Subaltern Climate Change Adaptation: A Theoretical Framework on Strategic Resilience in Subnational Border-communities

Abstract : Framed along pluralist and critical social theories, the paper offers an innovative climate adaptation theoretical construct—subaltern adaptation—which necessitates the reimagining of the ‘community’ as a spatio-temporal (‘historical’ space) and spatio-social (‘anthropological’ space) within a particular ecological zone, instead of the usual state-centric scale (e.g., the barangay, or the smallest administrative government district in the Philippines, as community), as a new and ideal site for climate change adaptation analysis and methodology. With the border-community as point of departure, it takes the subnational border-community as locus, and the local institution as unit of analysis. The proposed theoretical framework is grounded on the assumption that adaptation is a function and fusion of institutional strategy, inter-institutional partnership, and linked ecological and demographic realities. It fashions the complex and fundamental relationship between climate change, environment, and society—as lens to reveal the socio-ecological realities and vulnerability issues shared by local institutions in the border-community—and offers a methodical strategy that can guide interinstitutional, transborder or cross-scalar adaptation towards the creation of a resilient subaltern climate change community. The local transborder collaboration is basically geared at addressing the geospatial and social vulnerabilities that the local institutions share across the border and ultimately addresses the constraints that state-defined borders have on local climate adaptation.