338 THE GEORGETOWN ENVTL. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 35:331 TABLE A: CLIMATE CHANGE AND STATELESSNESS Requirement Climate Threat Possible Remedy Permanent Population Environmental displacement caused by wave-driven flooding or loss of freshwater. Permanent relocation funded by loss & damage mechanism. Defined Territory Sea level rise causing territorial loss and uninhabitability. Set-aside of physical territory in neighboring nation funded by loss & damage. Functioning Government En masse displacement following extreme weather event. Consent of host nation to function as government in exile. Capacity for Diplomacy Climate diaspora, loss of a functioning government. Consent of host nation to conduct foreign relations & exercise sovereign powers within host nation’s borders. Of the four indicia of statehood, climate impacts as applied to island nations will likely first cause the loss of a permanent population on a nation’s homeland. Though international law contemplates the loss of statehood due to absorption, merger, or dissolution of physical territory, climate change poses a novel threat to this statelessness calculus.42 A nation’s physical territory will be lost to environmental impacts, never to be assumed, merged, or dissolved into another nation. International law must take steps to accommodate this problem, balancing traditional notions of statehood with climate realities.43 For example, the U.N. Convention of the Law of the Sea and customary international law governing territorial sea and maritime baselines does not take into account habitable lands lost to the ocean.44 Would these nations lose their territorial sea or be classified as a rock or low-tide elevation?45 42. Matthew C.R. Craven, The Problem of State Succession and the Identity of States under International Law, 9 EUR. J. INT’L L. 142, 145 (1998); Jeffrey L. Blackman, State Succession and Statelessness: The Emerging Rights to an Effective Nationality Under International Law, 19 MICH. J. INT’L L. 1441, 1444–1445, 1180–1181 (1998) (discussing state succession issues arising out of the dissolution of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia). 43. Professor McAdam has examined new legal models such as a government in exile, which allows a State to continue even when the territory is no longer habitable. Professor McAdam has examined new legal models such as a government in exile, which allows a State to continue even when the territory is no longer habitable. McAdam, supra note 6, at 106. See also Maxine Burkett, The Nation Ex-Situ: On Climate Change, De-territorialized Nationhood and the Post-Climate Era, 2 CLIMATE LAW 345, 359 (2011). 44. See Alan Boyle, Law of the Sea Perspectives on Climate Change, 27 THE INT’L J. OF MARINE & COASTAL L. 831, 831–838 (2012). 45. Id. Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4223806