Australia and New Zealand’s permanent migration pathways for Pacific Islanders who are at risk of climate displacement may reflect geopolitical interests and neo-colonial power dynamics, rather than rights-based protection.

In June this year, Australia launched its new climate visa for Tuvaluans, as established under the 2023 Australia-Tuvalu Falepili Union treaty. More than 80% of Tuvalu’s population of approximately 10,900[1] applied for just 280 available places in the 2025/26 round. This overwhelming response demonstrates the severity of rising sea levels and the deep concerns of affected communities facing salinised water, lost livelihoods, and the projected submersion of their country by 2050.[2]

However, Tuvalu is not alone. This crisis reflects a broader regional challenge: climate change is widely recognised as the Pacific’s single greatest threat. While much climate-induced migration remains internal, increasing cross-border movement is inevitable, raising urgent questions about responsibility, equity, and protection.

International law is often viewed as a potential safeguard for those displaced by climate impacts, yet current legal frameworks offer limited protection. Despite growing awareness and important legal developments – such as the UN Human Rights Committee’s Teitiota decision, rulings and advisory opinions by regional and national courts, and most recently, the International Court of Justice – refugee and human rights law continue to address climate-induced displacement only in a rudimentary manner.

Given these shortcomings, concrete legal and policy measures are urgently needed to better protect those affected by climate change. Global and regional initiatives, including the 2018 Global Compact for Migration and the 2023 Pacific Islands Regional Framework on Climate Mobility (both non-legally binding), call for expanding safe and regular pathways, including humanitarian visas, regional free movement agreements, and migration quotas, to support those displaced by climate change. Such ‘voluntary’ migration can empower communities to move safely before disaster strikes, diversify livelihoods, reduce resource pressures, and build resilience.[3]

As members of the broader Pacific family and historically high emitters of greenhouse gases, Australia and New Zealand bear a particular moral, political, and historical responsibility to offer protection, support, and opportunities to their climate-affected neighbours – including through permanent migration pathways.

Current permanent migration pathways

New Zealand has long offered limited permanent migration options through the 1970 Samoan Quota (SQ) and 2002 Pacific Access Category (PAC) visa schemes. Officially framed as labour-based migration programmes, they nonetheless function as limited avenues out of climate-threatened countries. The SQ visa, established after Samoa’s independence to maintain close ties, allocates up to 1,100 places to Samoan citizens (including dependents) annually – 1,650 in both 2025 and 2026 (to reallocate ballot places not able to be used during the COVID-19 pandemic). Fiji and Tonga both receive an allocation of 250 annually through the PAC, with 75 each to Kiribati and Tuvalu. Both schemes operate by lottery, ostensibly to avoid taking only the most skilled migrants and thereby depleting the labour force in the country of origin. Applicants must be between the ages of 18 and 45, citizens of the eligible country with birth or parental ties, meet English, health, and character requirements, and hold a qualifying job offer (or have a partner with one).[4] At the time of writing, SQ entrants pay around NZD 820 (USD 470) for the visa, while PAC entrants pay a ballot fee (NZD 86-89 / USD 50) plus a visa fee (NZD 1280 / USD 740) if successful.

Australia only introduced permanent pathways in 2023 with the Pacific Engagement Visa (PEV), granting 3,000 places per year across selected Pacific Island countries (PICs) and Timor-Leste, by lottery, with similar age, nationality, and job-offer rules but far lower fees (AUD 25 (USD 16) for registration and a AUD 335 (USD 220) visa fee).^[5] The 280 places made available under the Falepili Union treaty were introduced in 2025 as a separate PEV stream which, unlike the general PEV stream, has no upper age limit or job-offer requirements.

Challenges and concerns

Though presented as acts of regional solidarity and humanitarian support, Australia and New Zealand’s permanent visa pathways for Pacific Islanders contain structural flaws that severely limit their reach and fairness. Overall, these policies reflect selective inclusion and gatekeeping shaped by national interest, rather than genuine humanitarianism, reproducing the very power dynamics they claim to redress. By diverting attention from meaningful climate adaptation and emissions reduction, Australia and New Zealand externalise the costs of a crisis they have historically helped to create. Recurring patterns of influence, control, and a hierarchy of mobility and protection warrant critical scrutiny as many of these dynamics reflect neo-colonial practices.

1. Lack of climate framing

Despite often perceived and presented as de facto responses to climate displacement, neither the SQ, PAC nor PEV mention climate change in their objectives, eligibility rules or official communications. The Falepili Union treaty is the only instrument to explicitly name climate impacts – but it is tied to a single country.

2. Quotas do not match need

Visa caps raise serious concerns about equity and fairness as they often bear little relationship to vulnerability or population size. In 2025-26, Samoa’s quota for New Zealand is 1,650, while climate-threatened Kiribati and Tuvalu receive just 75 places each. Some PICs, such as Vanuatu or Papua New Guinea, have no permanent pathway to New Zealand at all.

In the 2025 PEV ballot, 56,000 applicants competed for just 3,000 places: PNG’s allocation was just 1,350 despite its 10.7 million population and relatively small existing diaspora in Australia. Countries with smaller populations or alternative U.S. migration access (like Palau or Micronesia), by contrast, received allocations that in the end remained underutilised.^[6]

3. Random selection fails the most vulnerable

Both Australia and New Zealand maintain that random lottery promotes fairness and equal opportunity for all applicants, while helping to mitigate brain drain. In practice, however, this approach turns access to protection entirely into a game of chance, sidelining those with the most urgent protection or migration needs arising from climate displacement by treating all applicants as equally situated.^[7] Climate migration should instead be recognised as a moral and political right today – and as a legal right to protection in the future – ensuring that the most vulnerable are prioritised.

4. Eligibility criteria exclude

Beyond the randomness of the lottery, strict eligibility requirements under the SQ, PAC, and general PEV systematically favour the relatively privileged, undermining the humanitarian intent of the programmes. Those most exposed to climate impacts often fail to meet these criteria, leaving them excluded.

The Falepili Union stream offers somewhat looser entry criteria, but it is tied to a broader treaty arrangement: in exchange for the visa pathway, crisis assistance, and a formal affirmation of Tuvalu’s sovereignty, Australia gained considerable influence over Tuvalu’s defence and security policy through a veto right.[8]

5. Limited Pacific agency

Several PICs, including Kiribati, Samoa, and the Marshall Islands, initially declined PEV participation over concerns about brain drain,[9] lack of transparency, and inadequate consultation.^[10] Similarly, critics of the Falepili Union treaty point to the absence of broad community input into the its terms and emphasis, noting that many Tuvaluans wish to remain on their ancestral land and this is not sufficiently addressed within the treaty.

6. Prohibitive costs and practical barriers

The fees and travel costscan be a significant burden in countries with low household incomes[11] . Lengthy processing times of up to 11 months (in the case of the PAC and SQ) and the difficulty of securing pre-departure jobs further limit access, forcing reliance on overstretched diasporas and increasing the risk of exploitation.

A critical view

Seen through a postcolonial and climate justice lens, these pathways reflect and reinforce enduring power asymmetries with PICs. Far from neutral policy tools, they function as mechanisms of mobility gatekeeping, shaped by histories of colonisation and serving the political, economic, and discursive interests of the host states while limiting genuine Pacific agency.

Three key areas illustrate these neo-colonial dynamics:

Political instrumentalism

Migration pathways often serve (geo-)political interests as much, if not more than, humanitarian ones. Australia and New Zealand continue to wield migration policy and conditional aid as levers of influence, perpetuating neo-colonial dynamics that instrumentalise Pacific climate vulnerability for political ends.

Schemes like Australia’s PEV and the Falepili Union treaty function not only as mechanisms of support for PICs, but also as tools of foreign policy, positioning Australia as the partner of choice amid China’s growing influence in the region. While the Falepili Union treaty offers visas for Tuvaluans, it also grants Australia control over Tuvalu’s defence and security policy. This asymmetry – where Australia’s climate inaction contributes to the displacement risk, only to be ‘resolved’ through conditional migration – illustrates how climate vulnerability is instrumentalised to advance strategic interests. New Zealand’s SQ and PAC are less overtly instrumental, yet they remain shaped by colonial histories and broader strategic priorities.

Economic instrumentalism

While permanent residency might appear to differ from exploitative temporary labour schemes, economic considerations continue to outweigh humanitarian or climate justice objectives. Strict eligibility criteria filter out the most disadvantaged, ensuring that selection favours employability over vulnerability. This reflects a neoliberal logic: migration is framed not as a right or as climate reparation – grounded in moral, political, historical responsibility – but as an opportunity for those who can ‘add value’ to the host state. Pacific migrants are viewed not as climate-affected individuals or historical partners, but are instead valued primarily for their economic utility.

Such dynamics also risk undermining the development capacities of sending countries by creating a form of brain drain. Although neither Australia nor New Zealand actively pushes Pacific Islanders to migrate, the accelerating climate crisis does – creating a structural pressure that makes migration an increasingly necessary form of adaptation. Yet, in the absence of formal (legal) recognition of climate displacement in their migration frameworks, receiving countries maintain control over who gets to move, on what terms, and for whose benefit. While lottery-based selection processes aim to mitigate against brain drain, the design of the schemes still tends to privilege the receiving countries’ interest in attracting productive labour, while insufficiently addressing the structural vulnerabilities that drive mobility in the first place.

Framing and legitimacy

Australia and New Zealand present these pathways as acts of solidarity, generosity, and regional care, portraying vulnerable PICs as passive beneficiaries. This donor-recipient framing reproduces colonial hierarchies while legitimising the host states’ strategic interests. Rhetorical devices like the ‘Pacific family’ or ‘regional mobility partnerships’ obscure underlying power asymmetries. The Falepili Union treaty invokes Tuvaluan concepts of neighbourliness (falepili) yet embeds security and control provisions that undermine equality and reciprocity.

Appeals to ‘generosity’ sidestep responsibility for historical and ongoing contributions to climate change, while the absence of explicit climate change considerations in the PEV, SQ, and PAC reveals a gap between stated values and actual policy. Australia and New Zealand remain among the region’s highest per-capita emitters and are slow to reduce fossil fuel reliance. By relying on sentimental narratives, both states avoid more critical engagement with the political and moral obligations arising from colonial histories and ongoing emissions.

Towards rights-based, climate-just migration pathways

Tuvalu, like many PICs, faces a double bind: dependence on external support from countries like Australia and urgently needing to preserve its sovereignty and the dignity of its people. As climate mobility becomes more inevitable, the question is not whether Pacific Islanders will move, but under what conditions. From a climate justice perspective, Australia and New Zealand must go beyond rhetorical commitments and symbolic measures, reimagining migration policy to centre Pacific agency, challenge entrenched hierarchies, and create truly rights-based, climate-just pathways.

Recommendations for policy reform

Reframing migration pathways: Schemes must acknowledge mutual benefits and interdependence, historical responsibility (colonial histories and carbon emissions) and the right of Pacific peoples to mobility on equitable terms, rejecting donor-recipient narratives.

Genuine co-design: Reforms must be developed through participatory processes with Pacific affected communities. This includes consultations on eligibility and prioritisation, as well as concerns about brain drain, culture loss, and sovereignty.

Equitable access: Visa streams should be opened to older adults, unskilled workers, and those less likely to qualify under existing frameworks; character and health requirements should be reformed to prevent discrimination; and lottery systems should be balanced with targeted protection.

Material and legal support: Visa and application fees for low-income applicants should be subsidised or waived altogether; both legal status and protection from statelessness should be guaranteed; and receiving States should provide housing, employment, and legal orientation support post-arrival and educate employers and service providers about visa entitlements.

Migration as a complement, not a substitute, for climate action: Australia and New Zealand must invest meaningfully in Pacific climate adaptation initiatives, reduce their own carbon emissions, and protect the ‘right to stay’ for those who wish to remain on their ancestral land. Only by pairing mobility pathways with these commitments can migration policy reflect genuine reparative justice, regional solidarity, and true partnership – centred on the voices and rights of Pacific peoples.

Laura Kraft
Research Fellow and PhD Candidate at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg, Germany
kraft@mpil.de

linkedin.com/in/laura-kraft-710a79197.

 

[1] Latest figure according to the Tuvaluan Central Statistics Division at the time of writing.

[2] NASA Sea Level (2023) ‘NASA-UN Partnership Gauges Sea Level Threat to Tuvalu‘

[3] See McAdam J and Wood T (2023) ‘Kaldor Centre Principles on Climate Mobility’, UNSW Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, p.14

[4] For all entry requirement details, visit https://www.immigration.govt.nz/visas/samoan-quota-resident-visa/

[5] University of New South Wales, ‘Statement: Kaldor Centre welcomes world-first climate-mobility treaty between Australia and Tuvalu‘

[6] The PEV ballot: a stand-out success with two exceptions‘, Devpolicy Blog, 4th September 2024

[7] ‘Australia’s climate visa lottery model sets a troubling precedent‘, Context, 1st August 2025

[8] ‘The Falepili Union security, sovereignty, and the uncertain future of climate migration governance in the Asia-Pacific‘, Fluchtforschungs Blog, 22nd October 2024

[9] Devpolicy Blog (2024) ‘Why Kiribati should say yes to the Pacific Engagement Visa‘

[10] ‘Pacific Engagement Visas: New developments but quotas unknown‘, The Interpreter, 11th April 2024

[11] ‘Securing Australia’s new Pacific Engagement Visa costly, slow and “stressful”, applicants say‘, ABC News, 2nd March 2025

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