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On 21 October 2026 the government announced a new Climate and Nature Security Taskforce, which it describes as the world's first. Its formal name is the National Security and Resilience Risks of a Changing Climate and Nature Loss Taskforce. The announcement came from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, and the taskforce's meetings are chaired by the Minister for Climate Transition, Katie White, with the Cabinet Office minister Baroness Twycross.

Its 16 members include a former Ministry of Defence non-executive director for climate change, a senior manager at the Bank of England, the president of the International Crisis Group, the National Trust's director of science and nature and the head of the Netherlands' national weather service. The government links the move to the UK's hottest summer on record and a year of heatwaves, drought, wildfires and rising flood risk.

According to its terms of reference, the taskforce will:

  • identify key gaps and prioritise the most significant climate and nature related risks to UK security and resilience;
  • review and challenge the government's work on these risks and recommend how to improve preparedness;
  • recommend where the UK can strengthen resilience and shape outcomes internationally;
  • help develop a UK approach to climate and nature security.

It is planned to meet up to twice in 2026, once in person and once online, and then deliver an assessment of gaps in the government's response with recommendations. No date for those recommendations has been published. The taskforce is advisory: it does not change any law or reporting duty.

What it signals for a small business

The release names supply chains, energy systems and financial stability among the areas climate change reaches. That is the language of resilience planning, and it is the same thread running through this autumn's news: the severe drought direction to protect water supply, the MPs' wildfire and extreme heat report, and our guide to how tocheck the flood risk of your premises.

This is separate from the government's existing adaptation plan. The Third National Adaptation Programme, published by Defra, sets out the actions government and others will take to adapt to climate change from 2023 to 2028. The new taskforce looks at the same risks through a security lens.

For a small business the practical effect is indirect but real. When government treats physical climate risk as a resilience priority, large customers and public buyers tend to follow, and they pass the questions down their supply chains. A tender or supplier questionnaire that asks "which climate risks could affect your delivery, and what are you doing about them?" is far easier to answer if you have already written it down.

What to do now: a simple climate risk register

You don't need a consultant to start. A climate risk register is a table with one row for each risk at each site, reviewed once a year and after any event. Our climate risk assessment guide walks through it in more detail.

  1. List your sites, with postcodes, plus any key supplier or warehouse you can't operate without.
  2. Note the main hazards for each: flooding (rivers, sea and surface water), heat, drought or water supply, storms and wildfire where relevant. The official long term flood risk checker covers England.
  3. Write what has already happened. Closures, overheated rooms, spoiled stock, late deliveries. Real events from the last few years are your best evidence.
  4. Rate each risk as high, medium or low, with one sentence on why. Keep it honest and simple.
  5. Give each risk an owner and an action, such as signing up for flood warnings, a hot weather plan for staff, or a second supplier.
  6. Date it and set a review date. A dated register shows a buyer you keep it up to date.

Keep the register next to your carbon report. Buyers often ask about your emissions and your climate risks in the same questionnaire, and having both ready saves time.

Carbon Recycling nasıl yardımcı olur

The Climate risk add-on covers much of the first two steps of the register for you. It checks each site's postcode against the official flood maps for England, Scotland and Wales, lists nearby flood warning areas, and shows days a year above 30°C and the change in summer and winter rainfall at 2°C and 4°C of warming from the Met Office's UKCP18 projections. Each site gets a plain high, medium or low rating, and you can print a climate risk summary with physical risks and transition risk prompts, or download the results as a spreadsheet. It is a screening from official data, not a survey of your building.

The first 10 sites are free on any paid plan. After that it costs £5 a site a year, or £0.50 a site a month, plus VAT.

Alongside it, you enter your energy, fuel, travel and other activity, and Carbon Recycling applies the government's conversion factors to produce your carbon report and Carbon Reduction Plan, so the emissions half of a supplier questionnaire comes from the same place as the climate risk half.