Sea Level Rise and Climate Statelessness of LLISs. At the other end of the spectrum is a faster-than-expected rise in sea levels and an unfavourable international geopolitical context. This is not a likeliness assessment; all efforts should be directed towards bolstering local resilience and building durable solutions that both minimise harm to local populations and sustain their agency. However, even if all efforts are invested in the ‘positive’ end of the spectrum of futures, the sheer amount of uncertainty involved, and the highly political dimension of certain key elements (such as recognition) highlight the need for the type of approach described by former IKiribati president Anote Tong: ‘I’d rather plan for the worst and hope for the best’.53 For a state, this may involve complex trade-offs in the allocation of resources, but in terms of legal research, this could provide an opportunity to create better legal forecasts, which in turn could help with a state’s allocation of its resources. The use of a spectrum to conceptualise possible futures also reflects the uniqueness of the challenges faced by the different states threatened by climate change. There can be no single solution based on a ‘one size fits all’ approach.54 Discussing different solutions in the context of various possible futures has the benefit of allowing reasoning that would not be possible without allowing for several discussions to occur in parallel. In keeping with this approach, the current article aims to revisit the assessment of the law on statelessness outlined in the previous section, this time in the context of a hypothetical ‘worst-case scenario���. The bases of the analysis do not change, but the context within which the relevance of the law on statelessness is assessed does. Such context can be briefly summarised by the premise: ‘what if almost everything that can go wrong does?’ In practice, this is assumed to mean that the loss of a LLIS’s entire territory would result in the loss of its statehood earlier than otherwise expected under the narrative presented in Part III(A) and that a number of EDPs would find themselves excluded from most legal frameworks traditionally protecting those on the move. Against this backdrop, what would then be the added value of the law on statelessness for EDPs from LLISs? STATELESSNESS IN CONTEXT A Too Late? The importance of statehood cannot be understated when it comes to determining which protection would be available to EDPs from LLISs: [W]hat is certain is that the fate of the State of origin is the key to the determination of the legal status that the displaced population may uphold: the total de-population of a State leads to its loss of statehood, which in turn results in rendering its population stateless.55 As discussed in Part III(A), most scholars agree that the loss of an LLIS’s statehood would happen only some time after it loses its territory, if at all. According to this narrative, the length of the gap between the displacement of an 53 54 55 Kenneth R Weiss, ‘Before We Drown We May Die of Thirst’ (2015) 526(7575) Nature 624, 626. This is one of the potential problems with creating a ‘climate refugee’ treaty: see generally McAdam, ‘Forced Migration’ (n 6) 186–211. Torres Camprubí (n 12) 203. 297