I research and write about climate and environmental justice, just transition– how to transition to a carbon-free economy in a way that protects workers and communities, labor/climate coalitions, and the relationship between inequality and the climate crisis. Currently, I am an assistant professor in the environmental studies department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, affiliate faculty in the legal studies department, and on the Faculty Advisory Board at the UCSC Center for Labor and Community. I am also a Fellow at Cornell University’s Climate Jobs Institute. My community-engaged service includes the Board of Greenpeace USA Fund and Emeritus Board at the Center on Race, Poverty, and the Environment (CRPE).

My book, A Just Transition for All: Workers and Communities for a Carbon-Free Future was published by MIT Press in Dec. 2024. You can order here or at your bookstore of choice!

My previous work experience includes Associate Professor at Occidental College, Adjunct Professor at Fordham University School of Law, and various policy and think tank organizations.

Contact me at jmijin at ucsc dot edu

Publications:

• J. Mijin Cha and Hunter Moskowitz, “The emergence of intra-labor organizing: A case study analysis of the Climate Jobs National Resource Center movement in the USA,” Journal of Industrial Relations (June 2025)
• Michael Méndez, Sameer H. Shah, Cynthia Golembeski, Louise Bedsworth, J. Mijin Cha, Leo Goldsmith, Tisha J. Holmes, Julie Maldonado, Beth Rose Middleton Manning, Linda Estelí Méndez-Barrientos & Megan Mills-Novoa, “Centering environmental justice in United States (U.S.) National Climate Assessments (NCAs): a historical and contemporary analysis,” Climatic Change (April 2025)
• J. Mijin Cha and Emily Grubert, “Managing the decline of coal: pathways to public ownership of the Powder River Basin, Wyoming,” Environmental Research: Energy (March 2025)
• Vivian Price, Todd Vachon, Dimitris Stevis, and J. Mijin Cha, “Negotiating just transitions: power and interest dynamics in insurgent sustainability coalitions,” Environmental Politics (Nov. 2024)
• J. Mijin Cha and Emily Grubert, “Public control of coal resources of the United States’ Powder River Basin for a managed decarbonization transition,” Progress in Energy (Sept. 2024)
• Manuel Pastor, J. Mijin Cha, Michael Mendez, Rachel Morello-Frosch, “California dreaming: Why environmental justice is integral to the success of climate change policy” Proceedings of the National Academy Sciences (PNAS), (July 2024)
• “What is a Just Transition?,” Break/Down, (July 2024)
• Brian Tarroja, Julie M. Schoenung , Oladele Ogunseitan, Alissa Kendall, Yang Qiu, Timothy Malloy, Jens Peters, J. Mijin Cha, Dustin Mulvaney, Oliver Heidrich, Manuel Baumann, “Overcoming barriers to improved decision-making for battery deployment in the clean energy transition,” iScience, (June 2024)
• Dimitris Stevis, J. Mijin Cha, Vivian Price, Todd Vachon, “Varieties of Just Transitions: Lessons from the Just Transition Listening Project (US),” Austrian Journal of Development Studies, (Winter 2023)
• Patrick Bigger, Batul Hassan, Salma Elmallah, Seth J. Prins, J. Mijin Cha, Malini Ranganathan, Thomas M. Hanna, Daniel Aldana Cohen, Johanna Bozuwa, “Ceasefire now, ceasefire forever: No climate justice without Palestinian freedom and self-determination,” Climate and Community Project (Dec. 2023)
• “The Future of the Labor-Climate Alliance“, Dissent Magazine Special Issue, What’s Next for the Climate Left? (Spring 2023)
• J. Mijin Cha, “Jobs, Justice and Climate: Labor’s Response to America’s Ecological Transition“, Korea Labor Institute, International Labor Brief (Vol. 21, No. 3, 2023) (March 2023)
• Daniel Aldana Cohen, J. Mijin Cha, Nick Graetz, Aaryaman Singhal, Raka Sen, “Securing Climate Justice Federally:A Political Economy Approach to Targeted Investments,” Environmental Justice (Nov. 2022)
• A. P. Ravikumar, E. Baker, A. Bates, D. Nock, D. Venkataraman, T. Johnson, M. Ash, S. Z. Attari, K. Bowie, S. Carley, S. Castellanos, M. Cha, D. L. Clark, D. Deane-Ryan, D. Djokic, J. C. Ford, A. Goldstein, E. Grubert, L. Hu, D. M. Kammen, U. Kosar, C. Miller, M. Pastor and M. Tuominen, “Enabling an equitable energy transition through inclusive research“, Nature Energy, (Oct. 2022)
• J. Mijin Cha and Manual Pastor, “Just transition: Framing, organizing, and power-building for decarbonization,” Energy Research and Social Science, Volume 90 (August, 2022)
• “Save the Climate by Improving Jobs,” Scientific American (July 20222)
• “Against the Depoliticizing of Environmental Struggles: Notes On Non-Reformist Reforms,” Berliner Gazette, After Extractivism, (June 2022)
• J. Mijin Cha, Caroline Farrell, and Dimitris Stevis, “Climate and Environmental Justice Policies in the First Year of the Biden Administration,” Publius: The Journal of Federalism (May 2022) https://doi.org/10.1093/publius/pjac017
• J. Mijin Cha, Dimitris Stevis, Todd Vachon, Vivian Price, and Maria Brescia-Weiler, “A Green New Deal for all: The centrality of a worker and community-led just transition in the US,” Political Geography, Vol. 95 (2022)102594
• J. Mijin Cha and Lara Skinner, “Low Carbon- High Speed: How a Green New Deal Can Transform the Transportation Sector,” in The Green New Deal and the Future of Work, (Columbia University Press 2022)
• J. Mijin Cha and Todd E. Vachon, “Climate Change and the Future of Workers: Toward a Just Transition,” in Revaluing Work(ers): Toward a Democratic and Sustainable Future (Cornell University Press 2021)
• J. Mijin Cha, “The Fight for Climate Justice in the Biden-Harris Administration,” Global Dialogue, Vol. 11, issues 1 (Feb, 2021).
• J. Mijin Cha, “A just transition for whom? Politics, contestation, and social identity in the disruption of coal in the Powder River Basin“, Energy Research and Social Science, Volume 69 (Nov. 2020) 101657.
• J. Mijin Cha, “Just Transition: Tools for Protecting Workers and Their Communities at Risk of Displacement Due to Climate Policy,” in Putting California on the High Road: A Jobs and Climate Action Plan for 2030, a report in fulfillment CA AB 398 (Sept. 2020).
• J. Mijin Cha, Madeline Wander, and Manuel Pastor, “Environmental Justice, Just Transition, and a Low-Carbon Future for California,” Environmental Law Reporter, ELR 10216 (March 2020)
• “We the People: Voting Rights, Campaign Finance, and Election Reform,” in We Own the Future: Democratic Socialism- American Style, (New Press, 2020)
• “Learning from the New York Experiment: Managing a Just Transition to a Low-Carbon Future,” in the Public Administration Review online symposium (June 2019) on the Green New Deal.
• J. Mijin Cha, Jane Holgate, and Karel Yon, “Emergent Cultures of Activism: Young People and the Building of Alliances Between Unions and Other Social Movements,” Work and Occupations, (July 2018)
• “A Just Transition: Why Transitioning Workers into a New Clean Energy Economy Should Be at the Center of Climate Change Policies,” 29 Fordham Envtl. L. Rev. 196 (2017).
• “Labor Leading on Climate: A Policy Platform to Address Rising Inequality and Rising Sea Levels in New York State,” 34 Pace Envtl L. Rev. 423 (2017)
• “Changing Climate and Changing Rights: Exploring Legal and Policy Frameworks for Indigenous Mountain Communities in Nepal,” in Climate Change and Indigenous People (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013)
• “Increasing Access to Environmental Justice: A Resource Book for Advocacy and Legal Literacy in South Asia” Published by ICIMOD, ISBN 978 92 9115 021 2. (2007)
• “Access to Justice in the United States: Embracing Environmental and Social Concerns to Achieve Environmental Justice.” in Access to Environmental Justice: Comparative Perspectives (Martinus Nijhoff, 2007).
• “Environmental Justice in Rural South Asia: Applying Lessons Learned from the U.S. in Fighting for Indigenous Communities’ Rights and Access to Common Resources,” Georgetown International Environmental Law Review, Vol. 19:185 (2007).
• “A Critical Examination of the Environmental Jurisprudence of the Courts of India,” 10 Alb. L. Envtl. Outlook 197 (2005).

Grants:

• Principle Investigator, co-principle investigator Vivian Price, Dimitris Stevis, and Todd Vachon, Critical Minerals Just Transition Listening Project, Sloan Foundation, June 2024-present
• Principle Investigator, Critical Minerals Just Transition Listening Project, Center for Labor and Community, University of California, Santa Cruz, October 2024- present
• Principle Investigator Chris Benner, co-principle investigator with Manual Pastor, Racial Equity Inventory, California Air Resources Board, July 2024- present
• Principle investigator Rachel Morello-Frosch, co-principle investigator with Manuel Pastor, James Sadd, and Madison Swayne, AB 617 Evaluation, California Air Resources Board, July 2024-present
• Co-principle investigator with Manuel Pastor, States Matter: Developing Policies and Building Power for Just Transition, Nathan Cummings Foundation, September 2019-June 2021.
• Principle Investigator, Just Transition Roadmap, Climate Equity Network, July 2018-March 2019.

Reports:

• J. Mijin Cha, Manuel Pastor, Cynthia Moreno, and Matt Phillips, “Just Transition/Transition to Justice: Power, Policy, and Possibilities,” (June 2021)
• J. Mijin Cha, Vivian Price, Dimitris Stevis, and Todd Vachon, with Maria Brecia-Wailer, “Workers and Communities in Transition: Report of the Just Transition Listening Project,” (March 2021)
• J. Mijin Cha with Manuel Pastor, Madeline Wander, James Sadd, and Rachel Morello-Frosch, “A Roadmap to an Equitable Low-Carbon Future: Four Pillars for a Just Transition,” (April, 2019)
• J. Mijin Cha and Lara Skinner, “Reversing Inequality, Combatting Climate Change: A Climate Jobs Program for New York State,” (July 2017)

Education:

I hold a B.S. in Environmental Engineering from Cornell University, a J.D. from UC Hastings, College of the Law, and LLM and PhD degrees from the Univ. of London, SOAS. My PhD thesis, Law, Justice & the Environment: A Comparative Analysis of Access to Justice Movements in India and the U.S., can be found in the depths of the SOAS library in London.

Finally, the great Ta-Nehisi Coates once wished me Happy Birthday. It remains one of the best birthday presents ever.