RISE 2019 Conference

Joe Siegel is a senior attorney and Environmental Collaboration and Conflict Resolution Specialist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 2, Office of Regional Counsel in New York, where he has worked for 33 years. He specializes in climate resilience and air pollution law and policy and also serves as a facilitator and mediator on a wide variety of environmental matters. Joe co-chairs EPA Region 2’s Climate Change Workgroup and is the lead Regional attorney for climate change. He also co-chairs EPA Region 2’s Climate Change Workgroup and runs the Region’s Environmental Collaboration and Conflict Resolution Program. In his work as a neutral facilitator, Joe seeks to build bridges between diverse stakeholders and arrive at collaborative solutions. He has applied these approaches to a broad array of environmental matters for the Agency, including climate resilience, sustainability, environmental justice, water pollution and estuaries.

Joe has been an adjunct professor in Pace Law School’s JD and post-graduate LLM programs since 2000, where he teaches courses on climate change. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Hofstra Law School where he teaches Environmental Dispute Resolution. In addition, he was a Founding Advisor to the Kheel Center on the Resolution of Environmental Interest Disputes, and was a member of the Advisory Group to the United Nations Environment Programme and Permanent Court of Arbitration on environmental dispute resolution and dispute avoidance and is a member of Mediators Beyond Borders International’s Climate Change Policy Project. He was also an Adjunct Professor of environmental law for 11 years at CUNY Law School at Queens College.

Joe is a former Chair of the American Bar Association’s (ABA’s) Committee on Climate Change, Sustainable Development and Ecosystems in the Section of Environment, Energy and Resources and chaired the Section’s Alternative Dispute Resolution Committee. He also served as Vice-Chair of the ABA Renewable Energy Resources Committee and editor of the Energy Committees Newsletter. Joe is a certified mediator in Westchester County, New York, and a former community mediation volunteer for the Westchester Mediation Center. He is a frequent lecturer and writer on climate change as well as Alternative Dispute Resolution. Joe received a BA from Wesleyan University and a JD from Hofstra Law School.