Sikolohiyang Pilipino Values in Environmental Justice: How Cultural Values Inform Political Engagement and Policy Change

Abstract

Environmental justice is inclusive of more than just the distribution of environmental harms, including process equity, or the study of enabling factors like recognition and participation in the creation of such outcomes. Recognition and participation meaningfully identify the groups that often experience the most environmental injustice, their contributions to environmental decision- and policy-making, and what barriers exist to contributing. This thesis examines the recognition and participation of the Filipino community in the greater Seattle region within the context of environmental governance. I use the Sikolohiyang Pilipino cultural values to identify the role the Filipino identity plays in informing political engagement and situate these values within the belief system of the Advocacy Coalition Framework. Results demonstrate that the Filipino inherent values of community-building play an important role in choosing to engage with political subsystems and that environmental governance and policy brokers can learn valuable lessons for improving recognition and participation of BIPOC communities more broadly.