To See a World in a Grain of Sand—The Transformative Potential of Small Community Actions

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

the paper intends to think critically about environmental sustainability and sustainable development policies at the local level. The paper focuses on the initiatives of the United Nations Sustainable Lifestyles and Education Program. The paper is well written, very clear in the premises, with appropriately chosen examples and with articulated and adequate final considerations. The bibliography is rich and consistent. The paper is based on a qualitative analysis methodology. The tables and appendices are helpful and clear. I suggest the authors to insert, if possible, thematic papers on some of the examples cited.

Author Response

Thank you very much for the encouraging comments and productive suggestions. We have added some additional references to clarify our arguments, and some texts in sections 1, 2 and 5 to clarify the contribution as well as the limitation of the paper.

Unfortunately, we are not able to insert references to the cases of projects we cited since many of these projects are yet to release their outcome reports etc. to public. 

We have also carefully checked the language once again.

Reviewer 2 Report

I have comments for the author's in the document.  Well written.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you very much for the careful examination of the paper and suggestions.

We believe we reflected all your comments and suggestions.

With regards to the specific comment on the table in Section 3, we added information to clarify that we conducted "scan of policies and instruments" mainly through desktop survey and then conducted interviews to the implementers to gain a deeper understanding of what they were doing in what kind of contexts.

We have also expanded Section 3 to clarify how we collected information and analysed them. As is mentioned here, we gradually elaborated our perspectives of understanding ground-level collective actions through communicating and collaborating with them. 

Reviewer 3 Report

The overall impression is that this paper provides an interesting contribution to the existing sustainability literature. However, please find below some recommendations in order to improve the quality of the manuscript.

1.Introduction

The paper contains an interesting topic that needs to be examined. The paper is well structured and the introduction succinctly summaries the points that are going to be covered. However, the authors need to clearly and precisely highlight the contribution of the paper to literature. In this sense, I would strongly recommend the authors to expand this section and cite references that help them contextualize this paper in its sustainability field.

The empirical analysis is based on  particular Viet Nam cases , but very few information is provided explaining the reasons why make this case of interest, and what can other countries learn for this specific cases. Please revise this

2.Literature review

Section 2.1 and Section 2.2

Title of section 2.1 and 2.2 can merge together adequately represent the content of this section.

Section 2.2. Lifestyles – As entangled in the systems

It is not clear to what “system” are the authors referring to.  Please cite more literature.

In general terms, the model should be better explained, as in its current stage it is hard to image why the authors have selected these constructs and not others. Furthermore, previous literature should be used to validate the model. Also, hypotheses are not formulated. It is this reviewer’s suggestion to enhance this section and provide evidence why positive relationships are expected between the constructs.  It is this reviewer’s intuition that new studies have been recently published in the field of interest, and probably they will provide new insights that should be taken into account.

3. Materials and Methods                                                                     The research methodology and intellectual work including the case study analysis on which the paper is based, needed to be described. Please revise this.

4. Ground-level collective actions for sustainable lifestyles

The section should be suggested to change the term “Results”.

Results are presented and analyzed appropriately. However, the influence of the external variables is not fully illustrated. There is very little information on how this analysis has been conducted and how the research questions with regard these variables have been tested. (Please revise this).

5.Conclusions and discussion

The discussion section is of great value. However, there are some minor details that should be pointed out:

Some argument seems to not fit really well with the scope of this paper. For example,

“Since these two challenges are deeply entangled, most of 432 them needed to aim for responsible and reliable living at the same time. To this end, they visualised 433 the current status of living and the associated impacts, introduced physical tools or facilities to better 434 utilise the locally available resources in meeting the day-to-day need….”

The section has some examples of the above problems gleaned from just the conclusions and discussions: [Note that these are just a few examples. Some more examples can be given from the section.]

It is this reviewer’s suggestion to include other references that help explain the issue illustrated .

The conclusions section is very succinct and summarizes the main ideas in terms of policy implications. However, several aspects should be improved:

(1)The contribution of the paper should be strengthened at this point, in order to adequately conclude the paper.

(2)Limitations and future studies are not outlined. For example, the research method of case study has some research limitations.

Author Response

1.Introduction

Thanks to the suggestion, the introduction is improved with more reference to existing researches to more clearly contextualize the submitted paper and present its contribution to the field through gaining a deeper understanding of the changes of “systems” that eventually propel the shift in the lifestyles.  

2. Literature Review

Thank you for the suggestion. We carefully reflected your suggestions to enrich subsection 2.2 to make clearer arguments about how lifestyles are constituted by a diversity of elements. To do so, we added more references as well as key insights from these previous works cited. Subsection 2.3 on collective actions is also revised with more references to clarify the key questions of the paper deriving from the 3 bullet points in this subsection.

With this revision, we believe it is still relevant to separate the subsections 2.1 and 2.2 since the former summarises the mainstream understanding of lifestyles as individual behaviours.

3. Materials and Methods

We expanded the section and described more about how we collected information from projects and cases, and analysed them. As is described, the authors elaborated the analytical approaches through their close communication and collaboration with the implementing teams of the projects they supported under the SLE Programme.

4. Results: Ground-level collective actions for sustainable lifestyles

We changed the title of the section adding “Results”.

Influences of the external factors are described in lines from 270 to 272 (Section 3). How this analysis was conducted is also described in Section 3 (lines from 264 to 269).  

5. Conclusions and discussion

Thank you for the suggestion. The arguments of the first half of the section are based on the analysis in Section 4 with 6 cases cited in the boxes. We added some texts to clarify which of the cases cited in Section 4 led us to the arguments in Section 5. Also, where it is relevant we added references to previous researches that support our arguments.

We added a paragraph to describe the 2 points suggested. As for the contribution, our analysis in Section 4 and the discussion part proposes the dynamic engagement of people in the changes in lifestyles. As for the limitation, we admit the positions of the authors having supported the projects as the coordinators may pose clear limitations: 1) we did not have the analytical approach prior to supporting/communicating with them, and 2) we have yet to understand how projects evolved after the completion of the initial period.