Strategy Framework on Inter-Institutional Transborder Adaptation in Subnational Border-Communities: A Conceptual and Practical Adoption of the Subaltern Climate Change Adaptation Theoretical Model

This paper offers a conceptual adoption of the sublatern climate change adaptation theoretical model—an attempt at an aspirational blueprint for the governance of community-managed and –driven climate change resilience. While it is follows the model’s pluralist and critical theoretical frames, it also introduces a practical guide in developing, implementing, and evaluating community-level resilience facilitated and mediated by local institutions through inter-institutional transborder collaboration. It frames adaptation along the almost invisible and unexplored issues of vulnerability and adaptive capacities shared and experienced by different institutions across and beyond state-defined administrative borders, such as the border-barangays in the Philippines, or other countries’ small administrative subdivisions that border each other. The strategy framework proposes a method of transformation for local institutions, being vulnerable to climate risks, into becoming decision-makers in policy and practice— a grounded, political, and radical process of local climate change adaptation governance.