ClientEarth Poland Photo: vlod007We launch our Warsaw office and release our Polish national parks report This month we officially launched ClientEarth Poland at an event in our Warsaw office attended by leading figures of Poland's environmental and legal communities from civil society, academia and legal practice. CEO James Thornton said:“We knew we wanted to work in Poland from the moment we established ClientEarth. Poland has the biggest population and economy in Eastern Europe; it has by far the greatest biodiversity left on the continent; and it is facing very big questions for its energy infrastructure.” The launch was complemented by the release of ClientEarth Poland’s first report, Regulations for the creation and expansion of national parks in Poland. In this we explain that legal problems are stopping Poland from creating new, and expanding its existing, national parks. Our report proposes solutions. Dawid Szescilo, biodiversity lawyer at ClientEarth, said: “Failure to protect our natural resources will mean we lose Poland’s rich biodiversity. Our national parks are the envy of Europe, yet we’re allowing conflicting laws to stifle them.” Click here to read about the report in the Polish media.
At the beginning of January we released Environmental claims on supermarket seafood, a report showing that many supermarket use misleading labels on their seafood products. Melissa Pritchard, ClientEarth marine scientist was interviewed on leading investigative news programmes Dispatches to talk about the problem. Our report also featured on a special TV series for Channel 4 presented by celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall – Hugh’s Fish Fight. Channel 4 used our report to confront Tesco about the inaccurate labelling on their tinned tuna. As a result of this collaboration Tesco agreed to change the label on their tuna and to switch to catching all their tuna by pole and line (the most sustainable tuna fishing method) by the end of 2012. Our work with the Fish Fight campaign has also helped secure 190 signatures from MPs to an Early Day Motion (EDM) in the UK Parliament tabled by our patron Zac Goldsmith – it is currently the eighth most signed EDM out of 1300. ClientEarth and Fish Fight supporters wrote to their MPs, using our tool kit, asking them to sign a motion calling for a debate on the future of discards.
 Photo: dvidshub
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