Blog post by Chhaya Bhardwaj and Nabeela Siddiqui *
Each year, we speak of the displaced — of borders crossed, homes lost, and the stubborn endurance of hope in the face of despair. But today, another kind of refugee presses at the world’s doors: one who flees not war or persecution, but a vanishing coastline, a failed crop, or a raging flood. The climate refugee is no longer a prediction, but a reality — one which was solidified in the International Court of Justice’s July 2025 Advisory Opinion, which stated that “States have obligations under the principle of non-refoulement where there are substantial grounds for believing that there is a real risk of irreparable harm to the right to life.” The court recognized that climate change may force people to leave their home countries and make return unsafe or impossible.
And yet, Indian law refuses to acknowledge these climate refugees.
As the world marks another year of humanitarian reflection, we must confront this uncomfortable truth: our global legal architecture has failed those displaced by climate change. Despite rising tides and scorching droughts, there is no binding international definition of “climate refugee,” no protected legal status for those individuals, and no global systematic approach to their resettlement.
In India, where environmental displacement is already a lived reality for millions, the silence is even more glaring. This World Refugee Day must not be treated as simply a ceremonial event. While there are challenges to recognizing climate refugees, climate mobility and its various dimensions should be acknowledged. Climate mobility is a broad term that means the movement of persons who are negatively affected by climate change. It includes diverse movements which can be temporary, permanent, a relocation, planned migration, evacuation and rescue.
It is tempting to think of climate migration as a slow-burning crisis of the future, but this framing is dangerously outdated. From the receding shorelines of the Sundarbans on the east coast of India to the crumbling hills of Uttarakhand at the northern Himalayan foothills, environmental disasters have become routine ruptures in people’s lives. In the Sundarbans, rising seas and frequent cyclones — including Amphan in 2020 and Yaas in 2021 — have led to large-scale migration from West Bengal to Kolkata’s slums. Rather than temporary evacuations, these are permanent displacements. And yet, these people are treated as informal labourers, squatters, or even illegal encroachers. They lack access to legal status, social welfare, or even the mere acknowledgment of their displacement. Their tragedy is made worse by legal invisibility.
The term “climate mobility” has yet to find its way into Indian political and policymaking discourse, and may still be confused with “mobility plans” in transportation planning. While the Indian government recognizes that climate change is causing both cross-border migration — which may cause people to claim refugee protection — and internal displacement, there is still a long way to go.
The Law Lags Behind the Climate
As defined in the 1951 Refugee Convention, a refugee is someone fleeing their home country who is unable or unwilling to return due to persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. Environmental factors are not included in this list. Legally, therefore, a person escaping persecution is recognized as a refugee, while someone escaping a flood or a war is not, even though both groups may face comparable risks to life and security. This distinction, established more than seventy years ago, has become increasingly difficult to sustain, as the drivers of displacement have changed drastically in the decades since. In a significant proportion of contemporary cases, climate change intersects with conflict, poverty, and governance failures to produce complex displacement scenarios. For instance, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, has highlighted how recurrent flooding in Bangladesh, drought in the Sahel, and sea-level rise in Pacific Island states have combined with fragile governance and insecurity to force migration across borders. Yet the law’s refusal to recognize this complexity leaves climate-displaced people trapped in legal limbo.
The 2020 decision by the UN Human Rights Committee in Ioane Teitiota v. New Zealand, however, marked a symbolic turning point. Teitiota, a citizen of the low-lying island of Kiribati, sought asylum in New Zealand, arguing that sea-level rise threatened his right to life in his home country. While the Committee ultimately rejected his claim, it acknowledged that climate change could, under certain circumstances, trigger non-refoulement protections — the principle that prohibits states from returning individuals to a country where their life is at risk — due to environmental degradation. This was a historic moment. However, it was also a reminder of how far we have yet to go. The ruling was not binding, it offered no roadmap for countries, and it fell far short of offering legal status to climate-displaced persons — as the Committee put it, not today, but perhaps in 10–15 years, when the impact on the right to life is “really” evident.
With regard to India, there are very few cases where mobility and climate change were legal issues. However, in Ridhima Pandey v. Union of India, the issue of climate refugees was raised by the petitioner — a 9-year-old girl, Ridhima Pandey — who approached the National Green Tribunal of India, requesting that it direct the government to address climate change and protect her human rights, which she argued were being impacted by its effects. The petition described the displacement of people from an Indian island to other parts of the country as creating climate refugees. It also referenced individuals displaced in Bangladesh due to climate change as climate refugees, though it did not specifically differentiate between internal and cross-border displacement. Under Indian law, refugees have been defined since 1947 as people who are displaced across international borders, while those who move internally within India are classified as internally displaced persons (IDPs).
Similarly, in The Conservation Action Trust v. Union of India, the petitioners—local fishermen—framed their grievance by arguing that their risk of becoming “climate refugees” was increasing due to government indecision. This illustrates how petitioners themselves adopt the language of “refugees” in legal claims. However, such usage blurs the distinction between the legal meaning of “refugee” and its broader, popular usage. This blurring can hinder the potential for developing clearer legal protections, since it risks conflating distinct categories of displacement and obscuring the specific rights and remedies available under law.
Although the court in both cases did not delve into the question of “climate refugees,” their petitions reflect an understanding of confusion among both practitioners and claimants regarding climate migration. In both cases, petitioners presented their own social understanding of what the term refugee means, using it to describe their stories of suffering due to the adverse effects of climate change. However, this socially constructed understanding does not align with the legal definition of the term “refugee” in India, highlighting a gap between social and legal perspectives.
In both cases, the court did not seize the opportunity to clarify and reconcile these two socio-legal understandings. This could be because of several possible reasons: the court is overburdened and does not have the time to delve into aspects of law that are not central to the case at hand, it does not want to reflect on its position on such a sensitive issue, or because of the nature of the logical tautology of climate mobility in general. Calum TM Nicholson conceptualizes the field of climate mobility as a field of logical tautology. This means that the term includes all possible understandings of “climate mobility,” rendering the study of climate mobility a mere tautological or general assertion. There may also be other reasons why the court does not address the issue of climate refugee/mobility — ones the authors have yet to identify.
India: A Nation Displaced but Not Ready
India is one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries. Its vast coastline, Himalayan glaciers, monsoon-dependent agriculture, and densely populated deltas make it a climate flashpoint. Yet India has no legal category for “climate migrants,” no resettlement framework, and no targeted rehabilitation policy. Despite hosting millions of IDPs due to climate-related disasters, India lacks a coherent legal or institutional response to manage them. Climate migrants are lumped into broader categories — disaster victims, informal settlers, and slum dwellers — none of which confer durable rights or recognition.
Compounding the issue, India is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention nor its 1967 Protocol. Refugees and migrants alike are instead governed by the Foreigners Act of 1946, a colonial-era law that treats all non-citizens with suspicion. There is also no national legal framework that recognizes climate-induced displacement as a distinct category deserving of specific rights and protections. The government’s flagship climate programs, such as the National Action Plan on Climate Change, focus on mitigation and adaptation, but do not address climate mobility. Disaster management frameworks under the National Disaster Management Act treat migration as a relief issue, not a rights issue. Meanwhile, millions of affected people are slipping through the cracks.
In the absence of a legally acceptable definition of “climate refugees” — both internationally and in India — and amid dominant logical tautology on these issues, one comprehensive recent conceptualization of the term in the Indian context comes from Sincy Wilson, a PhD research scholar at the School of Law, Christ Deemed University in India. Wilson wrote that, “Climate refugees are people who are displaced within their country or outside it, due to the effects of climatological factors including extreme temperatures, widespread floods, droughts, rises in sea level, tsunamis, aggravating coastal erosion, desertification and other natural calamities.” She concludes by stating that “politicians are motivated by concerns over how decisions regarding refugees will be viewed by the electorate.” Her definition offers a general understanding of climate mobility and includes people displaced both internally and across borders.
Given the dominance of logical tautology in this area of study, Wilson’s definition can be used to understand the socio-political conceptualization of the term “climate refugees” in India. Her all-inclusive definition supports Nicholson’s concepts on logical tautology. One of the two ways to identify socio-political perceptions of refugees is through media reporting. Mridulika Jha reports that India’s Ghoramara island saw “India’s first climate refugees.” In another documentary from India’s Odisha province, those displaced internally are referred to as “climate refugees.”
Meanwhile, in this report by First Post, the author states that, “in 2019, India had the most climate refugees-more than five million people.” However, the report does not clarify what is meant by the term “climate refugees.” In the latter part of the article, the author refers to IDPs in the context of climate refugees. This underscores the logical tautology of the term “climate refugees.” This can be explained in three ways.
First, the term assumes inclusivity by categorizing all people displaced by climate change and disasters as climate refugees. Second, it is often used in political and media discourse to sensationalize displacement, framing it as a security challenge originating from across borders. Third, those who are internally displaced frequently lack adequate legal protections precisely because they are subsumed under the broad and imprecise label of climate refugees. Similarly, in an article by Chachra, Patra, and Majumdar, it is clear that the simple understanding of the term climate refugees is “people in the country” who will be forced to migrate. These media reports, however, are not the only documents referring to IDPs as climate refugees.
Some parliamentary discussions and speeches also use the term “climate refugees” to imply they are IDPs, offering insight into the socio-political understanding of the term. In December 2021, Parliamentarian Kanimozhi Karunanidhi stated the following:
“In my Villupuram parliamentary constituency, there are 19 coastal villages. There is severe sea erosion in all 19 villages. The villagers are requesting sea walls to protect them from sea erosion. This is a long-pending issue. Those who are displaced [d] due to an increase in sea level are called climate refugees. It is estimated that there will be one crore [ten million] persons who will be displaced in Tamil Nadu by the year 2050.
The Union Government should start working on the issues concerning the displacement of climate refugees, such as the relief assistance and alternative arrangements to be provided to them, from now onwards. We also have to adapt our other Schemes in consonance with global warming. Only the arguments will not be sufficient.”
That same year, Parliamentarian Pradyut Bordoloi also mentioned the term “climate refugees” in his speech. Bordoloi discussed the plight of climate refugees in the context of data by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, highlighting that 930,000 people were displaced due to “environmental reasons” and recommending that the government develop a policy framework to rehabilitate these climate refugees.
As argued, in the Indian context, there is a lot of discussion on climate refugees in the media, parliamentary debates, and proposed national bills. However, the chance of such draft bills becoming law seems increasingly unlikely. All the current usage is only leading to logical tautology (in)security and a lack of progress in terms of guaranteeing security and protection for the population migrating due to climate change-related factors. While many parliamentarians keep discussing how climate refugees in India need protection, the law makes no progress in this direction. Several state action plans mention population displacement and migration as an outcome of climate change, but they do not explicitly mention the term “climate refugees.”
Recognizing Climate Refugees Is a Matter of Justice
Climate displacement is not merely an environmental concern — it is a matter of justice. Displacement affects the most vulnerable: the poor, the landless, the coastal, the rural, and the marginalized. Often, it is a result of failed governance, unjust distribution of resources, and systemic neglect. Those least responsible for the global climate crisis are being hit the hardest by it. This is the reality of climate injustice.
In India, this injustice is compounded by caste, gender, and class. Women in drought-affected areas such as Bundelkhand are trekking longer distances for water, suffering the burden of food insecurity. Fisherfolk in Tamil Nadu are losing their means of livelihood due to sea-level rise and corporate land acquisitions. Dalit and Adivasi populations displaced by floods in Bihar and Assam are most often denied rehabilitation because they lack land titles or legal documents. To disregard the climate aspects of their displacement is to perpetuate a more fundamental structural violence.
If India is to take the lead on climate justice, it must begin by recognizing the people it has assiduously ignored over decades. The first step is legal recognition — formally defining terms like “climate migrants” or “environmentally displaced persons,” including both sudden- and slow-onset crises. This recognition should then be complemented by the creation of a national resettlement policy that provides housing, healthcare, education, and sustainable livelihoods — not just temporary aid. Climate displacement is not a humanitarian afterthought, but a matter of rights. India’s legal and policy constructs need to change to reflect this reality.
Across international borders, India must advocate for the formation of a South Asian climate mobility pact — whether through the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation or the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation — to ensure that regional migrants receive coordinated protections. However, such a pact has yet to materialize largely due to political reluctance. Migration remains a sensitive issue in South Asia, and regional cooperation is often undermined by bilateral tensions. Internationally, while the creation of a centralized database to monitor climate displacement is critical for evidence-based policy, progress has been stalled by the absence of a single lead agency, fragmented mandates across ministries, and a lack of standardized data collection methods. Legislative reform to recognize and protect climate-displaced persons has also been slow, as migration law reform is a low political priority compared to other pressing developmental and security agendas.
Domestically, while legal empowerment under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution is essential, judges and civil society organizations face structural limits in bridging the gap left by legislative inaction. Courts can interpret rights expansively, but cannot design comprehensive policy frameworks. Overcoming these barriers will require using existing regional disaster management platforms as entry points for climate mobility agreements, establishing an inter-ministerial task force to build and manage a unified displacement database, mainstreaming climate migration into national climate action plans, and expanding judicial and civil society capacity to litigate and advocate for climate justice. The displaced do not need sympathy, but rather justice, acknowledgment, and a legal establishment that notices and protects them.
We often speak of climate change in future terms — future emissions, future temperatures, and future catastrophes. But for climate refugees, the future is the here and now. These individuals have lost their homes, lands, and livelihoods. What they are asking for now is not pity, but protection. Not charity, but justice. We need to go beyond gestures and begin the work of constructing inclusive legal systems that view the displaced not as a menace or a burden, but as citizens of a common and vulnerable earth. The climate refugee is no longer on the “invisible” list. The only thing remaining is whether our laws, policies, and conscience will catch up.
* Prof. Chhaya Bhardwaj is an Associate Professor at the Jindal Global Law School, O P Jindal Global University and a PhD Candidate at the Dublin City University. She was an Alexander von Humboldt International Climate Protection Fellow, 2024.
Ms. Nabeela Siddiqui is an Assistant Professor (Law), at Vinayaka Mission’s Law School (VMLS), Chennai. She has previously worked with prominent educational institutions and the National Green Tribunal, Principal Bench, New Delhi. She was a recipient of the prestigious President of India, Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma Gold medal, The Innes Prize, The Carmichael Prize, and The V. Suresham Memorial Award.
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