Vulnerability of Pastoralism: A Case Study from the High Mountainsof Nepal

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for this interesting article, I enjoyed reading it and learning about the context of declining pastoral livelihoods in the Himalayas. This is an underrepresented area in the literature, and your use of qualitative methods make this a valuable contribution. However, I believe the study could make a better contribution to the literature on rural livelihoods with some further rewriting to help the reader better understand the data, how it was analyzed, and how the conclusions were drawn from it. In particular, I very much appreciate the use of multiple qualitative methods and would like to see anonymous quotes from the interviews and focus groups used to illustrate the points being made in the discussion. The discussion would also benefit from reorganization and more clear delineation between what is previous research (literature review) and what is the novel contribution from the data collected by the study. In addition, while the English is mostly understandable, there are many instances were the reader must guess at the meaning of passages. It is not publishable as the English is currently written. The article would benefit immensely from a thorough English language edit.

The study takes as its premise that pastoral systems in the Himalayas are declining, meaning that this type of livestock agriculture and its attendant lifestyle and culture are becoming less common geographically and socially. There are fewer pastoralists and their range is restricted. These changes are presented as being imposed from outside the community, threats such as climate change, government policy, and globalization are postulated as the major causes for the decline of pastoralism in the HindhuKush-Himalaya region. 

It seems the purpose of the study was to understand the causes of pastoral system decline, framed as “vulnerability,” and to describe the “adaptation practices” that could halt the decline, or “sustain the livelihood in the mountain regions.”

It would be helpful if the authors explain why this type of pastoralism needs to be saved, it seems there is an implicit assumption that it does need to be saved, but there is no direct discussion of this basic premise to the study. Is it a societal goal? Who has determined that this is a goal? It seems that the pastoralists themselves say that the younger generation does not want to engage in this activity. It would help the reader to understand the value of pastoralism. Line 292-295 are helpful in this regard, describing issues of environmental degradation and rural food insecurity.  It would be good to expand on this, and to introduce these issues earlier in the paper.

Section 2: A discussion of the ethical precautions taken while working with the herders should be included here, for instance were the surveys approved by an ethics board at a university? Did participants give informed consent, and if so, how? Were participants paid for their time in some way? Were participants offered a version of the text to review? 

An additional section on data analysis needs to be added here for both the quantitative and qualitative data. In addition, a summary of the survey statistics should be provided either as an appendix, or a chart in the paper.

Section 3: There must be inclusion of direct quotes from interviews and focus groups to illustrate how this results section was comprised.

Section 3: The sub-sections here should be more clearly related to their sub-titles, and they need to be re-numbered to make sense. For instance, in section 3.1 there is a discussion about the ecological sustainability of the pastoral system, and it is not well connected to other fragments regarding changing livelihoods and labour shortages. The labour shortage mentioned here should be discussed more, why is there a labour shortage? How and why has chemical fertilizer taken over from labour and manure? Perhaps reorganizing the sections and including clear, descriptive titles for each will help the reader understand the data and discussion better.

Section 3.2: It’s not clear how the three main “aspects” were arrived at. Were they derived from data analysis or is this based on literature review?

Section 5: The focus on climate change in the conclusion is at odds with the discussion section, where lines 372-373 state that “Analysis of the three major areas of vulnerability of the pastoralism system in the mountain regions of Nepal, suggest that non-climatic variables such as policy and globalization were more influential in eroding pastoralism compared to climate change.” The conclusion must be derived from the discussion and the data. 

Section 4 is missing, or the sections are not numbered properly.

Thank you again for your time and care in performing this study. I hope to see it published in a new form soon. 

Author Response

See the attached file

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The topic of this paper is very interesting. However, it lacks of quantitative data and its structure must be greatly improved (split paragraphs, new subsections, avoid repetitions, etc.) because at the moment it looks more an essay than a paper.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

see the attached file Reviewer comments and suggestions

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Review: Comments to Authors

Manuscript: (sustainability-716243) “Pastoralism in Vulnerability: A Case Study from High Mountain Region of Nepal”

I much enjoyed reading this manuscript. This manuscript includes interesting topics about sustainability in pastoralism over the Himalayan region. High altitude areas are naturally vulnerable to climate and weather events. The discussion on the topic in this manuscript occupies good enough importance to study. Overall, this manuscript looked over the diverse aspects of nature in high mountain areas well. I, however, could NOT read this manuscript easily and smoothly because of its format issues and inaccurate use of terminologies. Particularly, I totally lost my reading for the section about climate and weather vulnerability (Lines 301 – 377). Considering its potential interests for various readers and importance in the topic, I recommend the editor of Sustainability to give the authors revise & resubmit opportunity. The detailed comments are below.

1. Line 56

 “mountain mountains” is duplicated words. Remove one.

2. Figure 1, p. 3 is not informative.

In Table 1 – 3 and Table 6 – 9, the site number was mentioned, but where those places are in Figure 1. The red circles cover pretty large places. I strongly believe Figure 1 is a publicly available map from online or book for the general purpose. Why don’t you create your own map to present the details? From Figure 1, I don’t get any useful information to look over.

3. Provide the questionnaire

Table 2, 3, and 6 say that the source is a field survey. Since this study combined the qualitative and quantitative analysis, the survey questionnaire should be provided for readers to understand the results clearly. I barely follow how to implemented the survey and what questions connected to which results.

4. In Tables, there are too many inconsistent abbreviations without a full explanation.

Table 2: HH (probably household?), FG, and KII?

Table 4: NRs? In the source: MBNP, MCA, and ACS? I know those are region names. Please be informative to your readers!

Table 6: in the tile, CC? It should be climate change, right?

Table 9: Why “Community” is in full word but HH in the abbreviation?

For all tables, the first column is in “S. No.” and “S. N.”

5. Lines 301 – 377

Authors seem to be unfamiliar with the difference between weather and climate. I couldn’t get the exact meaning of these paragraphs in the sense of climate change and weather extremes.

The historic changes should be based on annual changes in temperature. The future prediction, however, must be climate normal. These two cannot be directly comparable to mention temperature change. Authors need to be more accurate on what that temperature means and what this manuscript expects from those changes.

The precipitation description reads very weirdly to me. Drought is not simply defined as the lack of rainfall. It should be presented as drought indices including temperature, humidity, and latitude as the most simple form.

Eventually, what is the issue of climate change? Warming temperature or heavy snowfall? Is Table 7 really climatic events? Those are extreme weather events!

I recommend authors to write the whole paragraphs in Lines 301 – 377 following the exact use of climate change and weather extremes.

Author Response

see the attached file reviewer 3

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for providing this amended manuscript, it is greatly improved. The English language edit has helped tremendously. In addition, the direct quotes, clarification, and reorganization have all aided in my understanding the study and its results. I was very interested to read the paper, and am hopeful it will now be published after some minor English edits: there are still numerous instances of grammatical errors and typos, particularly typos that combine two words.

I believe the article is a helpful addition to the literature and can serve as a basis for much needed future research that will support policies to address the decline of pastoralism and livelihoods in the region. While you may have intended to answer a set of research questions, I think rather what the paper best achieves is setting a research agenda for further inquiry. The topics covered are very broad, and would benefit from being broken down in several papers to explore them more fully. You may already have the data to more deeply explore many of the issues you raise, I hope to see further publications from the data if this is the case. 

Some minor points to consider, these are not necessary to publish the paper in my opinion, but they would enhance it:

- The quotes are translations. It would be appropriate to identify the original languages spoken next to the quotes, and to identify translation as part of the data analysis. Consider including the actual direct quote in the original language next to the English language translation.

- The addition of the three quotes is very helpful, but it is a minimum. Consider adding a few more quotes and also consider adding a short series of quotes from a focus group exchange where two participants discuss an illustrative point.

- An additional point for further research might be a study working with youth in the region to better determine the causes of their migration away from pastoralism.

Author Response

attached in file

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper has been improved following the reviewers comments

Author Response

paper has edited as reviewer suggestions and revised methodology  minor comments.

Reviewer 3 Report

I appreciate the authors considering my earlier comments carefully. Most of my comments seem to be reflected properly. Also, this manuscript reads more easily compared to the previous version. I still see some grammatical errors and minor typos. I ask the authors to review them carefully and make this manuscript error-free. Except this minor comments, I have no objection to publish this manuscript in Sustainability.

Author Response

Revised the paper as suggested by reviewer comments and suggestions.  Paper edited by Native English speaker