Considerations for a Climate Migrant’s Bill of Rights

Over the last two years, Samantha Hubner F22 and her cohort of Carnegie Ethics Fellows set out to tackle one of the most pressing ethical questions in climate policy: defining a framework to establish the rights that climate migrants worldwide should be guaranteed. The team knew a one-dimensional approach wouldn’t be enough. To ground the conversation in real-world expertise and experience, she turned to a familiar resource – former colleagues at The Fletcher School who focus on climate, migration and political demography. 

The result was a thought-provoking report and panel that brought cross-disciplinary insights to a rapidly emerging global challenge, compounded by multilateral ethical complexity. Organized as part of Hubner’s fellowship with the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, the event reflected the program’s mission to cultivate ethical, values-driven leaders equipped to navigate complexity. Over two years, fellows like Hubner explored difficult global dilemmas. Her focus was on unpacking the layered realities of climate-driven displacement. 

“Climate change-induced mobility is driven by a myriad of variables, such as extreme weather events or gradual environmental change, leading to significant risks across the spectrum of regional and state stability,” Hubner and her co-authors wrote in their final report. “In response, individuals and families in climate-vulnerable areas are faced with limited mobility options and even less support from states and the international community. As climate-induced migration rises both within and between states, new ethical questions and concerns are emerging for individuals, families, states, NGOs and multilateral institutions.”

After reading NATO’s 2023 climate change impact assessment, Hubner grew increasingly curious about the defense community’s engagement with climate issues. Her interest began in Academic Dean Monica Toft’s spring 2022 class, where she used geospatial analysis for her capstone on Taiwan’s election security.

“I left Fletcher thinking a lot about this,” said Hubner. “With the fellowship, we were told to pick research questions that we want to wrestle with, and we were encouraged to push outside of our usual areas of expertise. There were three other colleagues in my cohort who were interested in examining climate migration, and I was thinking, ‘this is perfect,’ both because I wanted to dive more into the topic myself and because a lot of my classmates and former faculty are experts in the field.” 

How to Define a Climate Migrant 

At the project’s outset, Hubner and the research team recognized that the topic of climate migration necessitated interdisciplinary analysis. 

“How do you even begin to wrap your head around defining a climate migrant?” she said. “There is no official definition, and in the absence of concrete parameters, you have to start with some sort of framework by which you can understand how to protect people from what we see happening.”

Samantha worked with Emily Kilcrease, Sophie Flint, George Shadrack Kamanda and Pekun Bakare, and the team assembled around four main pillars in alignment with their respective areas of expertise: international law, climate security, sustainability and climate finance. Hubner invited Dean Toft and former classmate Vishal Manve F23 to speak at the fellowship’s inaugural symposium in February. Toft brought her lens on demography, security and migration to the panel and illuminated security concerns as they relate to climate migration. Manve offered insight on climate and science, as both a subject matter expert and someone who has experienced the effects of climate change. After graduating from Fletcher, he went to Columbia Climate School to continue his studies and now works at the university’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. During the panel, he and Kilcrease brought it home with personal stories of climate-induced displacement from Southern India to California.

“During my time at Fletcher, climate migration was a topic that would come up often,” he said. “What would happen to people in island nations like Tuvalu or Fiji, or even right here in the United States, in places like Tangier Island in Chesapeake Bay, which could be completely submerged by 2053? Migration is at the forefront of national headlines, but nobody's talking about climate migration.”

“There's no climate passport available for people when they want to move out of certain geographies and countries,” he added. “If you look at Tuvalu, the government is taking extraordinary steps to preserve its identity – including creating a digital version of the nation to safeguard its culture, history and sovereignty as sea levels rise. But what does that really mean in practice? Even if Tuvaluans are able to migrate, like under the recent agreement with Australia, the physical land and deep-rooted cultural ties risk being lost. That’s why I was so moved when I read the Bill of Rights for Climate Migrants – because it centers dignity, belonging and justice in the face of climate change induced displacement.”

Climate Requires Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Both Hubner and Manve saw that the panel initiated a larger dialogue. 

Manve appreciated the synergies that emerged from multiple perspectives coming into contact. 

“Climate change is not just an existential threat – it is also a national security issue,” said Manve. “Addressing it requires collaboration across sectors – from national security and defense practitioners to technologists developing carbon capture solutions, to policymakers working at both the multilateral and national levels. This panel was a powerful example of that collaboration in action, where voices from government, academia and the private sector came together to learn from one another’s experiences. 

Hubner valued how the Fletcher network made it possible for this conversation to unfold. 

“I think there's a lot of emphasis at school or at work about becoming a subject matter expert,” she said. “Sometimes that's useful, but there's just as much utility in being the interlocutor and knowing the right people to call.”

“I am not a subject matter expert in climate or climate migration,” she added. ”But I know people – people I trust more than anything, having seen their work ethic and knowing their personal stories – to help me get on the right path. That’s a lot of what you come to Fletcher for –  building a network of subject matter experts to keep you on the right path and make sure that you're actually contributing value when you switch lanes, or decide to explore something new.”

Read more about Fletcher’s International Development and Environmental Policy field of study.