Resilience Live Episode 22 – What Climate Justice Can Learn from Queer Life in the Purok
Air Date: June 25, 2026
Speaker: Paul Daniel Serrano
About the Speaker: Paul Daniel Serrano is a queer climate activist and researcher from Bacolod, Negros Occidental. As founder of The Orchard, University of St. La Salle’s queer collective, they helped win campaigns for a gender-neutral dress code and yearbook inclusion for tattooed students. Their Psychology thesis, which mapped queerness in a local purok through focused ethnography, reflects a commitment to grounding advocacy in community realities.
Beyond campus, they advance climate action through the Negrosanon Initiative for Climate and Environment (NICE) and have spoken on climate justice at regional platforms, including the ASEAN Children and Youth Climate Summit 2025. They are also an incoming master’s student in Asia-Pacific Studies at NCCU Taiwan.
Abstract:
This presentation examines climate resilience beyond infrastructure, technology, and policy, highlighting how resilience is also shaped by relationships, belonging, and the everyday ways communities navigate uncertainty. Drawing from the undergraduate thesis Lalake Ka Ukon Babaye?: Mapping Queerness in a Purok through Focused Ethnography, it explores how queer experiences within a Bacolod purok offer valuable insights into community care, survival, and adaptation in places where people cannot simply relocate.
The presentation also reflects on experiences in queer organizing within a Catholic university setting, including advocacy for a gender-neutral dress code, yearbook inclusion for tattooed students, and the establishment of The Orchard, a queer collective at the University of St. La Salle. By weaving together community-based research, queer organizing, and climate advocacy, the discussion invites participants to consider what climate justice can learn from communities that have long cultivated belonging, care, and resilience amid uncertainty.