A Tuvalu family has been granted New Zealand residency after claiming they would be affected by climate change if they returned home.

It is the first successful application for residency on humanitarian grounds when climate change has been a factor.

Environmental law expert Vernon Rive, of Auckland University of Technology, says climate change was one of several factors the Immigration and Protection Tribunal took into account.

He says the family was granted residency on “exceptional humanitarian grounds” under a provision in New Zealand’s immigration legislation.

“It indicates that the impact of climate change will be one of the factors that the Immigration and Protection Tribunal will take into account in New Zealand when it’s looking at these applications on humanitarian grounds,” Rive told Radio Australia’s Pacific Beat.

“What it doesn’t do is open the floodgates for all people from low-lying countries, such as Kiribati or Tuvalu or Bangladesh, to obtain residency in New Zealand.”

Rive says the applicant had successfully fulfilled the requirements because he had six sisters already living in New Zealand and an elderly mother who needed care.

“The tribunal made it clear that it was a complete matrix of factors, of which climate change was one. But not the overriding one.”

According to the New Zealand Herald, the family moved to New Zealand in 2007 but has had no legal status in the country since 2009.

The newspaper reports the family applied for refugee and protected persons status in 2012.

Their case was dismissed by the tribunal in March but was successfully appealed on humanitarian grounds.

Their two children, aged three and five, were born in New Zealand.

The father is a qualified teacher but has been a maintenance worker at a fast food chain because he couldn’t register as a teacher in New Zealand.

In a decision issued last month, the tribunal found “exceptional circumstances which would make it unjust and unduly harsh” for the family to return to Tuvalu.

Immigration lawyer Trevor Zohs, who represented the familys, told the New Zealand Herald the effects of climate change should be recognised.

“A lot of people are affected by illness when they go back, they get sick from drinking polluted water. The island is porous so even when the water is not flooding, it penetrates the rocks under the land.”

Appealing the decision on humanitarian grounds allowed discretion to be widened so the tribunal could consider whether it would be unjust to send a person back to their country.

“Obviously their character, the fact they’re going to contribute to New Zealand and that they have a connection to New Zealand is also taken into account,” Zohs said.

The family has three generations of relatives living in New Zealand.

Kiribati man Ioane Teitiota’s bid to become the world’s first climate change refugee was rejected this year.

The 37-year-old moved to New Zealand with his wife in 2007 after deciding their life on the low-lying Kiribati island Tarawa was no longer sustainable because of rising seas.

He sought leave to appeal the tribunal’s decision at the High Court, but that was dismissed.

In his ruling, Justice John Priestley said: “At a stroke, millions of people who are facing medium-term economic deprivation, or the immediate consequences of natural disasters or warfare would be entitled to protection under the Refugee Convention.”

The International Refugee Convention does not recognise victims of climate change as refugees and past attempts to use climate change to gain refugee status in New Zealand have been unsuccessful.

The decision by the Immigration and Protection Tribunal is not binding and does not set a legal precedent.