‘Climate refugees’ sue British government for failing to protect homes from climate change

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• Geoff Bennett:

  Europe's most important court has ruled that protection from climate change is a human right. The judgment will be put to the test in Britain by a climate change refugee who lost his clifftop home to sea erosion.

  Rising sea waters and increasingly violent storms caused by melting ice and warmer oceans are a special concern on Britain's East Coast.

  Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports from the village of Hemsby by the North Sea.

• Malcolm Brabant:

  For Kevin Jordan, this is a painful trip down memory lane.

• Kevin Jordan (Storm Erosion Victim):

  It was natural for me to retire to a place like this. I could sit outside on my veranda, gin and tonics in the afternoon, watching the ships go by.

• Malcolm Brabant:

  His dreams were wrecked six months ago by the cruel North Sea.

• Kevin Jordan:

  We had quite an unexpected storm, caught us unawares, actually. My house was demolished because of erosion. I lost everything. There's no compensation for when you lose your house like that.

• Malcolm Brabant:

  These pictures are all that remain. Jordan now lives in a social housing complex, which he finds as depressing as his new status.

• Kevin Jordan:

  Climate change refugee, that's for sure. When you see these poor people trying to seek a better life in another country, it's so similar. My life has been affected very badly.

• Malcolm Brabant:

  This battered coastline belongs to Hemsby in the county of Norfolk, 140 miles northeast of London. Blessed with a long world-class sandy beach, it's a magnet for sunseekers when it stops raining.

  The concrete bathing platform is a benchmark. Fifty years ago, it was identifiable as a Second World War defensive bunker. Now it's surrendered to the deep.

  Britain's Environment Agency says that this part of Eastern England has one of the fastest eroding coastlines in Europe. Climate experts predict that, within 25 years, a third of all of Britain's coastline — that's 1,200 miles — will be under threat from rising sea waters. And that would mean that more than half-a-million homes would be vulnerable.

  Robert Nicholls, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change, University of East Anglia: You're getting quite big waves hitting Hemsby, where, in the past, they were probably a little bit smaller. And so you have got this hot spot of erosion.

• Malcolm Brabant:

  Professor Robert Nicholls, who heads the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change at the University of East Anglia, offers little comfort to those on endangered coastlines.

• Robert Nicholls:

  Even if we stabilized climate, this coast would continue to retreat. These problems would become smaller, but they wouldn't go away. So I think you have got to deal with living with erosion regardless of what's happening with climate change.

• Carol Boyes (Hemsby Cliffs Resident):

  I have seen those bungalows down in 2013 and 2018. And I will tell you something. It was heartbreaking to watch. You just have to hope and pray that it doesn't get any worse.

• Malcolm Brabant:

  Carol Boyes wants her children to inherit her home, but the widowed former nurse fears it'll be the next cottage to succumb to future monster storms.

• Carol Boyes:

  I'm very upset over it because it could have been stopped. It's very stressful, because you don't know what's going on down here. You don't know from one day to the next. I do get the impression that nobody is listening to us, yes. I really do.

• Simon Measures, Chairman, Save Hemsby Coastline:

  It is a big fight. And the big fight basically is political will.

• Malcolm Brabant:

  Simon Measures is Carol Boyes' next door neighbor. From here, he runs a Web design business, as well as the campaign to save Hemsby.

• Simon Measures:

  We have spent years and years getting a plan together, so we know what material we need, where it has to go. It's all done.

• Malcolm Brabant:

  Measures and his fellow activists are exasperated with their elected politicians.

• Simon Measures:

  We don't seem to have any push from the local council. And the local councillors isn't pushing our M.P., and our M.P. isn't pushing in Parliament, and Parliament isn't pushing the Environment Agency.

  It just seems to me that's what's lacking just here.

• Malcolm Brabant:

  Sir Brandon Lewis, Hemsby's Conservative member of Parliament, rejects claims of political inertia.

  In a statement to the "NewsHour," Lewis insisted he was in constant touch with the local authority about erosion.

  Thirty-five miles south is history's lesson about the North Sea's voracious appetite. The lost city of Dunwich is Britain's Atlantis. Legend has it that, during storms, you can hear the bells of churches that lie beneath the waves less than a mile offshore.

  This is all that remains of medieval Dunwich, once a center of religious patronage.

• Sarah Peel, Assistant Manager, Dunwich Museum:

  The dotted yellow line is the coastline today.

• Malcolm Brabant:

  Historian Sarah Peel on Dunwich Museum's prime exhibit, a model of the lost city.

• Sarah Peel:

  That's Blackfriars. that's one of our friars. They would have been the Benedictine monks. Dunwich was once the sixth most important port in England. Today, it's a village of about 75 to 100 permanent residents.

• Malcolm Brabant:

  Why is Dunwich relevant today to the climate crisis?

• Sarah Peel:

  We're looking at the 1286 storm where they lost about 30 meters in three days.

• Malcolm Brabant:

  That's 100 feet.

• Sarah Peel:

  We are seeing more of those storms. What were once 50-year storms are now happening once a year, twice a year, and we're looking at seeing five or 10 of those every year by 2050, probably.

• Malcolm Brabant:

  Scientists agree that increasingly violent storms are the product of global warming, rising sea levels caused by melting ice caps and warmer oceans.

  Kevin Jordan accuses the British government of failing to protect him from the effects of climate change, and he's hoping to make legal history by suing the state in a test case.

• Kevin Jordan:

  My human rights have been challenged because of the fact of the way I was evicted from here. My house was destroyed, no compensation. We are just treated like nothing.

• Malcolm Brabant:

  Jordan's lawsuit is due to be heard in London's High Court in June. Although Britain has left the European Union, it's still subject to judgments made by the European Court of Human Rights, which may work to Jordan's advantage.

  Earlier this year, the European court ruled in favor of Swiss women who claimed their government had failed to deliver on its climate change obligations.

  Siofra O'Leary, President, European Court of Human Rights: The court holds that under, Article 8, states have a duty to adopt and to effectively apply in practice regulations and measures capable of mitigating the existing and potentially irreversible future effects of climate change.

• Malcolm Brabant:

  So, could the British authorities be compelled to build defenses like these not far from Hemsby? The Environment Agency insists it's trying to find a sustainable solution after spending more than $250 million on flood prevention in the region since 2010.

• Robert Nicholls:

  It doesn't make sense to think about holding the Norfolk coast where it is for the next few hundred years, but I think then the government has to get involved in actually dealing with erosion and actually helping people to live on an eroding coast.

• Malcolm Brabant:

  The Hemsby activists fear that, ultimately, the government is prepared to sacrifice the local tourist industry with its trailer parks and traditional British seaside attractions.

• Simon Measures:

  Hemsby as a tourist attraction brings in 88 million to 100 million pounds a year. We need 20 million of that to put defenses in for the next 20 years. Well, 20 years times nearly 100 million, that's two billion pounds. Any business would think, well, that makes sense.

  But we can't get that message across anywhere.

• Malcolm Brabant:

  Will that argument prevail? Climate change expert Robert Nicholls has his doubts.

• Robert Nicholls:

  If we protected the coast, we'd be giving up hospitals, schools. There are — there are clearly choices that have to be made with the resources that are available.

• Malcolm Brabant:

  So the future for Simon Measures and his neighbors looks bleak, as they continue to live on the edge.

  For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Malcolm Brabant in Hemsby.