Australia Accepts First Group of Climate Refugees from Disappearing Island State of Tuvalu

In December, a first group of citizens from the disappearing island state of Tuvalu migrated to nearby Australia under a groundbreaking treaty that signals a new approach to climate mobility.

The Australia–Tuvalu Falepili Union treaty was signed in 2023 and came into force in 2024. It commits Australia to accept 280 Tuvalu citizens each year under a special visa, giving them immediate access to the same supports for education, health care, and child care available to Australian citizens, as well as “freedom for unlimited travel” to and from Australia.

As small island states face an existential threat from climate change, “the Falepili Treaty is a rare example of a legally binding instrument where a larger state commits, in advance, to treat a climate-threatened much smaller state as continuing, even if the physical territory becomes severely compromised or disappeared,” said Simon Klee, a doctoral student at the University of Ottawa.

Last fall, Klee received the Prix Jeune Chercheur (Young Researcher Award) for his work researching the Australia–Tuvalu Falepili Union treaty.

The treaty is also important because it shows how climate policy has become inseparable from geopolitics, security, and defence issues, Klee told The Energy Mix. It’s a combination of goals that he calls “controversial but also realistic.”

“In practice, many vulnerable islands are navigating climate survival while being courted (or pressured) by larger powers,” he said. “The Falepili Treaty is a great example of that new reality.”

The visa granted to Tuvaluans under the Falepili Treaty does not depend on employment and is open to primary applicants who are Tuvaluan citizens aged 18 years or older—so long as they do not have New Zealand citizenship or their Tuvaluan citizenship was not obtained by investment in the country. The visa is also open to people “with disabilities, special needs, and chronic health conditions,” reports The Conversation.

According to Klee, the cap of 280 visa recipients each year keeps the program politically and practically manageable for Australia. And for Tuvalu, it prevents a sudden loss of the working population that could undermine the island’s economy. By June, 2025, roughly a third of the island nation’s 11,000 residents had registered for the first wave of visas, reports EuroNews.

The cap is not set in stone, and can be adjusted annually by agreement of both countries.

Australia also commits to recognizing Tuvalu’s continuing statehood and sovereignty, notwithstanding climate impacts, and to assist Tuvalu in response to a major natural disaster, health pandemic, or military aggression, according to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Meanwhile, Tuvalu agrees to “mutually agree with Australia any partnership, arrangement, or engagement with any other state or entity on security and defence-related matters in Tuvalu.”

This commitment by Tuvalu is important for Australia as it seeks to establish leadership and ensure its security in the Pacific, especially amid tensions with China. Klee said he suspects a 2022 security agreement between China and the Solomon Islands may have had some influence on Australia’s entering the Filapeli Treaty: although Tuvalu is small, he explained, the treaty gives Australia access to the smaller country’s exclusive economic zone of 756,000 square kilometres, or about 29,000 times its land area.

“Moreover,” he adds, “the mobility pathway allows Australia to present itself as offering an innovative, humane response to climate threats, a form of tangible climate diplomacy.”

On that last point, the treaty has been criticized by some climate hawks because, although it may give Tuvaluans a lifeline to escape sea level rise, it does not require any emissions reductions by Australia to get at the cause of the crisis itself. “Tuvalu did not cause the emissions that are drowning it,” oceans journalist Luke McMillan wrote on LinkedIn, which makes the treaty “a deal between the desperate and the complicit.”

While Australia as a country is responsible for far greater emissions than Tuvalu, Klee says this criticism risks “misunderstanding what this treaty is (and isn’t).” He questions whether condemning the treaty for not cutting Australia’s emissions “can sound like asking Tuvalu to reject a lifeline.”

He adds that it also “should not be treated as climate justice achieved,” but rather as “a pragmatic survival tool, not an absolution for Australia’s role in climate change.”

The success of the treaty will also be determined by what it means for Tuvaluans’ continuing statehood, Klee said.

“The bilateral recognition (from Australia) is valuable, but Tuvalu’s long-term security depends on broader international acceptance,” he said. “In that sense, the treaty is a precedent, but not the endpoint.”