Does the Community Conservancy Model Work for Pastoralists? Insights from Naibunga Conservancy in Northern Kenya
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper provides a case study that will be very useful to others, but the value of the study is not made clear by the authors. I hope my comments will assist in the authors, achieving this, ahead of the paper than being accepted for publication.
Reviewer report for Sustainability:
Does the Community Conservancy Model Work for Pastoralists? Insights from Naibunga Conservancy in Northern Kenya.
Authors: Ken Ogao Oburah1, *, Clement Lenachuru1 and Wilfred O. Odadi1
Overall comments:
The paper provides a case study of the benefits of community-based conservancy projects, that involve the community in planning activities. This is useful evidence for advocates of this kind of conservation strategy. However, the recommendations for action for your reader are not clear. I suggest making your specific recommendations clearer in the Discussion. At present the article leaves too much up to the reader, instead of the authors leading their reader to conclusion and actions. More thought needs to be given to these issues, particularly in the Discussion, before the paper is ready for publishing.
Specific comments:
TITLE:
- Tile matches document content
WHOLE DOCUMENT:
- Throughout document: “socio-economic” is often spelt as “socioeconomic”. Spelling varies even on the same page. Please check whole document and standardize.
ABSTRACT:
- Line 13-14: Reconsider wording of “we evaluated pastoralists’ perceived conservancy- driven socio-economic impacts and..”. This 5-word compound noun is not clear. Is it the researcher’s perception of pastoralist or the pastoralists perceptions of the socio-economic impacts of the conservancy actions? Break the phrase into chunks rather than putting it into one long phrase.
- Line 21: Same issue. Change “Perception of conservancy-driven positive impacts was…” to “Positive perceptions of the impacts of conservancy was…”
INTRODUCTION:
- Para 1: Suggest swapping the order of paragraph content. It is actually mainly about the inadequacy of government reserves. It is confusing to switch topic mid paragraph.
- Start with the sentence that begins with “Despite..”.
- Move lines 30-34 to line 57, or elsewhere, or delete.
- Line 59: insert comma between zoning and designating
- Line 68: insert comma between forms and including
- Line 94: correct the spelling of Themeda triandra and check spelling of all other scientific names in the document.
- Line 107: suggest replacing “harvesting” with “extraction”, unless “harvesting” is a locally used term for a specific reason.
- Line : empowerment is a complex concept – how was empowerment measured, assessed?
- Lines 136-137: something wrong with the wording - comma or word missing?
- Line 141: see comments for Line 13-14 above.
- Line 149: socio-economic is formatted differently to elsewhere in the document.
- Table 1 caption: more details required. Are these data of the interviewees participating in the survey, or their households.
- Line 154: important to note that women are less well educated than men, or am I misreading the table?
- Line 156: replace that with
- Line 157: businesspersons change to business persons
- Line 160: Figure captions usually below figures (check with journal requirements).
- Line 160: Move main from where it is at the moment to in front of occupation – the data is clustered by “main occupation”.
- Line 162, Line 163: make two sentences to describe cattle and small tock. Current wording makes it confusing as to what is being referred to when referring to %.
- Lines171-175: Please restructure this sentence. It is too difficult to read as it is.
- Line 181: remove that from the sentence, or rewrite to make it clearer if my editing is incorrect.
- Line 181: replace economic assistance with employment opportunities, because this is what the examples provided relate to. If this is my misunderstanding of the intention of the text, then see items 22 below for suggestions.
- Page 6: How does the information presented in the paragraph text relate to the information presented in the Table above it? Why were some of the causes of change quantified in the table and others described but not quantified in the text. Are items described in the text, examples of categories in the table? If so I suggest using phrases such as: Factors that have contributed to increase in household average income is employment in new enterprises related to conservancy management. For example, xx households reported employment opportunities had been created in biosecurity management, such as xxxx. This was reported in xxx household interview. Try to connect block of information presented to the reader.
- Line 201: move management to before the bracket.
- Line 212: edit as follows - …”positively associated with their level of involvement in conservancy…”
- Line 213: add “s” before apostrophe (i.e. pastoralists’)
- Line 224: replace “community” with “communities”
- Line 236: there is a noun missing before “[24]”; socioeconomic is an adjective
DISCUSSION
- The discussion needs more work and is not suitable for publication. The issue is mainly due to a lack of clarity of the pints being made, and how they directly relate to the findings of your work. There is repetition within and between paragraphs, and new data that should be back in the results; it does not include a special call to action to the reader. What new thinking has been found and how does that new thinking influence what should be done in the future. Spend some time thinking about what your findings mean in terms of providing stimulus and guidance on specific action in new contexts. At present the Intro and Discussion seem very similar.
- Para 1. There is repetition among the sentences. Also, I suggest that more details are provided about the mechanisms by which this is achieved, as discovered in your analysis. This paper is a case study that contributes new evidence towards a point that has been found elsewhere previously. Important to showcase that evidence by making a recommendation based on that evidence (e.g. that local employment in new enterprises involved with conservation management, such as biosecurity, be prioritised).
- Line 242: the paper needs to provide evidence in the results of interviews for this occurring? Without evidence this sentence becomes a platitude that is repeated from the Introduction.
- Line 248: could be used in any of the surrounding paragraphs. Delete it and replace with a specific topic sentence for this paragraph. This paragprah seems to be explaining the security result observed in Table 3? Start this paragprah with a sentence that focuses on security benefits, not just benefits.
- Line 251 onwards: this is actually new data from interviews that should be in the results?
- Line 261 onwards: link the discussion back to the results presented in table by using the same language. The discussion seems to proceed without linking to the previous results.
I hope these comments are helpful to the authors and editors.
End of comments.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 1,
We would like to thank you for taking time to review our manuscript and for providing very insightful and valuable comments and suggestions. We have now completed revising the manuscript based on the review reports. We believe this revision has greatly improved the scientific quality of our manuscript, and made it even more suitable for publication in Sustainability. We detail our responses below:
RESPONSES TO REVIEWER 1
Overall comments:
COMMENT
The paper provides a case study of the benefits of community-based conservancy projects, that involve the community in planning activities. This is useful evidence for advocates of this kind of conservation strategy. However, the recommendations for action for your reader are not clear. I suggest making your specific recommendations clearer in the Discussion. At present the article leaves too much up to the reader, instead of the authors leading their reader to conclusion and actions. More thought needs to be given to these issues, particularly in the Discussion, before the paper is ready for publishing.
RESPONSE
We are very grateful for your recognition of the importance of our work. We have now reworked the Discussion section as recommended by you and Reviewer 2. Further details on the specific changes made to the Discussion are provided under “Specific comments below”.
Specific comments:
TITLE:
COMMENT
Tile matches document content
RESPONSE
Thank you very much!
WHOLE DOCUMENT:
COMMENT
Throughout document: “socio-economic” is often spelt as “socioeconomic”. Spelling varies even on the same page. Please check whole document and standardize.
RESPONSE
We have now used the word “socioeconomic” consistently throughout the document.
ABSTRACT:
COMMENT
Line 13-14: Reconsider wording of “we evaluated pastoralists’ perceived conservancy- driven socio-economic impacts and...” This 5-word compound noun is not clear. Is it the researcher’s perception of pastoralist or the pastoralists perceptions of the socio-economic impacts of the conservancy actions? Break the phrase into chunks rather than putting it into one long phrase.
RESPONSE
We have now reworded the phrase to make it clear that it is the “pastoralists’ perceptions of socio-economic impacts…” we evaluated. We have also broken the phrase into two shorter phrases as suggested.
COMMENT
Line 21: Same issue. Change “Perception of conservancy-driven positive impacts was…” to “Positive perceptions of the impacts of conservancy was…”
RESPONSE
Done as suggested.
INTRODUCTION:
COMMENT
Para 1: Suggest swapping the order of paragraph content. It is actually mainly about the inadequacy of government reserves. It is confusing to switch topic mid paragraph.
Start with the sentence that begins with “Despite..”.
Move lines 30-34 to line 57, or elsewhere, or delete.
RESPONSE
Done as suggested. Statement on lines 30-34 has been deleted as we now deem it redundant.
COMMENT
Line 59: insert comma between zoning and designating
RESPONSE
Done as suggested
COMMENT
Line 68: insert comma between“forms”and “including”
RESPONSE
Done as suggested
COMMENT
Line 94: correct the spelling of “Themeda triandra”and check spelling of all other scientific names in the document.
RESPONSE
Spelling of the scientific name highlighted above and several others have been corrected throughout the document
COMMENT
Line 107: suggest replacing “harvesting” with “extraction”, unless “harvesting” is a locally used term for a specific reason.
RESPONSE
Replaced as suggested
COMMENT
Line : empowerment is a complex concept – how was empowerment measured, assessed?
RESPONSE
Empowerment was not measured nor assessed in our study. Rather, the word appeared as part of the definition of the World Bank Poverty framework. It is necessary to define the framework to the reader because some of the selected socioeconomic indicators used in our study were derived from it.
COMMENT
Lines 136-137: something wrong with the wording - comma or word missing?
RESPONSE
We have revised the statement for clarity.
COMMENT
Line 141: see comments for Line 13-14 above.
RESPONSE
The line has been revised as earlier suggested
COMMENT
Line 149: socio-economic is formatted differently to elsewhere in the document.
RESPONSE
The word has now been standardised throughout the document as stated earlier.
COMMENT
Table 1 caption: more details required. Are these data of the interviewees participating in the survey, or their households.
RESPONSE
The caption has been revised for clarity. The data captured in the table (now Figure 2) were obtained from the respondents.
COMMENT
Line 154: important to note that women are less well educated than men, or am I misreading the table?
RESPONSE
Agreed, thanks for this observation. We have now incorporated it into the manuscript.
COMMENT
Line 156: replace “that” with
RESPONSE
The comment is incomplete and we are unable to figure out which word the reviewer intended to suggest we replace “that” with.
COMMENT
Line 157:“businesspersons” change to business persons
RESPONSE
Done as suggested.
COMMENT
Line 160: Figure captions usually below figures (check with journal requirements).
RESPONSE
The journal has not expressly stated the exact position of figure captions, but we have implemented this suggestion.
COMMENT
Line 160: Move main from where it is at the moment to in front of occupation – the data is clustered by “main occupation”.
RESPONSE
We prefer to retain the phrase in its current form. This is because occupation and main livelihood source were assessed as worded in the document. This was so because we wanted to understand whether the respondents’ occupation was actually their main source of livelihood. This was in considering the fact that the population under study were mainly pastoralists despite the fact that few of them might have had formal employment.
COMMENT
Line 162, Line 163: make two sentences to describe cattle and small stock. Current wording makes it confusing as to what is being referred to when referring to %.
RESPONSE
Done as suggested
COMMENT
Lines171-175: Please restructure this sentence. It is too difficult to read as it is.
RESPONSE
Restructured as suggested
COMMENT
Line 181: remove that from the sentence, or rewrite to make it clearer if my editing is incorrect.
RESPONSE
The sentence has been rewritten for clarity.
COMMENT
Line 181: replace economic assistance with employment opportunities, because this is what the examples provided relate to. If this is my misunderstanding of the intention of the text, then see items 22 below for suggestions.
RESPONSE
Done as suggested
COMMENT
Page 6: How does the information presented in the paragraph text relate to the information presented in the Table above it? Why were some of the causes of change quantified in the table and others described but not quantified in the text. Are items described in the text, examples of categories in the table? If so I suggest using phrases such as: Factors that have contributed to increase in household average income is employment in new enterprises related to conservancy management. For example, xx households reported employment opportunities had been created in biosecurity management, such as xxxx. This was reported in xxx household interview. Try to connect block of information presented to the reader.
RESPONSE
The information referred to was from key informant interviews, and is thus qualitative and unquantifiable. We have now rewritten that paragraph and made the source of that information much clearer. In addition, we have specified the various employment opportunities in line with the reviewer’s suggestion.
COMMENT
Line 201: move management to before the bracket.
RESPONSE: Done as suggested
COMMENT
Line 212: edit as follows - …”positively associated with their level of involvement in conservancy…”
RESPONSE: Edited as suggested
COMMENT
Line 213: add “s” before apostrophe (i.e. pastoralists’)
RESPONSE: Edited as suggested
COMMENT
Line 224: replace “community” with “communities”
RESPONSE: Replaced as suggested
COMMENT
Line 236: there is a noun missing before “[24]”; socioeconomic is an adjective
RESPONSE: This must have been an oversight. This has since been correct as a noun has been added
DISCUSSION
COMMENT
The discussion needs more work and is not suitable for publication. The issue is mainly due to a lack of clarity of the pints being made, and how they directly relate to the findings of your work. There is repetition within and between paragraphs, and new data that should be back in the results; it does not include a special call to action to the reader. What new thinking has been found and how does that new thinking influence what should be done in the future. Spend some time thinking about what your findings mean in terms of providing stimulus and guidance on specific action in new contexts. At present the Intro and Discussion seem very similar.
RESPONSE
Thank you for this observation. We have now thoroughly reworked and reorganized the discussion to conform to this and similar suggestions. Specifically, we have now linked our discussion to results based on research objectives, and avoided repetitions as much as possible. In addition, we have now highlighted the implications of our findings and given recommendations based on these findings.
COMMENT
Para 1. There is repetition among the sentences. Also, I suggest that more details are provided about the mechanisms by which this is achieved, as discovered in your analysis. This paper is a case study that contributes new evidence towards a point that has been found elsewhere previously. Important to showcase that evidence by making a recommendation based on that evidence (e.g. that local employment in new enterprises involved with conservation management, such as biosecurity, be prioritised).
RESPONSE
As stated above, we have now eliminated repetitions. In addition, we have highlighted possible mechanisms underlying our findings and made appropriate recommendations for action.
COMMENT
Line 242: the paper needs to provide evidence in the results of interviews for this occurring? Without evidence this sentence becomes a platitude that is repeated from the Introduction.
Line 248: could be used in any of the surrounding paragraphs. Delete it and replace with a specific topic sentence for this paragraph. This paragprah seems to be explaining the security result observed in Table 3? Start this paragprah with a sentence that focuses on security benefits, not just benefits.
RESPONSE
We have taken these comments into account when reworking the Discussion section.
COMMENT
Line 251 onwards: this is actually new data from interviews that should be in the results?
RESPONSE
We have ensured that all data referred to in the Discussion section are presented under the Results section.
COMMENT
Line 261 onwards: link the discussion back to the results presented in table by using the same language. The discussion seems to proceed without linking to the previous results.
I hope these comments are helpful to the authors and editors.
RESPONSE
We have ensured that we link the Discussion to results.
Reviewer 2 Report
This is an important article that highlights a positive association between community-based conservancy and socio-economic development among pastoralist communities in northern Kenya. In this way, the article contributes to an intense debate about the relationship between ecological conservation and socio-economic development.
The arguments, discussion of findings, and conclusion could be more compelling regarding the level of community involvement, which is measured in terms of hours per week.
The data presented in the pie chart on page 6 is a bit deceptive as one category captures 1-10 hours per week. The reader would get a more accurate sense of involvement if this category were broken into, for example, 1-3 hours per week; 4-6 hours per week, 7-10 hours per week.
The claims about involvement could be strengthened with more qualitative description from surveys and key informant interviews. It remains unclear to what extent community participation is shaping and driving the planning and management practices. It is a fundamental goal in community-based participatory research to account for how participant involvement is contributing to the project and identifying priorities and goals.
Line 143, you state the "Perceived socio-economic impacts was computed..." which should read "were" computed.
Line 252: "without fear of being attacked" I'm guessing refers to wild animals? This could be clarified.
Again, this is a really important article that provides compelling arguments. It could be improved by further quantifying and qualifying community "involvement."
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 2,
We would like to thank you for taking time to review our manuscript and for providing very insightful and valuable comments and suggestions. We have now completed revising the manuscript based on the review reports. We believe this revision has greatly improved the scientific quality of our manuscript, and made it even more suitable for publication in Sustainability. We detail our responses to your comments below:
RESPONSES
COMMENT
This is an important article that highlights a positive association between community-based conservancy and socio-economic development among pastoralist communities in northern Kenya. In this way, the article contributes to an intense debate about the relationship between ecological conservation and socio-economic development.
The arguments, discussion of findings, and conclusion could be more compelling regarding the level of community involvement, which is measured in terms of hours per week.
RESPONSE
Efforts have been made to make our argument compelling through rewriting the discussion section. We have reorganised the Discussion under two themes (one about perceptions and another about involvement) to make it more focussed. Both themes are now comprehensively discussed based on our findings.
COMMENT
The data presented in the pie chart on page 6 is a bit deceptive as one category captures 1-10 hours per week. The reader would get a more accurate sense of involvement if this category were broken into, for example, 1-3 hours per week; 4-6 hours per week, 7-10 hours per week.
RESPONSE
We had initially categorized involvement levels as per your suggestion above. However, such categorization produced invalid result when subjected to chi-square analysis. This is because further fragmentation of these categories as suggested will see the number of cells in the chi-square table with “expected count” less than 5 being undesirably high (over 20%). In order to satisfy Chi-square assumptions, we have now used two categories of involvement (Involved vs. Not involved) in chi-square association tests.
COMMENT
The claims about involvement could be strengthened with more qualitative description from surveys and key informant interviews. It remains unclear to what extent community participation is shaping and driving the planning and management practices. It is a fundamental goal in community-based participatory research to account for how participant involvement is contributing to the project and identifying priorities and goals.
RESPONSE
We have now included a more comprehensive description of various ways community participation, based on our key informant interviews. We have also comprehensively linked community participation to perceived conservancy-related outcomes in the Discussion.
COMMENT
Line 143, you state the "Perceived socio-economic impacts was computed..." which should read "were" computed.
RESPONSE
Edited as suggested
COMMENT
Line 252: "without fear of being attacked" I'm guessing refers to wild animals? This could be clarified.
RESPONSE
These are banditry attacks and raids by cattle rustlers. This has therefore been clarified in the text
COMMENT
Again, this important article provides compelling arguments. It could be improved by further quantifying and qualifying community "involvement."
RESPONSE
Efforts have been made to address this both in the Results and Discussion.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper is greatly improved and ready for publication.
I have a comment on paragraph captured by lines 593-603. the purpose of conservancy is to protect biodiversity values. This paragraph needs to be tempered by the phrase: "..., in combination with strategies to ensure biodiversity vales are also protected."
I am very happy that my comments were helpful to these authors, and appreciate the consideration they gave to them.
Author Response
REVIEWER'S COMMENT: The paper is greatly improved and ready for publication.
RESPONSE: We are thankful for this observation
REVIEWER'S COMMENT: I have a comment on paragraph captured by lines 593-603. the purpose of conservancy is to protect biodiversity values. This paragraph needs to be tempered by the phrase: "..., in combination with strategies to ensure biodiversity values are also protected."
RESPONSE: As you rightly note, biodiversity conservation is a central function of community conservancies in addition to enhancing local livelihoods. As such, we have amended the paragraph as suggested
REVIEWER'S COMMENT: I am very happy that my comments were helpful to these authors, and appreciate the consideration they gave to them.
RESPONSE: We are grateful for your earlier comment and suggestions. Indeed they played a big part in helping us improve our paper.
