Environmental Law Conference 2025: Planetary pollution in a time of climate crisis

Our speaker line up:

Chairs

Oliver Holland, Partner at Leigh Day  

Oliver is a partner in Leigh Day's international and environment teams. Oliver has been representing claimants in group litigation for over a decade. He has extensive experience in conflict of law issues, modern slavery, Group Litigation Orders and large-scale environmental litigation against some of the world’s largest multinational companies.

Oliver’s current cases include representing thousands of residents of the River Wye region against Avara Foods, Cargill and Welsh Water in relation to agricultural and sewage pollution. Also, he represents tens of thousands of car owners in emissions litigation and matters concerning environmental damage from the extractives sector, modern slavery in UK supply chains and pollution of the UK’s waterways and seas.

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Ricardo Gama, Partner at Leigh Day

 

Ricardo is a partner in the human rights and public law department of Leigh Day, focusing on environmental claims.
 
He has extensive expertise in environmental and planning law including in judicial review proceedings in the High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court, as well as in planning appeal and enforcement inquiries. He has detailed knowledge of the EIA, SEA and habitats regimes.
 

Panellists in part one

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Georgia Elliot-Smith, Co-Founder of Fighting Dirty

 

An environmental engineer, Chartered Environmentalist, and former UNESCO Special Junior Envoy for Youth & the Environment, Georgia’s career began as the first Environment Manager in the UK construction sector, and, over the last thirty years she has become one of the most experienced and outspoken sustainability professionals in industry, driving corporates to greater ambition.
An active protester against the rebuild of the Edmonton incinerator in her North London community, in 2021, Georgia led a judicial review to include energy-from-waste plants in the UK Emissions Trading Scheme resulting in a change to the law. In 2023, she founded non-profit Fighting Dirty with journalist George Monbiot and Green Party councillor Steve Hyndside, working with Leigh Day and David Wolfe KC on strategic legal challenges to prevent pollution from waste and chemicals.
 
In March 2025, Fighting Dirty succeeded in forcing the Environment Agency and Defra to launch an investigation into the export of millions of tonnes of waste tyres to India. Other current cases target the spreading of toxic sewage sludge on farmland, and poor regulation of industrial PFAS emissions.
 
In 2024, Georgia featured in the ENDS Power List as Environmental Campaigner of the Year and, in 2025, was a recipient of Law for Change’s Tenacious Award.

Dr Shubhi Sharma

Dr Shubhi Sharma works for CHEM Trust as their scientific researcher, mainly focusing on toxic and persistent chemicals such as PFAS and other endocrine disruptors. She also holds a PhD in environmental studies from the University of Edinburgh.

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Pippa Neill, News Editor at ENDS Report

Pippa Neill is the news editor at ENDS Report and leads on waste and resources and air pollution. Before joining ENDS, Pippa was the editor of Air Quality News and Environment Journal

Professor Roy Harrison OBE, Professor of Environmental Health at University of Birmingham

Professor Roy Harrison is an expert on air pollution, specialising in the area of airborne particulate matter, including nanoparticles. His interests extend from source emissions, through atmospheric chemical and physical transformations, to human exposures and effects upon health. He has been Queen Elizabeth II Birmingham Centenary Professor of Environmental Health at the University of Birmingham since 1991 and has served for many years as chair and/or member of advisory committees of DEFRA and the Department of Health. He was appointed OBE in 2004 for services to environmental science.

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Panellists in part two

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Amy Fairman, Head of Campaigns at River Action

 

Amy Fairman is the Head of Campaigns at River Action UK, where she leads high-impact initiatives to restore and protect Britain’s rivers from pollution. She has been instrumental in holding both the water and agricultural industries to account for their role in environmental degradation.
 
Amy has played a key role in campaigning against the water industry’s persistent failures, highlighting issues such as illegal sewage discharges and underinvestment in wastewater infrastructure. She works closely with policymakers, legal experts, and grassroots activists to push for stricter regulations, greater transparency, and urgent investment in river restoration. Amy has also led River Action’s efforts to challenge pollution from industrial agriculture, including campaigning for corporate accountability within the poultry sector and its impact on river ecosystems, most recently challenging Nando's role in polluting supply chains.

Giles Bristow, CEO at Surfers Against Sewage

Giles is the CEO at Surfers Against Sewage, a grassroots campaigning organisation dedicated to the protection and restoration of the Ocean. A senior leader and passionate environmentalist with more than 20 years’ experience in commercial, entrepreneurial, community and NGO environments in the energy, food, and ocean systems. Also, a committed RNLI Crew member, enthusiastic sea swimmer, surfer, wing-foiler, and sailor, with a passion for improving the state of the marine environment.  

Previously the Interim CEO and Director of Programmes at Ashden (Sainsbury’s Family Charitable Trusts); Director of Programmes at Forum for the Future, with responsibility for its systems change work; an environmental lawyer in the City of London with Slaughter and May and worked directly with communities across the UK to scale community energy as CEO of Carbon Leapfrog.    

“The ways our seas are treated is toxic, SAS sounds the alarm and leads the fight to reclaim and protect the UK’s wild waters from polluters.”     

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Matt Staniek

 

Matt is the founder of the Save Windermere campaign, which is fighting to end all sewage discharges into England’s largest lake and return it to its natural ecological state

Dr Eva Perrin, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in River Pollution at University of Plymouth

 

Eva Perrin is a freshwater scientist with a background in river pollution. Eva completed her PhD in 2023, focusing on the use of emerging water quality monitoring technologies to investigate bacterial processes in rivers and their implications for ecosystem health. Eva is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in River Pollution at the University of Plymouth, where she is developing a catchment monitoring framework to explore more integrated approaches to pollution monitoring, involving citizen scientists, community groups, diverse stakeholders, and multiple data types using novel technologies. Eva also has experience in environmental campaigning and has worked at the science-policy interface to influence local legislation aimed at improving water quality for recreational use.

Closing keynote

Eva Perrin
Sarah Finch at Horse Hill 18 June 2023

Sarah Finch

 

Sarah Finch is a writer and editor and a climate campaigner. On behalf of the Weald Action Group, she took a judicial review case against Surrey County Council’s decision to grant planning permission for oil production at Horse Hill all the way to the UK Supreme Court – and won. The 'Finch' ruling is having wide ramifications in the UK and has forced the government to rethink its approach to assessment of climate impacts of oil and gas developments.

Estelle Dehon KC, Cornerstone

 

Estelle Dehon KC is a versatile leading public law barrister with a broad practice, specialising in environment and planning law, with particular expertise in climate change, net zero and energy infrastructure. Estelle has particular experience in climate change-related challenges: she acted in the Supreme Court in Finch, the leading case on the climate impact of fossil fuel development; in the Court of Appeal challenge to the lack of emergency planning at the UK’s first site for fracking horizontal wells and challenging an extension to coal mining in Wales; in the High Court defending the Secretary of State’s refusal of an open cast coal mine in Druridge Bay and challenging the grant of new oil and gas licences.
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