SEA LEVEL RISE AND CLIMATE STATELESSNESS: FROM ‘TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE’ TO CONTEXT-BASED RELEVANCE MICHEL ROULEAU-DICK* Several low-lying island states currently risk the loss of their entire territory before the end of the century. Combined with the inadequacy of the existing framework of international refugee law to address the challenges faced by those displaced, this situation has made the law on statelessness an interesting candidate for securing an alternative path to obtaining a legal status in a postrelocation context. However, while several authors have examined this possibility, the majority conclude that it fails in its putative task by providing too little, and by coming into play too late to be of any significant relevance to the situation of environmentally displaced persons in low-lying island states. This article challenges this narrative by re-examining the relevance of the law on statelessness along with the context within which it might have to play a role. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ...................................................................................................... 287 Climate Statelessness ........................................................................................ 288 Too Little, Too Late .......................................................................................... 291 A Too Late................................................................................................ 291 B Too Little .............................................................................................. 293 Worst-Case Scenario ......................................................................................... 296 Statelessness in Context .................................................................................... 297 A Too Late? .............................................................................................. 297 1 Statehood .................................................................................. 298 B Too Little? ............................................................................................ 302 C Context-Based Relevance ...................................................................... 306 Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 306 INTRODUCTION After decades of doubt and uncertain progress towards awareness of climate change, attitudes are starting to change. Numerous governments now acknowledge that humanity is in a state of ‘climate emergency’ or facing a ‘climate crisis’, and various actors in civil society have also changed the way they discuss climate change to reflect the urgency of acting.1 Unfortunately, these pious declarations alone are unlikely to slow the pace of climate change, and while key in increasing pressure on governments, climate litigation is often limited by the narrow scope * 1 The author is a doctoral candidate at the Institute for Human Rights at Åbo Akademi University. He would like to thank Professors Elina Pirjatenniemi and Magdalena Kmak for their insightful comments, as well as the reviewers for their valuable contributions to the quality of this article. Any mistake is, of course, the author’s own. Damian Carrington, ‘Why the Guardian Is Changing the Language It Uses about the Environment’, The Guardian (online, 17 May 2019) <https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/17/why-the-guardian-is-changingthe-language-it-uses-about-the-environment>.