By james art Activist Kevin Jordan and disability campaigner Doug Powley, along with environmental campaign group Friends of the Earth (FoE), challenged the former Tory government’s National Adaptation Program (NAP) from July 2023 at a hearing earlier this year.
Lawyers for FoE, Mr Jordan, who lost his home to coastal erosion, and Mr Powley, whose health problems are being made worse by the intense heat, told the court in July that the plan was “inadequate” because it did not meet correctly at 61 climate change risk and should be repealed and rewritten.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) resisted the challenge.
In a written decision Friday, Judge Chamberlain dismissed the claim, saying there was no “error of law.”
Mr Jordan was left homeless shortly before Christmas 2023 after his house in Hemsby, Norfolk, was destroyed after coastal erosion put it at serious risk of falling into the sea.
He said before the hearing: “The government’s adaptation plans are completely inadequate to deal with the threat that climate change poses to people and the economy.”
Mr Powley, who lives in a care home and has health problems made worse by the increasingly hot summer temperatures, has previously warned that disabled communities are “disproportionately affected” by climate change and that he is ” fears that in the event of an emergency, disabled people will not be adequately protected”.
David Wolfe KC, for the campaigners, previously told the court in written submissions that the NAP, which is required every five years under the Climate Change Act 2008, “perpetuated” “the history of climate adaptation failure ” of the ministers.
He said the plan failed to address the risks posed by high temperatures, coastal flooding, erosion and extreme weather events and other challenges caused by a changing climate.
It also argued that the Government had failed to consider the risks to the implementation of the policies and proposals in the NAP, with the result that the plan leaves the British people, particularly the vulnerable, “subject to specific threats or adverse effects of climate change on their lives, health , well-being and quality of life”.
Mark Westmorland Smith KC, for Defra, said in written arguments that the campaigners’ case was based on “fundamental factual errors” and was an “unfair characterization” of the approach taken by ministers.
He said the environment secretary – a role currently held by Labour’s Steve Reid – had a “broad discretion” over NAP targets and was “politically accountable to Parliament for them”.
Mr Westmoreland Smith said consideration of “uncertainties” to address risks was “hard-wired” into the NAP and “clearly taken into account” and that “implementation-related factors such as the current state of policy, funding, timeframes and limitations and ‘achievability’ of actions’ were addressed throughout’.
In his ruling, Mr Justice Chamberlain said the government had considered the “equality impacts” of the plan and the risks of implementing it.
He said: “The evidence establishes that ‘delivery risk’, in the sense of uncertainty about whether certain proposals and policies will achieve what they set out to do, has been addressed at various stages.”