By threatening forests and forest peoples, UK Budget cuts threaten national security

No matter how one looks at the UK’s recent announcement of how its aid budget cut of 40% will be allocated, it seems that harsh times are ahead for the world’s most vulnerable ecosystems and the people who depend on them.

Aid budgets across donor countries are being cut, but on 19 March 2026, the UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, announced how the steepest cuts of the G7 would be spread, linking her reasoning directly to increases in defence spending: “this for us is not an ideological step. It is a difficult choice in the face of international threats.” Many have expressed quiet doubts, however, about how quickly and effectively such cuts could benefit the military, given the considerable time lag of defence investments. 

Although the Foreign Secretary invoked national security, she failed to draw attention to the UK Government Joint Intelligence Committee’s (JIC) recent national security assessment, which underscores the threat to national security posed by ecosystem collapse. Four of the six ecosystems identified as critical to UK security interests are forests; their destruction would trigger reduced crop yields, water insecurity, changes to weather patterns, increased carbon emissions, new zoonotic diseases and loss of pharmaceutical resources (FW 313). 

In response to the proposed budget cuts, the UK NGO Forest Coalition sent a letter to the Prime Minister and relevant Secretaries of State about the urgent need to protect forest funding and to maintain UK support to Indigenous Peoples and other local communities. Acknowledging that uncertain times require difficult choices, the NGOs, including Fern, nonetheless insisted on the national security threat detailed by the JIC:

“As the national security assessment makes clear, failing to tackle deforestation in UK supply chains undermines the national interest, fuelling the cost-of-living crisis, worsening geopolitical instability, accelerating nature loss and driving climate change, with consequences felt across the UK and beyond. This failure also directly drives well-documented human rights abuses, including land grabs, displacement and the disenfranchisement of forest peoples, despite the UK Government’s stated priority to uphold Indigenous Peoples’ rights.”

The NGOs point out that the cross-sectoral nature of forests, which span three UK ministries, illustrates their critical importance to the UK and to humanity in general. They further remind the government of the 2024 Labour manifesto commitments to deliver on the legacy of COP26. To uphold that promise, they insist, “UK leadership – grounded in rights-based approaches and long-term partnerships – remains irreplaceable.”

The valuable work of the UK’s existing forest programmes must therefore be protected, they argue: the Forest Governance, Markets and Climate (FGMC) programme, which tackles drivers of deforestation; support to forest economies through the Investment in Forests and Sustainable Land Use (IFSLU); the Amazon Catalyst for Forest Communities’ (AMCAT) work towards stronger forest governance and land tenure security, the Congo Basin Forest Action Programme’s (CBFA) efforts to help protect one of the world’s most vulnerable intact forest regions. All of these contribute to broader human security. 

When the Foreign Secretary wrote that “preventing conflict, instability and crisis, displacement and migration, supporting security, economic development, growth and trade, and building global partnerships are all the right things to do,” UK forest NGOs would agree. But this must begin by protecting global forests, and the Indigenous Peoples and local communities who are their most effective guardians.

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