Education unions across North Asia mobilize for systemic climate justice, linking labor rights to ecological transition amid extractive globalization

Indigenous knowledge systems in North Asia—such as Mongolia's *khoroo* and Taiwan's *pingpu* cosmologies—frame land and water as sacred, not commodifiable resources, directly challenging the unions' 'just transition' model, which still centers wage labor over ecological reciprocity. The unions' focus on formal education systems risks excluding oral traditions and land-based pedagogies that have sustained communities through centuries of extractivism. However, some unions, like South Korea's *Korean Teachers and Education Workers' Union (KTU)*, have begun integrating Indigenous perspectives into curricula, signaling a potential convergence.

The region's climate labor movement is rooted in post-colonial struggles: Taiwan's industrialization under Japanese occupation, Mongolia's socialist-era resource nationalism, and South Korea's *minjung* democracy movement all shaped contemporary labor-environmental alliances. The 1992 Earth Summit's 'just transition' concept was co-opted by Northern labor unions to prioritize job retention over systemic change, a framework now being challenged by North Asian educators who demand decolonization of energy systems. The 2011 Fukushima disaster exposed the fragility of nuclear-dependent education systems, yet mainstream narratives still frame 'transition' as a technical fix rather than a reckoning with historical energy dependencies.

Latin American *buen vivir* (living well) principles, which center community over GDP, offer a radical alternative to North Asia's labor-centric 'just transition,' where ecological limits are secondary to employment metrics. African feminist movements' emphasis on care labor—undervalued in both capitalist and union frameworks—could reframe climate education to include reproductive and ecological labor. The Pacific Islands' *talanoa* dialogue tradition, which prioritizes relational accountability, contrasts with North Asia's top-down policy approaches, suggesting a need for participatory governance in climate curricula.

Peer-reviewed studies confirm that education unions' demands for climate-literate curricula align with IPCC recommendations, but the unions' focus on 'green jobs' lacks granularity on the psychological and social costs of transition (e.g., mental health crises in coal-dependent regions). Research on *eco-anxiety* in East Asian youth highlights the need for trauma-informed pedagogy, yet this is absent from the unions' platform. The unions' emphasis on STEM overlooks the role of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) in climate adaptation, despite UNESCO's recognition of TEK as critical for resilience.

Japanese *mono no aware* (the pathos of things) and Korean *han* (collective sorrow) could deepen climate education by framing ecological loss as a cultural wound, not just an economic externality. Taiwanese *xiangtu* (rural nostalgia) art movements critique urban-centric 'green transitions,' while Mongolian throat singing traditions encode ecological memory of the steppe. However, the unions' secular framing risks instrumentalizing these traditions for political messaging rather than preserving their transformative potential.

Scenario modeling suggests that North Asia's 'just transition' could either replicate the EU's failed austerity-laden green deals or pioneer a new model integrating labor rights, Indigenous sovereignty, and degrowth principles. The unions' current focus on policy lobbying may yield incremental gains, but systemic change requires challenging the IMF's structural adjustment programs that still shape Mongolia's economy. A futures lens reveals that 'climate justice' without anti-militarization is incomplete, given the region's strategic fossil fuel reserves and U.S. military presence.

Migrant workers in South Korea's shipbuilding industry—disproportionately women and Southeast Asian—are excluded from the unions' climate demands, despite their exposure to toxic shipbreaking yards. In Mongolia, herder women bear the brunt of *dzud* (harsh winter) disasters but are sidelined in policy discussions dominated by male union leaders and urban elites. The unions' emphasis on formal education systems marginalizes informal educators like community elders and environmental activists, who often lead grassroots climate resistance.