Education
Harvard University; Columbia Law School.
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Peter Lehner
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Career
He leads a sustainable food and farming program at Earthjustice, developing strategies to reduce health, environmental, and climate harms from food production, and to promote a more environmentally sound agricultural system. From 2007 to 2015, Lehner was the executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council and the NRDC Action Fund. There, Lehner managed more than 500 environmental advocates in seven offices, guided NRDC"s policy, advocacy, communications, strategy, development, and management, and led the Action Fund"s political activities.
During Lehner’s tenure, NRDC opened new offices in Beijing and Chicago and launched a Center for Market Innovation.
Among other new initiatives, Lehner shaped a clean food program addressing food waste, antibiotics in meat, regional food, and climate mitigation. He blogged regularly on Huffington Post, delivered a TEDx talk on food waste, and co-authored, with Bob Deans, the book In Deep Water, about the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf.
From 1999 to 2006, Lehner served as chief of the Environmental Protection Bureau of the New York State Attorney General"s office. He supervised all environmental litigation by and against the state, prosecuting a wide variety of polluters and developing innovative multi-state strategies targeting global warming and air pollution from the nation"s largest electric utilities.
Law established in Supreme Court decisions in two of these cases, Massachusetts v.
Environmental Protection Agency and American Electric Power v. Connecticut, now underlies the Obama administration"s Clean Power Plan. Lehner also spearheaded novel watershed-wide enforcement programs and led cases addressing invasive species, wildlife protection, and public health.
Early in his career, Lehner created and led the environmental prosecution unit for New York City Law Department.
His cases protecting the city"s drinking water laid the foundation for the city"s current watershed protection program Subsequently, he joined NRDC as director of the water program from 1994 to 1999, where he brought much-needed attention to the problem of stormwater pollution.
Lehner serves on the boards of the Rainforest Alliance, the Environmental Law Institute, the Butler Conservation Fund, and two large farms in Costa Rica. He is the author of numerous articles on environmental law.
Lehner received Bachelor of Arts degrees in Philosophy and Mathematics from Harvard College and is an honors graduate of Columbia Law School, where he also taught environmental law for many years.
Achievements
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Lehner has been honored with the Distinguished Public Service Award by the Association of the Bar of the City of New New York The Earth Day Good Government Award by the City of New New York The Environmental Leadership Award by Hudson Riverkeeper. The Region II Environmental Quality Award by the United States. Environmental Protection Agency. The Environmental Leadership award by Environmental Advocates. And the Public Interest Achievement Award from the Public Interest Law Foundation. In 2015, Lehner was presented with the Right Stuff Award from the Apollo Alliance Project of the Blue Green Alliance, for outstanding efforts to promote a sustainable environment and economy.
Membership
He is a member of the American College of Environmental Lawyers and the Council on Foreign Relations, and is a founding member of The Environmental Law Reporter.
