Climate Refugees Are Already Here—And Democracy Hangs In The Balance

At the end of July, the Frankfurter Rundschau ran an alarming headline: “First country on Earth to become uninhabitable—alarming forecast.” The island nation of Tuvalu in the South Pacific will most likely become uninhabitable in the coming decades due to rising sea levels. In response, the Australian government has been offering an annual quota of 280 people from Tuvalu unlimited residence permits since 2023, with the prospect of resettling all Tuvaluans in Australia within the next 40 years.

Yet the Australian migration regime remains notorious for its harshness, which violates human rights. No refugees who attempt to reach the country by boat are admitted. Those intercepted while fleeing face imprisonment on Pacific islands—without due process of law. The prison on Manus Island gained notoriety through the writings of former prisoner and current literary prize winner Behrouz Boochani. Boochani documents the torturous conditions during his seven years of imprisonment. Both faces—selective rescue and brutal detention—are therefore part of the Australian regime.

Temperatures on Earth and in the oceans are rising, transforming our climate. Human-made climate change manifests in the increase of extreme weather events. It destroys livelihoods globally and within nation states and exacerbates inequalities. Climate change will inevitably lead to increased climate refugees and migration. The United Nations predicts that 200 million people could flee due to climate change by 2050. The UN Refugee Agency reported that three-quarters of the 120 million people already displaced worldwide live in countries severely affected by climate change. But climate migration is not a future scenario; it is already happening today.

Climate refugees and the security trap

Critical voices point out that discourse about migration as a consequence of climate change has become an essential part of a larger security policy apparatus that increasingly portrays climate change as a threat to national security. Climate-induced migration gets portrayed as a chaotic mass phenomenon primarily affecting the Global South. The reference to “national sovereignty or the fear of losing it” has become a “central aspect of environmental refugee policy”, argues academic Marlene Becker. In her study of these policies, Becker demonstrates that integrating this discourse into neoliberal migration management logics and security policies legitimises more robust border regimes to ward off climate refugees.

This threat scenario also underscores the urgency of comprehensive climate protection measures. At the climate conference in Cancun in 2010, signatory states agreed to take and coordinate measures to deal with climate-induced displacement and migration (paragraph 14(f) of the Cancun Declaration, 1/CP.16).

Within the international refugee law regime, there currently exists no mechanism to adequately address ecologically induced displacement. The grounds for persecution under the Geneva Refugee Convention always require an individual reason for persecution and a specific perpetrator—prerequisites that do not apply to systemic climate crises and disasters. On 23 July 2025, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) published a landmark advisory opinion commissioned by the United Nations General Assembly, but originally initiated by young students from the island nation of Tuvalu (Pacific Island Students Fighting for Climate Change). In it, the ICJ reaffirmed climate protection as an obligation under international law, deriving not only from the Paris Climate Agreement but also from numerous international agreements and human rights declarations. Although addressed only briefly, the ICJ nevertheless clarifies that climate refugees are protected by the principle of non-refoulement if they face serious harm or threats to their lives from deportation. In his dissenting opinion, Romanian judge Bogdan Aurescu stated that states have a positive obligation to protect climate refugees from human rights violations (Aurescu dissenting opinion, pages 25-26).

The ICJ advisory opinion has no direct enforceability in Global North countries, which are considered destination countries for migration. However, the ICJ’s reasoning and the linking of climate-related damage to the international refugee law regime will play a greater role in future legal struggles before European courts. Lawyers, NGOs, and those affected will be able to invoke potential dangers for those seeking protection who have fled countries particularly affected by climate change in lawsuits against deportations, from lower administrative courts up to the European Court of Human Rights.

Selective border openings

On the political level, the authoritarian right answers the large questions of migration and climate crises by combining isolation policies with promises of preserving the current social order. Yet this involves not general isolation or actually closing borders, but rather selectively opening and closing them. Philosopher Lea Ypi describes it thus: “Borders have always been (and will continue to be) open for some and closed for others. The same applies to barriers to integration and civic participation.” That borders have always been selectively permeable, with filters primarily based on class differences, is nothing new. This selective permeability results in graduated rights and stratified access to social welfare benefits for those residing in a territory—while some groups receive full civil and social rights, others have no access to law and welfare state provisions at all.

Ypi therefore advocates focusing attention on the connection between social class and migration. In the transformation conflicts accompanying the escalating climate crisis, this perspective becomes necessary to centre the class dimension in this discussion. Class-related social barriers within Europe must first be addressed when discussing migration. A class-based perspective addressing socio-ecological transformation conflicts cannot ignore migration—not only because the authoritarian right places migration at the centre of its racist mobilisations, but also because migration systematically links inequalities requiring resolutions to socio-ecological dimensions.

From a trade union perspective, demands must therefore include an internationalist perspective of global solidarity. One such demand: insisting on the right of those affected by the climate crisis not to have to leave. This means advocating for preserving livelihoods globally so people are not forced to flee their countries of origin. This involves more than changing political, social, and ecological conditions in the origin countries. In their 2021 study Das Recht, nicht gehen zu müssen (The Right Not to Have to Leave), Sonja Buckel and Judith Kopp demonstrate, through the analysis of climate, trade, and arms policies, that power relations in countries of the Global North must change fundamentally. Socio-ecological transformation must therefore originate in countries responsible for the climate crisis, which have externalised consequences elsewhere. This perspective on combating the causes of migration and flight also strengthens the political scope for civil society actors and trade unions, whose strategies for changing political and economic conditions in the Global North can simultaneously build solidarity with the Global South and dismantle neocolonial conditions.

However promising future socio-ecological transformation, fossil fuel production has already caused irreversible climate damage. Even if CO2 emissions ceased overnight globally, people would still need to leave homes due to droughts, floods, and overheating. Migration researchers and social movements therefore emphasise defending and expanding asylum rights.

Defending democratic spaces

Socio-ecological transformation and advocacy for the right not to have to leave can only succeed through preserving and expanding democratic spaces. Facing global authoritarianism and fascist movements, democracy itself stands at stake. Current democratic crises intertwine inextricably with ecological crises, mutually exacerbating each other. Migration policy debates form part of this broader crisis dynamic and must be embedded in societies’ general crisis tendencies. For progressive forces, the focus cannot be de-emphasising migration—or worse, adopting right-wing isolationism—but expanding democratic spaces and inclusive solidarity. The choice before us is not whether climate migration will occur—it already is. The choice is whether we respond with the erection of walls or with demands of justice, with fear or solidarity. That choice will determine not only climate refugees’ fate but democracy’s survival itself.

The German version of this text first appeared on the WSI Blog of the Hans-Böckler-Stiftung.

Neva Löw, PhD, is a political scientist and works for the Economic and Social Institute (WSI) of the Hans-Böckler-Stiftung.

Maximilian Pichl is Professor of Social Work Law at Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences.