Sanitation Upgrading as Climate Action: Lessons for Local Government from a Community Informal Settlement Project in Cape Town

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors conduct research about environmental protection from an interesting perspective. Linking this topic with a very tangible part of public policy (sanitation) should be valued. I would like to draw attention to the second aim of this paper - socio-economic complexity. From my perspective, it is not properly explained in the text. I am wondering what is the relation between environmental protection and socio-economic context. Is there any general outcome that should be taken into consideration in a different geographic area? This is the only thing that I find a bit confussing. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This article discusses the access to the sanitation services in a context of an informal settlement and suggest to the impact of climate action. The article corresponds to a case study of an outskirt in Cape Town in South Africa. The article is very interesting and appellative for the audience of the Sustainability Journal. The article is also very well structured and carefully written without typos. In my view, it is a very good contribution for the literature and my assessment is clearly positive. However, the article can still be improved and some small changes are proposed.

1. The first one is related to the role of climate action and how it is impact on the access. It is not completely clear and the argument could be more sustained;
2. Second, some additional information should be added, for example, does population have access to water supply. How? The problems are not the same, technically water supply is pressured and easy to deliver, but institutionally the problems are the same (e.g., land tenure, …);
3. The paper does not approach the sustainability issues and this is a little bit strange (see the paper of Marques et al., (2015). Environmental Science & Policy 54, 142-151;
4. The same takes place considering governance issues (see EF Guimarães et al., 2016), Utilities Policy 43, 124-129;
5. The human right to water and sanitation and SDO no. 6 of UN are not also addressed.

Good luck and congratulations to the authors for this interesting piece of research!..

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf