Environment-driven mobilities and UK national security

Report

This document is one of a series of reports from the Agile Initiative's Environment and National Security: Exploring the Risk Pathways project. The Priority Policy Questions: Summary of Key Findings reports respond to questions emerging from discussions with policymakers. Designed to be concise and accessible, each provides a list of key findings, a synthesis of available scientific evidence, a graphic illustrating the pathways between environmental pressures and national security, an explanation of the implications for UK national security, a list of priority policy recommendations, and description of relevant uncertainties and evidence gaps. Environment-related migration is not principally a story of mass cross-border flows to the UK. The dominant climate related mobilities are ‘in-country’ and urban, concentrated in the Global South. Within the UK, the most consequential near-term security issues for human migration arise from (i) the announcement and management of coastal retreat and flood risk and (ii) the way diasporic networks operate as both adaptation channels and contested political arenas. Security threats are rooted principally in unmanaged pressure on UK institutions, weak governance, rights and protection gaps, hostile exploitation of migration narratives and radicalisation regimes, and failure to prepare for both movement and immobility. For more-than-human mobilities, security threats arise from movement of pathogens, vectors and invasive species.

Authors: Clack, T; Keith, M; Schwanen, T; Chung, J; Salihoğlu, A

• Publication status: Published
• Publisher: Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford
• Series: Priority Policy Questions: Summary of Key Findings
• Place of publication: Oxford, UK
• Publication date: 2026-07-01
• Commissioning body: Agile Initiative
• Language: English