Expanding Legal and Policy Protection Frameworks for Climate Migrants

Climate change is displacing millions of people globally, yet current international legal frameworks fail to adequately protect climate-displaced populations. The 1951 Refugee Convention does not recognize climate as grounds for protection, creating a critical gap in international law. While initiatives such as the Task Force on Displacement under the Warsaw International Mechanism, the Nansen Initiative, and regional frameworks like the Kampala Convention have emerged, comprehensive and enforceable protections remain absent. Climate-displaced persons often fall into legal limbo, lacking recognized status or rights. This Research Topic examines emerging approaches to expand legal protections for climate migrants, centering principles of justice, historical accountability, and community self-determination. Effective protection frameworks must address both the needs of those who migrate and the rights of communities to remain in their homes with adequate support for adaptation.

This Research Topic aims to advance legal and policy solutions that expand protections for climate-displaced peoples through rights-based, justice-oriented frameworks. We seek to address critical questions: What legal mechanisms can fill current protection gaps for climate migrants at international, regional, and domestic levels? How can protection frameworks incorporate principles of climate justice, including historical responsibility and differentiated obligations? What creative legal arguments are practitioners developing to establish protection claims, including novel applications of human rights law, non-refoulement principles, statelessness frameworks, and climate attribution science in legal pleadings? How can frameworks ensure self-determination for affected communities in mobility decisions? This collection will provide actionable research for policymakers, legal practitioners, scholars, and advocates. We aim to examine both established protection models, including humanitarian visas, regional mobility agreements, and complementary protection mechanisms, and emerging litigation strategies that are reshaping legal possibilities. Contributors should explore how expanded protections can be intersectional, addressing differential vulnerabilities based on gender, indigeneity, disability, and socioeconomic status, and how legal frameworks can be designed with meaningful participation from affected communities rather than imposed upon them.



We invite original research articles, systematic reviews, policy analyses, and case studies addressing:

Expanding international legal frameworks: treaty development, protocol amendments, and new protection categories

Regional and domestic protection mechanisms for climate migrants (humanitarian visas, temporary protection status, complementary pathways)

The right to remain: legal frameworks supporting in situ adaptation and community-led relocation

Litigation strategies and legal precedent-setting for climate displacement claims

Corporate and state liability for climate-induced displacement

Integration of climate mobility protections into climate finance and loss and damage mechanisms

Labor migration pathways as protection mechanisms for climate-displaced populations

Intersectional protection frameworks addressing gender, indigeneity, and other vulnerabilities

Community participation and self-determination in protection framework design

Decolonial critiques and Global South perspectives on protection frameworks


Topic Editor Dr. Gabriela Nagle Alverio will be employed by Covington and Burling beginning September 2026. Topic Editor Dr. Alessandra Gazzo Jerolleman is employed by Livelihoods Knowledge Exchange Network (LiKEN) a private non-profit corporation.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Registered Report
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: climate migration, climate displacement, legal protections, right to remain, climate mobility justice, international law, policy frameworks, planned relocation, human rights, climate adaptation

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.