UK Launches First Practice Toolkit on Climate and Protection Claims

Earth Refuge and Refugee Legal Support launched the UK's first Practice Toolkit on Climate, Disasters and Protection Claims in October 2025. The guidance does not create new rules. It shows practitioners how to spot and build claims that carry a climate dimension under the legal tests they already use.

What does the Toolkit do?

The Toolkit helps UK lawyers identify where climate change and disasters already matter to their caseload. It then shows how to weave those factors into existing asylum, protection and human rights arguments. It builds on two international guidance documents: the Refugee Law Initiative's Declaration on International Protection in the Context of Disasters and Climate Change of June 2024, with its analytical paper, and the Practical Toolkit on International Protection for People Displaced across Borders in the Context of Climate Change and Disasters of February 2025.

Contributors include lawyers, academics and policy experts from the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, the Refugee Law Initiative at the University of London, Qore Legal and Garden Court Chambers, plus independent practitioners and consultants. The takeaway: this is practice guidance, not a change in law.

Why was it drafted?

In October 2025, the two organisations hosted the UK's first conference on protection for people displaced in the context of climate change. Practitioners gave clear feedback. To run protection claims with a climate dimension, they needed guidance on identifying and building such claims within the UK immigration and human rights framework.

No new rules apply

The central message is simple. A claim with a climate dimension still turns on a well-founded fear of persecution for a Refugee Convention reason, or under the European Convention on Human Rights on a real risk of Article 3 harm, or very significant obstacles to integration under Article 8 private life. The labels "climate refugee" and "disaster refugee" carry no legal weight.

The Refugee Convention is likely to apply in only a limited range of these claims, because it requires human agency. The first successful "climate displacement" case in the UK was argued under Article 8. Article 8, and sometimes Article 3, is likely to prove more flexible than the Convention.

Climate change is the context in which harm arises, or what makes it worse — hence the phrase "a claim made in the context of climate change". Common scenarios include disasters contributing to a breakdown in public order, disasters aggravating conflict or violence, and disputes over disasters or environmental issues placing inhabitants at risk from other people.

How should practitioners use it?

The Toolkit supports a practitioner from first client interview to appeal, including legal aid funding applications. It covers:

• Issue spotting. The climate dimension is usually embedded within accounts of persecution and may be missed without deliberate questioning. Triage questions cover weather patterns, land, livelihoods, violence, health, trafficking and risk on return.
• Building the claim. Clients may not disclose or identify these issues as relevant. The Toolkit explains how to recognise invisible patterns and use country evidence.
• Experts. Country experts may not immediately see the link between climate change and persecution. As Toolkit author Ubah Dirie puts it: "you must become the expert!" Practitioners should study Home Office Country Policy and Information Notes and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports before instructing an expert.
• Funding. Guidance covers legal aid funding structures for asylum work, ancillary immigration work, audit considerations, and mixed claims involving protection, Article 8 and Article 3 arguments.

In short, the Toolkit turns a developing area of law into a step-by-step workflow for busy practitioners.

What happens next?

The Toolkit is a starting point. Its authors will update it as law and practice develop, and training based on its contents is in preparation. The authors also invite practitioners to share the cases they are seeing. A joint webinar launching the UK and Australian Climate and Protection Toolkits takes place on Thursday 5 November at 8.30am GMT (7.30pm Australian time). Olivia Clark of Refugee Legal Support and Yumna Kamel, Co-founder and Executive Director of Earth Refuge, are the contacts for training requests, feedback and case sharing.