“Climate Refugees” and the Limits of Refugee Law: Bangladesh and India

Climate change is increasingly shaping patterns of human mobility. In South Asia, Bangladesh is often cited as one of the countries most exposed to environmental risk, facing rising sea levels, cyclones, flooding, and land erosion. These pressures are already contributing to displacement and migration. While most movement remains internal, cross-border migration into India also occurs, raising important questions for international law.

The concept of the “climate refugee” is widely used in public discourse, but it has no formal legal status. Under the 1951 Refugee Convention, refugee protection is limited to individuals fleeing persecution on specific grounds such as race, religion, or political opinion. Environmental factors do not fall within this definition. As a result, even where climate change plays a role in cross-border movement, those affected are not recognised as refugees.

Climate Change and Cross-Border Movement

Bangladesh’s vulnerability to climate change is well documented. Flooding, cyclones, and saltwater intrusion have disrupted livelihoods, particularly in rural and coastal areas. Environmental degradation affects access to land, freshwater, and food security, making it increasingly difficult for communities to sustain themselves. Migration, therefore, becomes one of several strategies for coping with environmental stress.

Although the majority of displacement occurs within Bangladesh, movement across the border into India forms part of a long-standing migration corridor. Economic opportunities, geographic proximity, and historical ties all play a role. However, climate change is increasingly understood as a contributing factor that interacts with these existing drivers.

This creates a form of movement that does not fit within existing legal categories. Migration is rarely driven by a single cause; instead, environmental pressures, economic necessity, and social factors are often interlinked. International refugee law, however, is structured around more clearly defined grounds of persecution. As a result, individuals moving in part due to climate-related factors are not captured by the existing framework.

Legal Classification and Its Implications

The absence of legal recognition has practical implications. Bangladeshi migrants in India are usually classified as economic or irregular migrants, regardless of the environmental pressures that may have influenced their decision to move. This classification determines the extent of their rights and protections.

Without refugee status, migrants may face detention, deportation, or exclusion from access to basic services such as healthcare and education. Legal insecurity also increases vulnerability to exploitation in informal labour markets. The issue is therefore not only one of terminology, but of access to protection.

Legal developments in India further complicate the situation. The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) introduces religion as a basis for access to citizenship, offering expedited naturalisation to certain non-Muslim groups from neighbouring countries, including Bangladesh. Muslims are excluded from this framework. At the same time, measures like the National Register of Citizens (NRC) have heightened scrutiny of citizenship status, placing additional pressure on migrant populations.

Taken together, these developments illustrate how domestic legislation can interact with gaps in international law. Where refugee law does not apply, states retain broad discretion in how they classify and treat migrants. This can result in protection being shaped by political and social considerations rather than by vulnerability to harm.

Limits of the Refugee Framework

The case of Bangladesh and India exemplifies a larger structural issue within international law. The 1951 Refugee Convention was not designed to address environmental displacement. Its focus on persecution reflects the historical context in which it was created, rather than contemporary patterns of mobility.

However, expanding the definition of a refugee to include climate-related factors raises many challenges. Questions of causation are especially difficult: at what point can environmental degradation be said to compel movement? In contexts such as Bangladesh, where migration decisions are shaped by several factors, establishing a clear legal threshold is difficult.

Reforming the 1951 Refugee Convention is also not straightforward. Amendments require a long and complicated multilateral process, so historically, changes have been achieved through additional instruments instead. The 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, for instance, expanded the Convention’s scope without changing its core definition. Any further reform would likely depend on broad consensus among states, which remains difficult to achieve. For climate change, where questions of responsibility and burden-sharing are politically sensitive, there is limited appetite among states to expand the scope of refugee protection.

Addressing the Gaps in Protection

Therefore, addressing this gap does not necessarily require a complete overhaul of the refugee regime, but it does call for a reconsideration of how international law responds to climate-related movement. One avenue is the development of complementary protection frameworks that operate alongside existing refugee law. Another is a greater reliance on international human rights law, particularly in situations where returning individuals to environmentally degraded areas may pose serious risks to life and dignity.

At the regional and national levels, there may also be scope for more targeted responses. However, as this case study demonstrates, such approaches are shaped by political considerations and may not always prioritise protection.

Conclusion

Climate-related movement from Bangladesh to India demonstrates the inadequacy of existing legal frameworks in responding to changing patterns of displacement. Even where environmental pressures contribute to cross-border movement, impacted individuals are not recognised as refugees under international law. Instead, they are treated within migration systems that offer limited and often precarious forms of protection.

For international law, the challenge lies in responding to forms of mobility that do not fit within established categories. As climate change continues to reshape human movement, the adequacy of the current legal framework will increasingly come into question.

---

References

Table of Legislation

Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (adopted 28 July 1951, entered into force 22 April 1954) 189 UNTS 137 

Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (adopted 31 January 1967, entered into force 4 October 1967) 606 UNTS 267 

Bibliography

Alam S, 'Environmentally Induced Migration from Bangladesh to India' (2003) 27(3) Strategic Analysis

Bharadwaj R and others, ‘Exposed and exploited: Climate change, migration and modern slavery in Bangladesh’ (2025) IIED Working Paperhttps://www.iied.org/22604iied accessed 16 April 2026

Center for Excellence in Disaster Management & Humanitarian Assistance, Climate Change Impact Case Study: Bangladesh (CFE-DMHA) https://www.cfe-dmha.org accessed 16 April 2026

Chatterjee D, 'Understanding the linkages between climate change and migration from Bangladesh to India' (2011) 35(1) Strategic Analysis 109

Crush J, Chikanda A and Ramachandran S (eds), New Directions in South-South Migration (Springer 2025)

Dewan C, 'Climate refugees or labour migrants? climate reductive translations of women’s migration from coastal Bangladesh' (2023) 50(6) The Journal of Peasant Studies 2339

Duque MC, 'Climate Change in Bangladesh Shapes Internal Migration and Movement to India' (Migration Information Source, 4 September 2024)https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/climate-change-bangladesh-migration-india accessed 16 April 2026

Gupta D and others, 'Climate-Induced Migration in India and Bangladesh: A Systematic Review of Drivers, Impacts, and Adaptation Mechanisms' (2025) 13(4) Climate 81

Panda A, ‘Climate Induced Migration from Bangladesh to India: Issues and Challenges’ (SSRN Working Paper 2186397)https://ssrn.com/abstract=2186397 accessed 16 April 2026

Uddin MJ, 'Climate Change, Vulnerabilities, and Migration: Insights from Ecological Migrants in Bangladesh' (2024) 33(1) The Journal of Environment & Development 50

Cover image: Moniruzzaman Sazal / Climate Visuals Countdown (CC BY-SA 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons