Climate Migration: How Will Borders Change in 2050?
The IPCC report published in 2023 and the findings of COP21 revealed that the 1.5-degree threshold set in 2018 is highly likely to be crossed in the early 2030s if current emission trends continue. If the worsening of the current situation is not prevented, dangers such as the melting of polar ice caps and rising sea levels submerging many cities are foreseen. For this reason, millions of people are expected to face the danger of becoming homeless. We see the repercussions of this situation in the legal world with the discussion of concepts such as ’climate refugee’ and ’climate passport,“ and as an inevitable consequence, the potential changes in climate borders have come to the fore. The Mediterranean basin, in particular, referred to as a ”hotspot," is among the regions presenting the greatest danger, considering its economic and political importance.
According to the World Bank, climate-induced displacement could affect up to 143 million people in the Global South by 2050, with the Mediterranean potentially serving as a strategic transit corridor for northward migration. Increasing water scarcity in the Middle East is already contributing to internal displacement.
According to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Mediterranean basin faces risks of intensified summer droughts, reduced soil moisture, and increased pressure on water resources, even under medium emission scenarios. In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, per capita water availability, which is already low, is projected to decrease further with climate change.
The Groundswell report, published by the World Bank, models the demographic consequences of these ecological projections. According to the report, millions of people in the MENA region could be forced to relocate internally by 2050 due to climate impacts. Migration is predominantly from rural areas to urban centers. This raises the issue of ’climate refugees.”.
The existing international legal framework offers limited protection to these new forms of mobility. The 1951 Refugee Convention does not explicitly recognize climate-induced displacement, leaving individuals referred to as “climate refugees” in a normative vacuum. While decisions like Teitiota v. New Zealand have acknowledged that severe environmental degradation could, under certain circumstances, trigger non-refoulement obligations, no distinct legal status has been established for those displaced due to climate. Proposals to either broaden the definition of refugee or create a separate “climate refugee” category aim to fill this gap, but a binding global arrangement has yet to emerge. Therefore, Current human rights regimes are unable to protect the rights of climate refugees, a growing problem now and expected to be even larger in the future.
In this context, a more innovative and forward-looking approach is the idea of a “climate passport.” This concept refers to a legal document that would grant individuals from regions rendered uninhabitable due to climate impacts the right to cross-border mobility and potentially access to the labor market. Such arrangements aim to redefine how borders respond to climate-induced displacement, rather than redrawing borders on the map, and can be considered the best solution among existing legal and political options when looking at current scenarios.
In conclusion, by 2050, borders may not physically change on the map, but their political and legal meanings may be transformed. Sea level rise may lead to the retreat of some coastlines and the shrinking of low-altitude areas, but large-scale geographical border shifts in the Mediterranean and MENA region are unlikely in the 2050 perspective. In fact, in international law, states tend to keep their maritime jurisdictions constant even if the coastline changes. For this reason, the impact of the climate crisis on borders will largely be seen not on the map, but on how borders will be operated. In the face of increased climate-induced mobility, states can choose one of two paths: Either see migration as a security threat and tighten border controls, or adapt border regimes by developing new protection statuses and regional cooperation mechanisms. Current trends suggest stricter border enforcement in the short term. And yet, given what time will bring, states should abandon the traditional approach and adopt new legal approaches, such as climate passports, that are innovative and responsive to the problems and needs of the time.