Democracies in the Climate Crisis: Redefining Citizenship and Statehood in Sinking States

RESIST will be the first research to redefine our current legal categories of citizenship and statehood in the extreme case of sea level rise submerging the whole territory of a state. The international community has no experience in managing the disappearance of whole territorial states as a result of environmental disruptions, nor has it designed international legal norms to account for such an eventuality. In this view, RESIST first examines a real-world case, namely the unique case study of Tuvalu, where recent constitutional amendments (2023) have innovated the notion of statehood in light of the impacts of climate change or other causes resulting in loss to its physical territory. More specifically, Tuvalu is the first State to introduce a novel definition of statehood in its Constitution that does not require physical territory as a necessary condition for being recognized as an independent state. Second, it shows the shortcomings of these current legal categories in tackling present and future challenges deriving from the climate crisis and climate-induced migration in particular.Third, it develops alternative and/or broader understandings of citizenship and statehood to better cope with these challenges.Finally,it formulates policy recommendations for how to address the challenge of climate-induced migration of whole states and states that lose a significant part of their territory in a fair manner. The main goal of RESIST is to equip democracies with new conceptual and legal instruments to prevent climate emergencies from being tackled in a way that violates basic human rights. Such a goal is achieved through the following methodology: literature review and legal mapping exercise conducted through the research desk over open-access documents, collection of further contributions through a Special Issue, and semi-structured interviews conducted during a secondment in Australia at the Australian National University College of Law and fieldwork in Tuvalu.