The climate crisis is threatening families, futures and dignity. Tuvalu and Kiribati families are disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis. Call on the Aotearoa New Zealand Government to step up its support for a safer, more just future by providing rights-based humanitarian visas for these families.
What’s the problem?
In 2025, people around the world felt the heat of one of the hottest years on record, with high numbers of storms, floods and wildfires. While some people are only waking up to the climate crisis, Pacific Island countries have been living through it for years. Pacific communities lead the charge to protect their homes and push for global action on a crisis they have done little to cause yet battle the impacts daily.
In low-lying island nations like Tuvalu and Kiribati, the rising sea is swallowing coastlines, contaminating water and soil, and making it harder to grow crops or access clean drinking water. Droughts, coastal erosion, king tides, floods and cyclones intensify the struggle, including hitting women, children, people with disabilities and older people.
That is why we are calling on Aotearoa New Zealand to step up its support for them to have a safer, more just future. The existing visa options the government provides leave too many behind – especially those most at risk like people with disabilities, medical conditions and older people – but a rights-based humanitarian visa will allow impacted families to live with dignity, rebuild their lives and plan a new future.
While doing so, we urge the government to scale-up support for mitigation, adaptation and climate finance for loss and damages in the Pacific to ensure that people wanting to stay can do so with dignity.
What can you to do to help?
Send a message to the Aotearoa New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs to create a rights-based humanitarian visa for people who face harm from climate change and disasters.