Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript presented alternative adaptation pathways for transport, energy and tourism sectors in the island of Sicily by using blended-method approach and multi-criteria analysis with stakeholders. The manuscript is more like a technical report than a scientific paper. I suggest that the manuscript should have more discussion about the results in the context of addressing climate change. Other major concerns: Sea-level rise is the biggest challenge for islands in the future. Why doesn’t the program of priority actions consider by Stakeholders take this point into account? For the sectors of maritime transport and tourism, there should be some common impacts or overlapping, should there be some discussion on this point for the adaptation pathways?  Other comments: 1.      The main results of the paper should be given in Abstract. 2.      Too many keywords? 3.      A geographic map of the study area should be provided to make readers easily understand the context of the paper. 4.      Lack of basic information of study area, for example, geographic location? Climate? area of island? Population? GDP? Transport capacity? Energy consumption? Tourism information, number and income? etc … 5.      Does the topic of energy in the manuscript only refer to electricity, then how about other composition of energy consumption? 6.      P.268, how many people participated in the survey in the 32 stakeholders and what was the proportion? 7.      P.270, why did the study choose the duration from June 2018 to March 2021. What is the difference between during the COVID-19 pandemic and before the pandemic? 8.      In Result, why does environmental protection have low score in sustainability evaluation both in short-term and long term? And policy on environmental protection should be discussed, especially long-term policy. 9.      Some quantitative conclusions should be given in Conclusion.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This is a very interesting and useful study which analyses key stakeholder responses to a variety of climate change adaptation strategies for Sicily, in the contexts of the transport, energy and tourism sectors.  The methodological approach seems appropriate, taking a participatory approach and involving expert stakeholders.  The findings reveal that there are critical elements of climate change found at the island level which are not sufficiently considered at the national level.  However, a great deal of work is needed to bring this article to a publishable standard.  Please see my comments by section below.

 

Abstract:

Line 19: what is a ‘downscaled analysis’?  Do you mean micro-analysis, or local-level analysis?

Line 20: The term ‘revises’ is used here and elsewhere in the paper, but I think it would be clearer to use the term ‘review’.

Line 21: ‘participatory appraisal by stakeholders’ – do you mean agreement or engagement rather than appraisal?

 

1    Introduction:

Line 32: Use the island of Sicily rather than ‘Sicily Island’

Line 44: ‘blended approach’ – do you mean mixed methods?

Line 46: does ‘fed the participatory appraisal’ here mean ‘informed the data collection phase involving 32 stakeholders’?

Lines 56-64 – there are no sources to support the justification for the sector focus.

Line 70: is one part of the methodological approach to do a policy design exercise, or are you calling the entire process this?

 

Literature Review:

The literature review carried out on impacts of climate change is too heavily focused on Sicily, and over-reliant on sources 8 & 12. There is a lot of detail related specifically to policies and strategies for Italy and Sicily and little review of the climate change literature which uses other countries or islands as the focus.  This means that the findings are very specific to Sicily and it does not sufficiently take into account the broader context.  Further review of the academic literature relating to climate change and island contexts is needed, and this literature needs to be part of the discussion and conclusions, for the study to make a contribution.

Lines 79-80: this is not sufficient discussion of the island’s tourism sector.

Lines 80-84: it is not clear why this information is included.

Lines 85-89: there are no sources supporting these points.

Line 97: If tourism in Sicily represents only a small amount of GDP, why is it important and worthy of focus?

Table 1 is very useful.  Consider rewording the title for clarity.

Lines 174-178: this seems to be one of the main justifications for the study – the fact that islands need different considerations to be made where climate change is concerned – but this is a short paragraph and is not supported with any references.  This argument needs development as part of the literature review.

Lines 215-218: You mention here that there are previous studies but you do not make reference to any of them.

Line 228: There are several studies about the different priorities between national and local governments, for mainlands and islands in particular.

 

Methodology

It is clear that a great deal of research has been carried out on the potential impacts of climate change on Sicily and the adaptation strategies proposed (Lines 231-237).  This is really useful, but the literature review has tended to focus on this Sicily-specific detail, rather than the broader academic literature on the topic.  This section should begin with an explanation and justification of the methodological approach – mixed methods? – referring to the academic literature on the method and with reference to other studies that have used the same or similar approach.

Line 237: what did this introductory event involve?  If this was part of the data collection, this needs further explanation.

Line 238: What is the ‘policy-oriented analysis’.  Is this a stage of the data collection?

Line 241: the discussion of the literature on adaptation needs to come earlier in the paper.

Line 242 (and 269-270): who are these stakeholders?  Why these stakeholders?  You need to explain and justify your sampling strategy.

Line 243-245: it is not clear how this data collection phase was carried out – did you carry out focus groups?  If so, you need to justify this approach.

Line 247: was this a self-administered survey? 

Line 250: why are these referred to as APTs if they are policy ambitions?  What does this stand for?  This is confusing.  Be consistent in your use of terms and abbreviations.

Figure 1: this should be presented by data collection phase.  I think focus groups and then surveys were carried out?  You mention ‘workshops’ but what did these consist of?  How did you collect data?

Section 3.1: you are mixing the literature review on adaptation strategies and the data collection phases – these should be presented separately.

Figure 2 is very confusing and not very useful – consider removing or reproducing. 

Results:

I appreciate that a lot of really useful and interesting data has been collected but it is very confusing to understand the key results.  It may be more useful to present the detail in tables and to only discuss the key findings in the text. This would free up word count for the development of the literature review and methodology sections.  It may be that the paper is trying to cover too many areas for the given word count; a focus on only transport, energy or tourism could be more useful.

Policy discussion:

Line 613-615: This is a useful point and one which could be further developed in the literature review, methodological approach, and conclusions.

There is only reference to one source in this section.  This needs to be a discussion of the findings in relation to previous studies on the topic.

Conclusions:

Line 659: If this is a novelty of the paper then this needs arguing more strongly, with reference to other similar studies that use different approaches.

The conclusions do not refer to any other sources.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have revised the manuscript according to the reviewer's comments.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for the detailed article review and for checking all the suggested changes accurately.

Thanks for your work and cooperation, and all the best.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you for your detailed responses to my comments and for the changes you have made to your manuscript.  I have just a few remaining minor comments to make at this stage:

 - Please use the term 'the island of Sicily' throughout your work, not just in the one instance where I suggested using it - including in the title.

 - Please use the term 'mixed methods' instead of 'blended' throughout your work, not just in the one instance where I suggested using it.

 - in your document where you have indicated changes you have made, the statement 'SPECIFICATION INCLUDED' appears 3 times.  I'm afraid I don't know what you mean by this and so I am unable to evaluate your changes.

Best wishes.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for the detailed article review.

We modify the whole article with the term Sicily islands with the island of Sicily.

We also changed the word blended to mixed.  

About specifications included here are the answers to your previous notes.

           

Reviewer request: Line 19:

what is a ‘downscaled analysis’?  Do you mean micro-analysis, or local-level analysis?

Answer: now, in line 20

We agree and we change from downscaled analysis to local-level analysis.

 

Reviewer request: Lines 80-84 and 85-89:

Lines 80-84: it is not clear why this information is included.

Lines 85-89: there are no sources supporting these points.

Answer: LINES 85-86 SPECIFICATIONS INCLUDED -

We erased all sentences in those lines because the supplementary information we mentioned for the islands of Sicily was not useful for the climate change paragraph. We decided to erase it.

 

Reviewer request: Line 238:

Answer: Lines 238: SPECIFICATION INCLUDED

We add more literature details in the proceeding paragraphs according to the specific scientific theme (climate change, adaptation, etc).

 

Line 247: was this a self-administered survey? - SPECIFICATION INCLUDED – 

Answer: now lines 319-322 and 315-318

We specified the methods for the survey and the stakeholder's selection.

 

Thanks for your work and cooperation, and all the best.