2021 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 3(2) challenges faced by stateless persons, notably through its #IBelong Campaign.87 In parallel to the UNHCR’s efforts, the increased interest in statelessness in the literature has also most likely contributed to a better understanding of the phenomenon. Again, this is not to say that statelessness offers a ready solution to the protection of EDPs from LLISs. The present analysis remains anchored in a worstcase scenario, and even then, the relevance of the law on statelessness is largely contingent on external factors, mostly relating to the statehood of the relevant LLIS. Beyond these clear limitations, it remains that the law on statelessness may eventually have a legally productive role to play in the protection of those displaced by rising seas. As set in Part IV, the assessment of the relevance of the law on stateless for EDPs is closely linked to the context in which it is assumed to take place and the alternatives available in such context. Consistent with the scenario-based approach adopted by this article, two scenarios are presented in Figure One below. The first one is the ‘standard’ scenario, a loose aggregate of what could be described as the ‘mainstream’ legal forecast of the future of LLISs. This scenario follows the assessment of future statehood found in the literature cited in Part III(A), which posits the existence of a substantial gap between the loss of physical indicia and the loss of statehood. The second scenario is the ‘worst-case scenario’ discussed in the present article. The underlying assumptions to the worst-case scenario timeline are that sustained recognition would not be possible to secure following the loss of an LLIS’s territory, and that statehood would be interpreted in its narrower meaning. In contrast, the ‘standard’ scenario relies on the international community maintaining its recognition of the deterritorialised LLIS, at least for some time after the loss of its physical indicia. This, of course, remains a relatively narrow understanding of a worst-case scenario, purely concerned with the legal dimension of the challenges faced by LLISs and their nationals. As a result, other factors such as faster or slower effects of climate change are not considered. Common to both, however, is the assumption that no other solution could, or would be implemented to provide the concerned EDPs with an alternative framework for protection. The key difference between the two scenarios, from the perspective of protection, is the length of the assumed period of de facto statelessness before EDPs qualify for the stateless status provided by the 1954 Convention. Were its statehood to be maintained beyond the loss of physical indicia, the displaced nationals of an LLIS would find themselves outside the scope of the protection afforded by the law on statelessness. Alternatively, if an LLIS lost its statehood, the state’s former nationals would fall within the scope of the 1954 Convention. 87 ‘#IBelong Campaign’, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (Web Page, 2021) <https://www.unhcr.org/ibelong/>. 304