conditions around the world and the United Kingdom. Tracing recent events like the flooding in Valencia in October 2024, Storm Boris in Central and Eastern Europe in September 2024, Storm Daniel in 2023, the German floods of July 2021, and even the deadly heat waves in South Asia, she spoke of the extreme weather the world and the United Kingdom could and should expect if we continue down the current path. The extreme heat of 19th July 2022 and wildfires at Holt Heath in Dorset and at Arthur’s Seat, she says, are only the beginning of the extreme weather the United Kingdom is set to witness as the continuing use of fossil fuels will lead to blocked jet streams and supercharge extremes. She concluded by remarking how extreme weather conditions like Storm Arwen show that the United Kingdom could slip into a state of constant crisis management and to avoid this we must look to ways countries like Denmark have adapted to brace for these conditions including their rain tunnels and sponge parks and how the United Kingdom must look towards preventing and adapting for these changes before it is too late.

Economic impacts

Angela Francis, a policy expert in green economics and now the Director of Policy Solutions at WWF UK, spoke of the economic impact of climate change. In her powerful speech she emphasised the need to reward companies who are doing well at lowering carbon, restoring soils, keeping forest standing, circular use of resources and producing less waste. Today’s market rules of net zero and nature positive solutions will not work in a market that takes climate change for granted as our consumption today, she said, does not factor in our impact on the climate. Companies that are reporting their carbon, she pointed out, are the ones that are already doing well on the climate front, but lowering their environmental footprint makes companies experience a financial hump before they are able to see positive effects in the long term.

This hump, she stresses, is what is getting in the way of the transition for most companies as we fail to reward these companies while those who do nothing to lower their environmental impact continue to enjoy the same market benefits. She also busted bad economic arguments including the one that says we can’t do this without raising the cost of living. While an important argument to tackle, Francis says we need to get out ahead of it because inflation would have been 7% lower if we had decarbonised the power sector ahead of Russia invading Ukraine, it would have been a further 9% lower if our food systems were not linked to fossil fuels through fertilizer prices, and 11% lower if the UK had switched to heat pumps earlier. The way forward is patient outcome-focused strategy, aligned incentives, thinking internationally and phasing out old technology by highlighting risks and not eliminating them. We must ensure that these solutions work for lower and middle income households as they are key to public acceptance and to building leading businesses.

National security and military considerations

Lt General Richard Nugee CB CVO CBE spoke to the National Security and Military considerations of climate change, a unique yet important perspective. He spoke of how not only the Ministry of Defense in the UK, but also NATO are already looking at their environmental impact and factoring climate change into national security. Speaking of his own time in the British Army, the Lt General spoke of his battlegroup in Iraq and how while no one in his battlegroup was harmed by the enemy, many fell victim to heat stroke. Climate change is a threat multiplier, making existing threats worse and introducing new threats. It also fuels state instability and the competition for resources. Our futures, he stressed, pose a high risk of strategic and military conflict regarding access to water, resources and shipping routes if we fail to act now. In certain areas, climate change makes livelihoods impossible, homes uninsurable and feeds into wider political tensions. There is a growing need for military support during emergencies like floods, fires and heatwaves —like the 2019 Derbyshire case of needing military support to prevent a dam from collapsing after torrential rain.

The threat of crises cascading together due to climate change will leave Government systems overwhelmed. The way forward is not only good for the climate but also strengthens the security of the state and includes measures like energy independence, diversified food supply and a supply chain to withstand shocks, insulating homes and infrastructure to withstand extremes, better planning for unforeseen threats, adaptation and supporting climate stability not just at home, but also abroad.

Energy

Lawyer and campaigner Tessa Khan, founder and Executive Director of Uplift, spoke on energy and the shift we need to make away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy and electrification. The price of energy is a genuine threat to the public mandate for decarbonisation. An energy system powered by renewables is more affordable and more economically secure. Our dependency on fossil fuels is responsible for huge economic shocks and half of the UK’s recessions since 1970 have been due to fossil fuel price shocks. A spike in wholesale gas prices, and also oil, caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine resulted in the UK government spending 64 billion pounds, more than the annual defense budget, on helping homes and businesses who would otherwise be overwhelmed. The End Fuel Poverty Coalition reports that there are now more than 12 million households across the UK that are struggling to pay their energy bills. Renewables are not only cost effective but also vastly more efficient than fossil fuels. She states that upfront costs and investments are only growing pains and should not prevent our transition away from fossil fuels because delaying this transition only risks adding to its costs. The scale of these costs – and who bears them – are actually political questions and there are ways to have entities like the national wealth fund bear the brunt of that cost. This transition, Khan emphasises, would also create new jobs, along with being cleaner, cheaper, more reliable and overall will benefit all of us.

Reflections

Beyond the factual content, the National Emergency Briefing also prompted reflection on how the event itself was conceived, communicated, and received.

A carefully constructed national intervention

One striking aspect of the briefing was the level of preparation and coordination evident throughout. From the choice of venue and speakers to the carefully curated audience, the event was clearly designed as a national intervention rather than a one-off conference. The event strived to educate and inform MPs to help shape policy for the future. This sense of purpose extended beyond the day itself, with sustained media coverage in the UK and internationally, as well as an open letter calling for a televised national emergency briefing addressed to the Prime Minister. As law students, for us this highlighted the importance of how evidence, expertise, and media strategy interact to shape public discourse and political accountability.

A deliberately confronting message

The evidence presented was often difficult to hear, but was deliberately so. The briefing aimed to demonstrate why the UK must respond to the climate and nature crisis with emergency-level action comparable to wartime mobilisation. This approach felt necessary in the context of rising climate scepticism and increasing misinformation. Several speakers emphasised that inaccurate and misleading information about climate change is now widely disseminated, undermining public understanding and delaying action – making clarity and scientific integrity central to the briefing’s purpose.

Hope as a discipline

Despite the gravity of the message, the briefing was not without hope. Rather than offering reassurance, it framed hope as something grounded in responsibility and action. For us as law students, this was particularly resonant. The day underscored the role of law and policy in translating scientific evidence into enforceable frameworks, ensuring accountability, and protecting vulnerable communities. In this sense, the briefing reinforced our interest in the evolving role of law in the Anthropocene—not as a passive observer of crisis, but as a key instrument for enabling collective and just responses to systemic environmental risk.

Conclusion

As COP30 ended without even naming a fossil-fuel phaseout, the gap between science and political action has never been wider. That is precisely why this National Emergency Briefing mattered. Amid misinformation and hesitation, it offered a clear, united account of what is happening, what must happen, and what we can still do. The message across every discipline was the same: we are in an emergency, but one in which timely, decisive action can still alter our future. The evidence is now unmistakable. What remains is whether we finally choose to act — and, as Lt General Richard Nugee CB CVO CBE reminded us, the first duty in any real crisis is to face the threat that stands before us, not the threat we wish it were. It takes courage.

By IMAANE PATEL: SECOND YEAR LAW STUDENT and JEANNE PINSON: SECOND YEAR LAW STUDENT