State Extinction Through Climate Change

Summary

This chapter captures the controversy on ‘state extinction’ through climate change. Sea-level rise and changing weather patterns, among other impacts of climate change, are likely to cause some low-lying Small-Island Developing States (SIDS) to be uninhabitable in the coming decades, even before SIDS territory ‘sinks’ out of sight. Academic debates have offered various proposals on what might happen to the remnants of the states concerned, if they continue to exist at all, and the rights of these territorially orphaned entities under various regimes. Sharon concludes that there is one and only one legal avenue for the—very slight—possibility that statehood would continue after the land is gone.