By Stuart Lambert, co-founder
This week, Andy Burnham took the COP31 stage in Antalya and handed climate change to a spy.
Well, strictly speaking, he handed it to the former chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee, which oversees MI5 and MI6, but I’ve watched enough Slow Horses/Tinker Tailor/ etc to count it as the same thing.
Dame Madeleine Alessandri is now the UK’s special representative for climate security. The PM says climate is a national security issue.
I mean, it definitely is. And always was. But it’s not been framed that way before. Which makes this a huge shift – one that’s been oddly underreported.
And it begs a question of company Boards: how will you respond? Have you made, or will you make, the same shift? For while I’d put money on the sustainability conversation over the 18 months having shifted to a ‘resilience’ framing (it might now be shifting still, to ‘adaptation’), I’ve not spoken to or heard from many who’ve started talking about it (yet) as an issue of security and survival.
Why a spy?
This appointment has been made because of a report: a report which could/should have been 2026’s biggest story but which wasn’t, thanks to Trump’s ongoing mania and the war in Iran.
Under Alessandri, the JIC collaborated on a secret assessment warning that within five years the UK could start to feel national security impacts from ecosystem collapse overseas: food shortages, higher prices, mass migration and conflict between nuclear-armed states. Britain imports about 40% of its food.
Let me reiterate – this wasn’t a hysterical warning from a charity or NGO or eco-campaigner. It was a sober, serious intelligence assessment.
But that assessment was suppressed under Keir Starmer, leaked to the Guardian in October 2025 and published only in redacted form this January. It remains unpublished in full, even after the official behind it got the new job.
Meanwhile, the government has approved the Jackdaw gas field, is reportedly mulling a new oilfield at Rosebank, is said to be weakening the electric vehicle mandate and has cut funding for heat pumps. The Guardian also reports that Burnham has no dedicated climate adviser in Downing Street. Greenpeace UK says words and deeds are drifting apart.
So Britain has appointed an envoy to warn about a risk while declining to show us the evidence.
This strike anyone else as… not ok?
After all, if a public company did similar to investors or regulators regarding its own risk register, we’d call that a serious governance failure.
I/we at Blurred have been talking about Sustainability 3.0 – the markedly different paradigm we’re in that requires sustainability be framed in inarguable, logical-not-ideological terms in order to avoid culture war nonsense – for 18 months. Appointing a national security specialist to a climate brief represents a new front in that battle, one of which companies should take serious note.
Because too many remain sluggish on pragmatic action. Only 42% of companies have a dedicated adaptation plan, according to S&P Global data cited by Systemiq and C2ES, and responsibility is fragmented between sustainability, finance and operations leaders. Meanwhile, 47% of directors and officers surveyed by WTW rate climate as an extremely or very important risk, down from 52% last year, ranking it 25th of 32.
Governments are (belatedly) promoting climate up the risk register just as boards are demoting it.
So move climate resilience off the sustainability team’s desk and onto the risk committee’s agenda, with one named owner the CFO and CEO will actually listen to. Then write your own version of the JIC assessment: what happens to your supply chain, your people and your customers if the next five years go badly? Publish what you can. Authority comes from evidence you are willing to show, and when the business is better prepared, the comms gets easier.
Handing climate to a spy only works if she is allowed to tell us what she knows.
This blog was originally posted on Stuart’s Substack, Unblurred. Image created by AI.