Berlin: New Zealand could become the world's first country to recognise climate change as an official reason to seek asylum, a government minister said in an interview on Tuesday. If implemented, up to 100 refugees per year would be admitted to the island nation on a newly created visa category.

It may appear relatively insignificant, given that the US Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre predicts 150 to 300 million people to be forced out of their homes due to climate change by 2050. Yet the announcement has still stunned environmental activists who have long demanded such resettlement programs, but have been blocked by governments and courts - including New Zealand's own Supreme Court.

A child wades through sludge and water on the Island Republic of Kiribati in the Central Pacific Ocean. Credit:James Alcock

"There might be a new, an experimental humanitarian visa category for people from the Pacific who are displaced by rising seas stemming from climate change, and it is a piece of work that we intend to do in partnership with the Pacific Islands," Climate Change Minister James Shaw told Radio NZ.

Although NZ's approach does not bind other host countries, the experiment could be used as a role model, both in national courts and in the public debate. If implemented, the New Zealand proposal would likely be used by activists in European nations like Sweden or Germany to pressure their own governments into creating similar schemes.