The effects of anthropogenic climate change are becoming more and more visible as being highlighted by scientists, politicians and media. The causes of droughts, floods, melting ice caps and rising sea levels can all partially be traced back to human activities. In this study, I examine where the future climate refugees of Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands should go when inhabitants of these low lying island nations are forced to leave their disappearing territories due to sea level rise. By using a normative method of analysis i egentlig mening, arguments deriving from certain values will be presented to confront the problem. These values originate from Edward A. Page’s theories concerning justice in sharing the burdens of climate change. Combined with a complementary utilitaristic value, the conclusion is that Australia is most suitable to host future climate refugees of these particular island nations, while the justice based values alone concludes the US as its preferred choice. In parallel, normative political theory will be evaluated regarding its functionality in the subject of global climate questions. Hence this study contains two purposes; to argue where the islanders should go, and whether a normative methodology is suitable when solving such a problem.

Climate colonialism is a form of neo-colonialism that turns climate actions into colonial behaviour, this is especially true when the focus is on indigenous peoples. The republic of Marshall Islands is under threat of disappearing because of climate change and even though they want to fight it the United States prefer that they be removed from their homelands. In the Oaxaca region of Mexico, the native population are manipulated or forced to move from their lands because of the growing wind power industry and in Sweden the state has given a questionable greenlight to a company to start building a mine in the middle of the sami-landscape. This thesis argues that all these situations are a form of climate colonialism and follows the theory of neo-colonialism to understand how climate colonialism functions.