Abstract
With the sea level rising by 0.5–2.0 m by 2100 for a 4°C increase, up to 187 million people (2.4% of the global population) are at risk of forced displacement. In this context, the conditions for statehood established by the Montevideo Convention will be compromised by the total or partial loss of territory and mass migration. In this view, the present paper seeks to answer the question of how to rethink the category of statehood in the face of the climate crisis. It does so by exploring the potentiality of performative utterance to conserve statehood, thus advancing new interpretation of this category. More specifically, the paper examines the Constitutional amendments adopted in Tuvalu in October 2023 as a paramount case to overcome the current conceptual boundaries of statehood through the lens of the theory of performative utterance.