About Us

Our Mission

Our world faces several existential threats whose roots lie in environmental and social injustice. The Yale Center for Environmental Justice (YCEJ) works with partners across Yale and in communities around the world to remedy the key drivers of injustice while co-creating generative solutions for a more just and sustainable world. 

What We Do

Education & Capacity – Climate change and other environmental injustices demand big leaps in understanding, innovation, deployment and management. Working with over 30 faculty across the University, YCEJ institutionalizes new curriculum and field experience for undergraduate, masters and doctoral students and reaches hundreds of environmental leaders and professionals across the world every year with conferences,
workshops and online certificate programs. From our Tribal Co-Management Clinic (jointly offered with the Law School) to a global Certificate in Clean & Equitable Energy Development, YCEJ faculty have catalyzed and led more than a dozen new and recurring courses over the last three years. Many of these courses interface directly with
environmental and climate challenges, as well as opportunities being generated by communities around the US and the world.
 
Research – YCEJ works to power the growing awareness of environmental and climate justice with rigorous scientific, economic, social and policy analysis. We answer questions like, “How do we constructively and formally integrate indigenous knowledge in decision-making and emerging tools like generative artificial intelligence?” and “How do funds from the Inflation Reduction Act and other infusions of climate capital around the world augment a just transition?” YCEJ is institutionalizing strategic research capacities to fill pressing empirical, management and other knowledge gaps on an ongoing basis.
 
Impact – Solutions generated by and with environmental justice communities are key to meeting the urgency of environmental injustice and the climate crisis. YCEJ serves those communities as well as stakeholders in government and business. From local, grassroots venues to global climate negotiations, YCEJ generates impact through capacity building, strategic communications and centering community and under-represented voices.
 

Who we are

The Yale Center for Environmental Justice is a joint undertaking between Yale School of the Environment and Yale Law School, in partnership with the Yale College’s Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration. The Center was founded by Prof. Gerald Torres, one of the architects of the U.S. government’s first environmental justice executive order and a renowned scholar in constitutional and environmental law.
 
Its inaugural Director is Dr. Michel Gelobter, one of the nation’s pre-eminent scholar- activists in environmental and climate justice and clean technology and the author of The Soul of Environmentalism. YCEJ’s extensive indigenous programs are led by Patrick Gonzales-Rogers, most recently the leader of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition. The Center is governed in conjunction with a strong external advisory board and input from students and faculty across the University.

People and Partners