In a widely acclaimed article from 2009, Indian historian Dipesh Chakrabarty argued that in the climate crisis, even the rich and privileged won’t have lifeboats to save them. Luregn Lenggenhager, a historian and assistant professor at the Center for African Studies, University of Basel, has a counter argument: “Our hypothesis is that the rich elite will likely be able to save themselves for a long time to come because they have the means to build a proverbial Noah’s Ark.” 

Lenggenhager and his team began to study these “lifeboats” in September 2025 in the SNSF-funded project "Curated Escapes and Derelict Landscapes in Times of Climate Change". They can take various forms, and examples include exclusive safari lodges to protect wild animals in Namibia; comfortable, stylish, temperate capsules in the Antarctic; and “smart cities” in Mauritius.