As climate crisis threatened her home, Alolita was offered a chance at a new life in Australia
On a suburban street in eastern Melbourne on a cool summer’s day, Alolita Tekapu sits on the couch feeding her one-month-old son, Philip, while her three older boys play outside. Her husband folds laundry nearby, pausing occasionally to check on the children. It’s an ordinary domestic scene. But the reason this family are in Australia is far from ordinary. Alolita and her family come from Tuvalu, a Pacific nation of about 10,000 people whose low-lying atolls are among the most vulnerable in the world to rising seas. They are part of a historic group of Pacific Islanders arriving in Australia under a new deal offering permanent residency to Tuvaluans, many of whom are on the frontlines of climate change. Climate change has had a profound impact on daily life in Tuvalu, which lies roughly halfway between Australia and Hawaii and whose highest point sits less than 5 metres above sea level. Alolita remembers navigating king tides and intense storms in her Pacific home. She describes flood waters rising to knee height at her workplace, seawater pushing farther inland each year, and an airstrip that would turn muddy and waterlogged during high tides. “The land is eaten by the sea little by little,” Alolita says. “I worry about how we are going to live for the next decade.” The migration deal – part of a sweeping bilateral agreement signed between Australia and Tuvalu two years ago – allows up to 280 Tuvaluans a year to live, work and study permanently in Australia. The agreement, known as the Falepili Union, commits the two countries to cooperation in other areas including climate adaptation, disaster response and security guarantees. The migration opportunity has proven hugely popular. More than 8,750 people registered for July’s ballot, which randomly selected those eligible to migrate to Australia. Alolita waited until the final days before applying. She was unsure whether leaving Tuvalu was the right decision, cherishing the freedom and ease of life in her island home. Her husband was already in Australia as a temporary migrant, working long shifts at an abattoir under the Pacific labour scheme. He had decided he did not have time to enter the ballot himself on behalf of his family. In the end, Alolita put her own name forward quietly, without telling anyone else. A week later, she was at work singing happy birthday at a colleague’s celebration when her phone buzzed. It was an email from the Australian government. She had been selected as part of the inaugural cohort to migrate under the deal. “In the middle of the song I was shouting out and happy,” she says. “I’m so thankful to God.” Her colleagues crowded around to congratulate her. Then, one by one, they reached for their own phones, searching for the same message. “Some people, I could tell they were jealous,” Alolita says. “I feel so lucky [considering] how many people applied.” Pregnant and keen to give birth in her newly adopted country, Alolita fast-tracked the move and arrived in Australia with her children last September, becoming one of the first successful ballot recipients to make the journey. Since then, others have followed, including a dentist, a pastor and Tuvalu’s first female forklift driver, Kitai Haulapi. “I applied to Falepili because I learned about the many opportunities it offers particularly in employment,” Haulapi said in a video shared by Australia’s foreign affairs department. “The wages are very good and would enable me to support my family back home.” The Tuvaluans’ migration is part of a global push for countries to address climate-driven displacement. In July 2025, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion recognising population displacement as part of a list of “severe and far-reaching” consequences to climate change, which poses an “urgent and existential threat”. Nevertheless, there is still no obligation under international law for countries to accept people displaced by climate change. Celia McMichael, a professor specialising in climate change-related migration at The University of Melbourne, therefore describes the Australia-Tuvalu agreement as a “landmark initiative” in a landscape where climate migration across borders is largely unsupported. “Migration can offer a pathway for people to adapt to climate change,” McMichael says. “It allows people to move away from places exposed to climate change risk and to send back money that can support local climate adaptation and resilience.” The government of Tuvalu has pushed back against interpretations that the treaty allows an escape route for so-called “climate refugees”. McMichael says countries like Australia don’t just have a responsibility to provide migration pathways for Pacific islanders, but also to cut emissions and fund adaptation within places like Tuvalu. “The government of Tuvalu, and many residents, do not support relocation as a solution to the climate crisis,” she says. “There are also concerns that Tuvalu could lose the very people who have the labour and skills that are needed to support climate adaptation and resilience.” Alolita also recognises the responsibility that wealthier countries like Australia have to limit greenhouse gas emissions. “Big countries affect small countries,” she says. These days, though, she’s focused on more immediate concerns, like housing, healthcare and schooling for her young sons. She’s received some support from community organisation, AMES Australia, which is drawing on Tuvaluan community members to assist new arrivals. The transition remains a struggle – Alolita’s family is now sharing a unit with a friend. She has modest hopes for the new year in this new country, including finding a house, putting her children in school, and securing a job to support her husband’s income and their growing family. Often, she finds herself missing the languid rhythm of life in Tuvalu. “But we needed to think about the future of our kids,” she says. “My responsibility is now for them.”
