Climate change is intensifying the problem of statelessness in the Asia-Pacific. But there are simple, practical steps that countries in the region can take to identify risks and implement law and policy reforms that would help.
Key words: Climate change, statelessness, migration, Falepili Treaty, Tuvalu, Australia, Global Recommendations
In December 2025, the first cohort of 280 Tuvaluans selected via ballot to migrate to Australia under the Australia-Tuvalu Falepili Treaty (‘Falepili Treaty’) arrived at Brisbane airport to make Australia their new home. Touted as the ‘world’s first and only bilateral agreement on climate mobility’, the operationalisation of the Falepili Treaty highlights that long-held projections of climate-related migration and displacement are now a reality in the Pacific.
With the Asia-Pacific widely recognised to be one of the most climate-vulnerable regions in the world, human mobility in response to the negative impacts of climate change is expected to increase.
To date, the related risks of loss of nationality and statelessness, as well as the increased impacts on groups already living in protracted situations of statelessness in the Asia Pacific have largely been overlooked in debates on climate-related mobility and in climate adaptation, risk reduction and relief policies.
We argue that new initiatives designed to better identify and address risks of statelessness need to be quickly activated by governments in the region.
What does the science say?
Climate change is intensifying a range of environmental hazards across the globe. These include slow-onset events (sea-level rise, desertification, rising temperatures) and extreme weather events (heatwaves, droughts, extreme precipitation, and cyclones). The 2023 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report identifies Asia as particularly exposed to physical climate risk, noting that densely populated countries including Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Indonesia face especially high risk from sea-level rise and both coastal and inland flooding. The Asian Development Bank’s Columbia University Climate School assessment identifies six Asia-Pacific countries in a high-risk ‘red zone’: Bangladesh, Kiribati, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, which together hosmore than 520 million people.
Tuvalu is facing an urgent threat of sea-level rise with projections suggesting nearly all of its land could be submerged by 2100.
Climate change also exacerbates the impacts of extreme weather events, as seen in record-breaking heatwaves in India and Pakistan in 2022, and in Australia in 2019-2020. In 2025, the Asia-Pacific region suffered one of its worst typhoon seasons with severe impacts on communities in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka.
Climate-related hazards and the link with statelessness
Many of the world’s known stateless populations are exposed and vulnerable to climate-related hazards. Based on data reported to UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency, in 2025 there were more than 4.4 million stateless people globally, with 70 percent of this population based in just four countries, three of which are in Asia: Bangladesh, Myanmar and Thailand. Stateless populations often face specific and heightened risks because of pre-existing vulnerabilities that arise because of their lack of legal status and marginalisation, leading them to be excluded from climate-related policies, including those related to disaster relief and emergency healthcare.
Impact on stateless communities
Stateless persons, such as Rohingya refugees from Myanmar in Bangladesh, have limited mobility options to withstand climate-related hazards. The Cox’s Bazar settlement in Bangladesh is routinely affected by landslides and floods, putting the lives of stateless refugees at risk. Even the proposed relocation of Rohingya refugees to Basan Char in Bangladesh would leave them extremely vulnerable to sea-level rise. Many stateless persons, including the Rohingya, work in the informal economy and may face loss of their livelihoods resulting from extreme weather events, from which they may have little or no support to recover. Individually or together, these vulnerabilities leave stateless persons more exposed to climate and disaster-related harms.
Moving beyond ‘sinking states’
Climate change is increasingly linked to human displacement. However, awareness of the risks that climate-related hazards pose in creating or exacerbating conditions resulting in the loss of nationality and statelessness is limited. The image of ‘sinking states’ leading to loss of statehood has dominated the limited discourse on the issue and has overshadowed the real and tangible risks of statelessness arising out of climate-related migration and displacement. However, a series of authoritative pronouncements from the UN Sixth Committee, the International Law Commission, the International Law Association, the Pacific Islands Forum, and most recently the International Court of Justice, in its long-awaited advisory opinion, have consistently and progressively argued that losing territory does not necessarily mean losing statehood.
Loss of documentation
People who are displaced or who need to migrate in response to climate-related hazards may face loss or damage to documents that help prove their nationality, such as birth certificates or national identity cards. In 2024 the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre recorded that 45.8 million people were displaced from their homes due to weather-related hazards globally. For example, in Assam, India, annual floods not only lead to the continual displacement of populations but also to the loss and damage of essential documents, including land titles. This has hindered the ability of individuals to verify their citizenship under the National Register of Citizens (NRC) increasing the risk of these groups being left stateless.
Gaps in nationality law and discrimination within the law
Displaced populations may also be affected by gaps in nationality laws. For example, the laws of the Federated States of Micronesia, Palau, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu provide no protection or right to nationality for stateless children born on their territory. Further, Nauru, Samoa and Tuvalu permit loss of naturalised citizenship due to extended periods of residence abroad, even where the loss could result in such nationals being left stateless.
Some nationality laws prevent women from conferring their nationality to their children born abroad and lack safeguards to grant nationality to children born on the territory who would otherwise be stateless. For example, the Constitution of Kiribati prevents women from conferring citizenship to children born outside the country.
Indigenous populations
Indigenous populations often view migration as a measure of last resort, prioritising adaptation strategies that would allow them to stay in their homeland safely as long as possible. This understanding lies at the heart of the Pacific Regional Framework on Climate Mobility, which underscores that for Pacific peoples, ties to land and sea are central to identity and sovereignty, making displacement a deeply existential issue.
For example, in 2023 the UN Human Rights Committee recognised an element of this unique connection to land and waters held by members of the Torres Strait Islander community. The authors of the complaint against Australia argued that climate change impacts compromised their traditional way of life and threatened to displace them from their island homes which would result in ‘the infliction of egregious and irreparable harm with respect to their ability to enjoy their culture.’ The Committee found that by failing to address the impacts of climate change, Australia had violated the rights of Torres Strait Islander communities to maintain their culture and traditional ways of law as well as to transmit this culture to future generations. The risk of such harm exists even in instances where legal statelessness may not arise—as well as in instances where it does—and should be considered in corollary to risks of formal loss of nationality and statelessness.
Gaps in policy responses
Domestically, development and humanitarian policies, plans and programming relating to climate adaptation, management and disaster risk reduction and relief have not incorporated stateless populations and their specific needs. These gaps are further compounded by the fact that most states in the Asia-Pacific are also not parties to the two UN statelessness conventions, which contain important protections for stateless persons as well as safeguards to prevent new cases of statelessness.
Regionally, the Asia-Pacific lacks a framework to address migration and displacement in the context of climate change. Risks of loss of nationality and statelessness have also not been adequately considered when it comes to laws and policies developed to address cross-border displacement and migration in the context of climate change.
The Falepili Treaty between Tuvalu and Australia
The Falepili Treaty is the world’s first binding agreement providing mobility options to the Tuvaluan population affected by climate change. The bilateral treaty entered into force in 2024 and includes Australia’s guarantee of recognition of Tuvaluan statehood irrespective of ‘the impact of climate change-related sea-level rise’. It provides permanent residency pathways for 280 Tuvaluans every year to live, study and work in Australia. The inaugural visa ballot in 2025 closed with applications from over half of Tuvalu’s 11,500 people, demonstrating overwhelming interest.
Although praised as a model agreement that focuses on ‘human mobility with dignity’, the Falepili Treaty does not explicitly address the question of what happens to the nationality status of those who migrate under the scheme, or loss or deprivation of nationality Tuvaluans may encounter if they acquire Australian nationality. The non-binding Explanatory Memorandum released in 2024—a year after the Treaty was signed—only includes a brief reference to the fact that Tuvaluans migrating to Australia will have the option to retain their nationality while being eligible to acquire Australian nationality on the same basis as other Permanent Residents.
While Tuvalu’s Citizenship Act does not provide for loss of Tuvaluan nationality upon acquisition of another nationality, expert have identified that naturalised citizens of Tuvalu may be deprived of their citizenship, and be at risk of being stateless if they do not intend to make Tuvalu their permanent home. The Explanatory Memorandum also restricts the migration pathway to ‘genuine Tuvalu citizens’ without clarifying further what conditions need to be met for someone to be considered a ‘genuine citizen’. At minimum, it seems that being a ‘genuine citizen’ would exclude stateless persons, or persons whose nationality status might be unclear, from applying to move to Australia under the Falepili scheme.
The Treaty has also been criticised for creating a transactional relationship between the two countries and a lack of consultation with Tuvaluan communities especially in relation to those who wish to remain in their homeland. Similar concerns have emerged in discussions on migration or permanent relocation options in the context of climate change in the Pacific islands (e.g., Fiji-Kiribati), given the deep connections that communities have with their lands and seas.
What can be done?
Global Recommendations on Nationality and Statelessness in the Context of Climate Change
In 2026, the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness at the University of Melbourne Law School, together with the UN Refugee Agency, will launch the world’s first Global Recommendations on Nationality and Statelessness in the Context of Climate Change (‘Global Recommendations’). Developed through a series of consultations with statelessness and climate-related mobility experts, as well as affected communities, the nine recommendations guide States and other stakeholders to take concrete steps that will help to safeguard every person’s right to a nationality and reduce the impacts of climate change on those who are already stateless.
The Global Recommendations aim both to prevent future cases of statelessness in the context of climate change, and to improve the lives of those currently stateless, including by proposing that such persons be granted nationality. Each Recommendation identifies the population type to which it applies (e.g., those who are already stateless, or those who are at risk of statelessness) as well as their location (e.g., in their own country, or in a situation of displacement or migration). Each Recommendation also offers a set of practical suggestions on how it may be implemented.
The Recommendations in relation to the Falepili Treaty
For example, one of the Recommendations, has been developed to address the deficit in terms of citizenship protection observed in bilateral (and multilateral) agreements that facilitate migration in the context of climate change, like the Falepili Treaty. To safeguard the nationality of persons who use such migration opportunities, and to protect against statelessness, these agreements need to explicitly engage with issues of nationality. This Recommendation proposes that States take steps, including a thorough assessment to identify and address potential gaps in, and conflicts between, the laws of States participating in the facilitated migration agreement that could lead to statelessness. If such an assessment had been undertaken prior to the Falepili Treaty being signed, the issue of naturalised Tuvaluans being left at risk of statelessness could have been identified and remedied in advance of the Treaty being formalised.
This Recommendation also calls on States to meaningfully engage with affected communities in the design, negotiation, and implementation of such agreements and ensure that they are fully aware of the potential impacts of migration under these agreements on their nationality status. In this regard, the Falepili Treaty has also come under significant criticism, with neither communities in Tuvalu nor Australia having been consulted prior to it being signed.
Finally, this Recommendation suggests that States entering into facilitated migration agreements permit dual (or multiple) nationality as this would help to mitigate risks of statelessness by allowing migrants to retain their original nationality as they integrate and eventually acquire the nationality of their new country of residence. Many countries in the Asia Pacific, including those that are highly vulnerable to climate-related hazards, and from whose territories people may eventually migrate or be displaced, either do not permit dual nationality, or only allow it in very limited cases (e.g. with a small number of countries).
Importantly, the Global Recommendations are underpinned by five guiding principles, which reflect universally applicable norms of international law:
- the right to a nationality
- equality and non-discrimination
- the right to life with dignity
- the duty of international cooperation; and
- the right to participate.
Each of these principles plays a critical role in ensuring that policy responses developed to address and prevent statelessness in the context of climate change are fair, rights-based, and developed through state-to-state support and exchange of good practice, and with the meaningful participation of the people affected by such policies.
Conclusion
Given the vulnerability of the Asia Pacific region to both slow-onset and extreme weather events, and the risk of increased human mobility as a result, governments can ill-afford to turn a blind eye to gaps in their legal and policy systems that have the potential to generate and sustain new cases of statelessness.
Initiatives such as the Global Recommendations on Nationality and Statelessness in the Context of Climate Change offer States and other stakeholders an opportunity to analyse the statelessness risks they might face and take early action to prevent them from occurring. Doing so will ensure that law and policy responses to climate-related hazards are more inclusive and equitable; and could also lead to a much-needed breakthrough in resolving protracted situations in the most statelessness-prone region of the world.
Image: Aerial view of rice fields in Bangladesh. Credit: Zakaria Joy/Pexels.
