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In this essay, Olya K-Mehri, Centre Lead for Climate, Migration and Place, explores how environmental change shapes people’s relationships with their homes and territories, challenging the assumption that relocation is an inevitable response to climate risk. Rising sea levels, extreme weather, drought and environmental degradation are expected to displace populations, prompting governments and international organisations to focus on migration, relocation and resettlement. However, this emphasis on movement can obscure a fundamental question: what happens when people want to remain? Encouraging climate-affected populations to move away from environmental risk can overlook their attachments to home, land, community and territory, as well as the political and material conditions that make remaining possible. Drawing on the concept of the right to remain, or right to stay, this essay argues that climate justice must protect people’s ability both to move when necessary and to remain safely with dignity. It highlights the importance of access to resources, protection from climate risks and meaningful participation in decisions about communities’ futures. Climate displacement is therefore understood as one shaped by questions of belonging, territorial security and unequal distribution of power.
Climate adaptation has traditionally focused on managing environmental risks and reducing exposure, often raising questions about who will migrate, where they will go and how governments should manage displacement. However, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s Sixth Assessment Report recognises that climate-related mobility is more complicated than a simple movement/displacement binary. It identifies adaptive migration, involuntary displacement, planned relocation and immobility as distinct outcomes of climate risk. Importantly, the IPCC explains that immobility can result from a lack of resources and agency, but can also be a deliberate choice based on people’s connections to culture, livelihoods and place. This distinction is crucial because remaining in a climate-vulnerable place is not necessarily evidence of irrationality or an inability to adapt. People may remain because their home provides social relationships, economic security, cultural identity and a sense of belonging that cannot just be reproduced elsewhere. Climate relocation planning must recognise people who do not wish to relocate, particularly where strong attachments to place mean that relocation could actually increase vulnerability.
As a result, the concept of a right to remain challenges the assumption that movement is the natural or inevitable response to climate change. Recent legal scholarship has begun to conceptualise a “right to stay” as an entitlement for individuals and communities to remain in their territories under conditions of safety, dignity and habitability. This right needs to distinguish between voluntary immobility, where people genuinely choose to stay, and involuntary immobility, where structural constraints prevent people from exercising meaningful choices. In this way, the right to remain does not then mean that people must stay in places that become physically unsafe. Instead, it concerns whether people have a meaningful choice about where and how they live. A community cannot be said to have a genuine right to remain if it is denied the infrastructure, resources and political support necessary to adapt, and then subsequently told that relocation is its only option.
Treating communities as populations to be managed, rather than as political actors with legitimate claims to their territories, risks reproducing existing inequalities.
The right to remain also introduces a different understanding of climate adaptation, as while adaptation is often discussed in terms of reducing exposure or increasing resilience, it can also involve protecting people’s relationships with place. For communities that have lived in a particular territory for generations, losing that territory can mean more than the loss of physical property, encompassing the loss of cultural practices, social networks, livelihoods, ancestral relationships and political identity. This is particularly significant for Indigenous peoples and communities whose identities are closely connected to specific territories. The IPCC recognises that voluntary immobility can represent an assertion of the importance of culture, livelihoods and relationships with place, it also documents cases of relocation in places such as coastal Alaska, the Solomon Islands and Fiji in which communities have experienced financial and emotional distress, along with disruption to cultural and spiritual connections following relocation. These findings demonstrate why relocation cannot automatically be considered a successful climate adaptation strategy. Moving people away from danger may reduce physical exposure, but it can simultaneously create new social and cultural vulnerabilities. Research also notes that planned relocation can be expensive and contentious and may disrupt livelihoods, social cohesion and essential knowledge systems.
Relocation decisions also raise questions about who defines environmental risk and determines what constitutes successful adaptation. When governments prioritise reducing physical exposure to climate hazards, they may overlook the cultural, social and economic significance of the territories communities are asked to leave. Adaptation strategies must therefore account for the wider consequences of relocation, rather than assessing success solely in terms of reduced exposure to environmental risk.
These questions become particularly significant when relocation decisions reflect unequal power relations. Treating communities as populations to be managed, rather than as political actors with legitimate claims to their territories, risks reproducing existing inequalities. This does not mean that relocation should be dismissed. In some circumstances, moving away from high-risk environments may be necessary and actively desired by affected communities. The central issue is whether communities have meaningful influence over whether, when and how relocation takes place. A community-led, adequately resourced and culturally appropriate programme differs fundamentally from one imposed on a community with limited alternatives, particularly in its recognition of community agency and territorial claims.
Meaningful choice also depends on whether people have the resources to act on their preferences. The distinction between voluntary and involuntary immobility is therefore essential: while voluntary immobility may reflect a deliberate attachment to place, involuntary immobility can arise when people lack the financial means or other resources necessary to move. A viable right to remain must consequently exist alongside a right to move. Climate justice requires neither forced immobility nor forced mobility; people should not be compelled to remain because they cannot afford to leave, nor forced to relocate because their communities have not received adequate protection from avoidable climate risks.
Small island states provide one of the clearest examples of the tension between climate change, territory and the right to remain. Rising sea levels, coastal erosion, saltwater intrusion and extreme weather threaten the habitability of low-lying islands. The IPCC identifies small islands as particularly exposed to climate-related risks affecting habitability and notes that climate-related mobility can range from voluntary movement to involuntary displacement and planned resettlement.
This framing is particularly evident in Western media and academic discourse, where low-lying Pacific states such as Tuvalu are frequently portrayed as places from which populations will eventually be forced to migrate as rising sea levels threaten their habitability. But this overlooks the political implications of territorial loss. For these communities, the threat of climate change extends beyond physical displacement to questions of territorial continuity and collective identity. The possibility of losing inhabited territory raises difficult questions about international responsibility, particularly given the relatively small contribution of many island states to historical greenhouse-gas emissions. Furthermore, this highlights the importance of international support for adaptation through adequate financing, coastal protection and climate-resilient infrastructure, rather than treating relocation as the inevitable outcome of environmental change.
Climate displacement is ultimately a question of justice, extending beyond the management of environmental risk to the conditions under which people can sustain their relationships with place. Recognising a right to remain shifts attention towards the political and material conditions that shape whether staying is possible, rather than treating relocation as an inevitable response to climate change. Where relocation becomes necessary or is actively desired, its legitimacy depends on whether affected communities can meaningfully shape decisions about their futures. Climate justice requires addressing the risks that threaten habitability while ensuring that communities retain the resources and agency to determine their own futures.
About the author
Olya is Strategic Partnerships Lead and Centre Lead for the Centre for Climate Migration and Place, at the Institute of Domestic Violence, Religion & Migration. She brings an interdisciplinary perspective that bridges environmental ethics, public policy, and community practice. With a research background in interfaith dialogue and climate ethics, her work explores how diverse philosophical and spiritual traditions can inform justice-orientated approaches to environmental responsibility. She leads projects on just transition and inclusive climate policymaking, centring the experiences of marginalised communities. Her practice includes developing participatory tools that support culturally grounded, locally meaningful responses to climate impacts. As part of her research with the Institute, Olya focuses on climate adaptation and migration policy, critically examining how dominant frameworks on climate-induced displacement overlook gendered vulnerability, exploitation, and the conceptual gaps that leave displaced people without adequate protection.
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