Refugees fleeing the impending effects of the climate crisis cannot be forced to return home, according to a new decision by the United Nations Human Rights Committee, as CNN reported. The new decision could open up a massive wave of legal claims by displaced people around the world.

The first-of-its-kind ruling opens the door for a new kind of legal claim to future protections for people whose lives and health are threatened by a warming planet and sea-level rise, according to legal experts, as The Guardian reported. The ruling is expected to have profound consequences as the impacts of the climate crisis are predicted to displace tens of millions of people. The UN Human Rights Committee ruling started from the case of Ioane Teitiota, who applied for refugee protection from New Zealand, claiming that his life was at risk in his home country of Kiribati, which is predicted to be one of the first countries lost due to sea-level rise, as CNN reported. Kiribati is an equatorial island nation in the middle of the Pacific that spans 1.3 million square miles, but only has 310 square miles of land and roughly 110,000 people. The committee heard Teitiota's claim that his home island South Tarawa had increased in population by nearly 50 times from 1,641 in 1947 to 50,000 in 2010 due to sea level rising, leading to other islands becoming uninhabitable. That explosion in population has led to violence and social tensions, as The Guardian reported.

Teitiota claimed that a shortage of freshwater and difficulty growing crops because of the salinity of the water posed a threat to him and his family. Further, he argued that because the island is predicted to be uninhabitable in 10 to 15 years, his life was in danger if he remained there, according to The Guardian. The committee did not fully agree with him. It rejected his claim that he faced an imminent threat to his life. It said, "sea level rise is likely to render the republic of Kiribati uninhabitable … the timeframe of 10 to 15 years, as suggested by [Teitiota], could allow for intervening acts by the republic of Kiribati, with the assistance of the international community, to take affirmative measures to protect and, where necessary, relocate its population," according to the The Guardian.