The UK has announced a package of support to address the growing security risks posed by climate change and nature loss, benefiting millions of people around the world and helping protect critical ecosystems, including forests in the Amazon and Congo Basin.

£330 million of UK funding for the Global Environment Facility - the world’s leading multilateral fund for protecting nature and tackling environmental threats - will support sustainable agriculture and fishing, helping ensure some of the world’s most vulnerable people have secure access to food as well as clean water.

The UK funding will also reduce environmental degradation, including desertification and deforestation, and strengthen resilience to droughts and flooding.

Announcing the funding package at the UN General Assembly, UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband highlighted growing national security risks posed by climate change and nature loss. He warned that climate change and biodiversity loss are now a national security threat as well as an environmental one, with climate-fuelled droughts, extreme weather and pressure on food, water and financial resources increasing the risks of instability, conflict and displacement around the world.

Climate shocks beginning in one country can rapidly travel through supply chains, financial markets, and migration patterns to other countries, directly impacting British consumers.

Speaking at the UN General Assembly, Ed Miliband convened foreign ministers, including those from the EU, Australia and Kenya, to strengthen cooperation on climate and nature-related security risks and drive collective action to address their root causes.

Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told the event:

“Climate change and nature loss have never been issues for climate and environment ministers alone.

“They are defining challenges for our citizens, our economies, our foreign policy, and our national security.

“This year, once again, the impacts of climate change have been unprecedented and devastating - lethal heatwaves, drought, fires, and flooding accelerated by glacial melt.”

“We face an El Nino that is already set to be the most intense in living memory,” he warned, saying:

“This will intensify climate shocks that compound and cascade across borders, threatening food and water security, displacing communities, putting pressure on markets and scarring economies.

“The countries fit for the future will be those that see climate and nature as intrinsic to economic and national security. Countries that anticipate risks and invest in resilience before crises hit.”

"That is why the UK is placing climate and nature security at the heart of our national security and foreign policy decision-making."

The UK is also providing £1 million to the UN Climate Security Mechanism, which helps countries identify and respond to climate-related risks before they escalate into conflict and humanitarian crises.

The £331 million package builds momentum ahead of COP31 and demonstrates the UK’s commitment to addressing the causes and consequences of climate and nature-related insecurity, and reducing the risks that instability, food insecurity and extreme weather pose to British households and businesses.

The Foreign Secretary convened the Foreign Ministers’ Dialogue on Climate Change and Ecosystem Degradation as National Security Risks during the United Nations General Assembly.

The UK’s funding pledge to the Global Environment Facility is for the 4-year ‘GEF9’ period 2026-30.