Building Coastal Agricultural Resilience in Bangladesh: A Systematic Review of Progress, Gaps and Implications

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

General Comments:

The authors have adequately addressed almost all of the comments from my prior review. My only major concern at this point is that the authors should do more with the information they compiled about the existing literature. For instance, the authors break down the articles in terms of types of intervention approaches and within those, what research methods were used, but do not discuss the importance or implications of these results. Likewise, there is a disconnect between how the authors describe and analyze the existing literature at the beginning of the R&D (geographic areas covered, research methods used, types of intervention approaches used/investigated, dimensions of resilience covered) and the gaps in the literature that they identify at the end of the R&D (maladaptation, gender inequality, geographic areas covered). The only common topic is geographic areas covered, but even for this, it appears that the authors identify “geographical disparity in the coverage of coastal island communities” as one of the major gaps based on only one paper (Walshe & Stancioff, 2018) rather than on the results of their systematic literature review. In the gaps section they focus on island communities, but they did not provide any data about the number or portion of papers that addressed island communities. Rather, in their analysis they identified that a limited number of studies have been conducted in the South Central and South East regions (lines 149-150).

The term “snowball search” is never defined. In their response to comments, the authors state that they explained this term in Table 1, but all that is included is “To include relevant article,” which is not an explanation of the term or method and appears to contain a typo besides. An explanation should appear in the Methodology section, and the snowball search line in Table 1 should be removed.

There is confusion about what is a “Themes” and what is a “Measures”. For instance, Table 3 refers to ag adaptation , alt livelihoods, … as “Adaptation Measures” but Table 4 refers to them as “Themes”. Either correct apparent inconsistencies or be more clear in how these terms are being used.

Text still contains repetition that should be removed. For example, lines 471-476.

 

Line by Line Comments:

Line 54 – Look up proper use of “which” vs. “that”.

Line 54 – Omit “to” before “build”.

Lines 95-109 – This paragraph needs to be edited to remove repetition and tighten the text.

Line 125 – Section 3 should be title “Results and Discussion”

Lines 126-136 – The information in this paragraph is either redundant or belongs in the Methodology section.

Line 170 – Omit footnote. Address this issue in the text, and add reference for statement that these issues are major focus of Bangladesh ag policy.

Line 210-211 – Is this statement supported by the results of this lit review? If so, show the reader how.

Table 3 – Define abbreviations in table footnote.

Table 5 – The authors use % of studies in this table vs. number of studies in other tables. It is unclear why there is this inconsistency.

Figure 1 – Under the Eligibility step, b. should read “Do not meet other eligibility criteria”

Figure 1 – Under the eligibility step, edit so that the statements in the second box make sense. “Full text paper excluded due to papers which study area is not in coastal area” and “Full text paper excluded due to do not meet the eligibility criteria” are not grammatically correct.

Figure 4 – Label (a) and (b). For Fig.4b, add y-axis title.

Author Response

Dear Sir,

Greetings of the day. We have addressed all of your comments and suggestions. Kindly find it in attachment.

Many thanks and best regards

Shilpi

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This version of the paper was a vast improvement. There are some minor issues with the use of the Oxford comma.  

Author Response

Dear Sir,

Greetings of the day. We have sorted the oxford comma.

Thank you very much

Best regards

Shilpi

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

General Comments:

This manuscript provides an interesting and valuable review of the recent (since 2000) literature on climate adaptation and resilience in coastal Bangladesh. The authors used a well-accepted methodology to systematically identify and select the papers to include in their review. They analyzed the frequency that different climatic stresses, adaptation activities, adaptation themes, and resilience dimensions were covered, and used this information to inform a discussion about the adequacy of current adaptation approaches to building resilience, barriers to adoption, and the gaps in the literature.

 

The writing is very clear in most instances. However, there is opportunity to “tighten up” the text in some places (e.g., introduction) and more details are needed in other places (e.g., methods). As well, the text contains numerous incomplete sentences, incoherent sentences, and grammatical errors, all of which suggests the manuscript was not carefully edited before being submitted. I have noted a few of these cases in my line-by-line comments to provide examples but there are many more instances. The authors should engage an editor to review and edit the article before resubmitting.

 

The objectives of this review were to “explore existing agricultural adaptation measure”, “investigate to what extent these adaptation measures build resilience”, and “identify major challenges that hinder the adaptation process”.  Thus, the authors should explain why “adaptation” was not among the key words used to identify articles for this search, and provide evidence that the omission of the word “adaptation” did not skew their search results. If this is not possible, the search should be repeated with “adaptation” included as a key word.

 

As well, the authors should explain why the terms “salinity intrusion” and “sea level rise” were included in the key words but other potential climatic stresses were not included. Their inclusion of the term “salinity intrusion” and their finding that “most of the studies were focused on responses to salinity and its causes and effects in the coastal areas.” (lines 142-144) appears to be a self-fulfilling prophesy.

 

The authors are strongly encouraged to add one or two tables that list each of the 54 articles and how they were categorized in terms of research methods used, and climatic stresses, adaptation activities, themes, and dimensions of resilience covered. This would add rigor to the article and increase its value as a resource for others looking for relevant literature on this topic.

 

The pie charts (Figures 3, 4, and 5) are not space-efficient and not do not add much beyond presenting the percentages in the text. The authors should consider omitting them.

The authors should provide a brief description of each of the different intervention approaches mentioned in Section 3.3 and perhaps more discussion of their relative merits.

 

It is not clear how the adaptation activities were divided into themes. Varieties and alternative crops appear in Table 3 under technological advancement but are discussed in Section 3.5.1 Agricultural Adaptation.  Prawn and crab culture appear under Agricultural Adaptation in Table 3 and Section 3.5.1 but they are discussed as alternative sources of income, which is a different category (i.e., Alternative Livelihoods).

 

The discussions of the different themes would benefit from more citations to support the authors’ statements. For example, see lines 244-259.

 

The authors identify the lack of cross-sectoral analyses as a limitation of their literature review. It is unclear whether this is due to a lack of papers that employ a cross-sectoral analysis, or to the authors failing to conduct a cross-sectoral analysis of the papers they reviewed. If the former is true (which I suspect is the case), then this topic belongs under Section 4 Major Gaps. If the latter is true then the authors need to justify why they did not conduct such an analysis.

 

 

Specific comments:

 

Line 24 – Fix “in all over”

 

Line 39 – It is unclear to which parts of the world the authors are referring when they state “several such parts of the world”. None was mentioned previously.

 

Line 66 – This sentence is incomplete.

 

Line 85 - The authors state “as outlined above” but it is not clear to what they are referring. What topic did they select? Where was that stated?

 

Lines 97-104 - More details should be provided in Section 2.1. Figure 1 shows more steps and information that is described in the text.

 

Line 97 – Shouldn’t the total number of articles identified be 380? The 809 figure includes duplication so those are not individual articles. Maybe those 809 could be referred to as entries to remove this confusion.

 

Line 101 – The authors state “discussed above” but it is not clear to what they are referring. Do they mean the use of inclusion/exclusion criteria was discussed? Or do they mean the specific inclusion/exclusion criteria used for this study were discussed?

 

Line 101 – “Snowball search”? This was never defined.

 

Line 102 – Omit “important”. If an article was deemed relevant than it should be included according to the methods.

 

Line 122 – “The review shows that most of the studies around 70% studies held in south west regions …” This part of the sentence does not make sense and needs to be corrected.

 

 

Line 138 – The authors should state what they mean by the term “seasonal variability” and (in Table 2) “seasonal variations”. Does it refer to year-to-year variation? Month-to-month variation within a year? Temperature? Precipitation? Max daily temperature? Min daily temperature? There are a lot of possibilities for this term. More details would be helpful.  As well, the word “shift” generally implies a change in the average but not in variability, for example a shift in the average frost-free date or apple bloom date. The word “change” might be more appropriate when talking about variability.

 

Line 140 – Where is the evidence for this statement? Presenting the results in Table 2 by region would provide this evidence.

 

Line 170 – “FGD” has not been defined.

 

Line 172 – “BBS” has not been defined.

 

Line 173 – What is meant by “model preparation”?

 

Line 208-209 – It is unclear which “anticipatory adaptation practices” they authors are discussing.  Are they referring to the practices mentioned in the last sentence of the preceding paragraph? If so, the authors should consider providing an example of what they mean by this statement. Or are they introducing a new topic, for which adding activities in aquatic ecosystems is an example?

 

Line 241 – A review paper can be a valuable source for researchers to find specific literature related to topic areas of interest. For this reason, here (line 241) and in the other theme sections, it would be helpful for the authors to list the specific activities in the text with their relevant citations in the text. For example, here, the authors could add to this sentence … “Suggested infrastructure development to protect communities from natural hazards are listed in Table 3 and include: establishment shelter (citations), embankment building (citations), …..” The authors do this nicely in section 3.8.

 

Line 365-369 – Insert relevant citations.

 

Line 457-465 – The authors need to define “maladaptation” and “maladaptive behaviours”. An example or two would be helpful. As would being consistent with its spelling – is it maladaptation or mal-adaptation?

 

Lines 488-490 – This sentence is unclear. To what does the “which” refer (climate change-related adaptation policy and practice? Implications? Scientific work? Synthesizing scientific work?).

 

Lines 488-503 – Omit. These comments are more of a summary/abstract than conclusion.

 

Table 3 – It is difficult to discern which theme applies to which activities in the table. The authors should consider inserting row lines or spaces between themes.

 

Table 3 – Omit the S.1 – S.6 labels since they do not appear to be used anywhere else in the manuscript. Instead, spell out the climatic stresses. Using the full width of this landscape-oriented will provide enough space for those labels.  It may also provide enough space for each activity to fit on one line (right now many spill over onto a second line).

 

Figure 1 – The title appears incomplete and needs editing.

 

Figure 1 – The text in some of the boxes is cut off and is not readable.

 

Figure 1 – Isn’t the location of the study (coast in Bangladesh) one of the eligibility criteria? If so, why are the 37 articles that were not on the coast separated out? Are they a subset of the 59 articles that do not meet the eligibility criteria.

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper presents the results of a systematic literature review of climate change adaptation and resilience in coastal agriculture in Bangladesh. It explores the existing adaptation measures against the risks posed by climate change. It investigates the extent of resilience building by these adaptation measures and identifies major challenges that hinder the adaptation process 16 within the country. The research was conducted by following the systematic methods of the protocol of  Preferred Items for Systematic Review Recommendations (PRISMA) outlined in Pickering and 18 Byrne (2014) and Pickering et al (2015). These are adequately described. Importantly the limitations of the methods are highlighted by the author in Section 2.2 (Lines 107 to 117). The manuscript provides a wealth of original research that has the potential to contribute to knowledge on perception studies in climate change. However, there are deficiencies that need to be addressed before this manuscript can be published.

1. There is a lack of conceptual framing which makes it difficult to understand the kind of literature this work is contributing to.

2. Related to the above, there is a lack of clearly stated research questions to guide the study, making it difficult to appreciate the kinds of data collected and subsequent presentation of the results. Authors could frame their research questions around the climate stresses identified in the review, the approaches to adaptation interventions reported in these studies, the barriers reported and the major gaps identified for future research.

3. The analysis for Figure 4 lacks depth and could be improved. For instance, can the authors tell the reader which kinds of adaptation (community based adaptation approach (CBAA), integrated coastal zone management approaches (ICZMA), ecosystem-based adaptation approach (EBAA), and asset-based index approach) are using which method (qualitative versus quantitative) for investigation.

5. This structure of the manuscript needs attention. For instance, the section titled “summary” (i.e. Line 320) should be integrated into the conclusion and some moved to the discussion section. The authors could bring the issues of the barriers and major gaps to the discussion and results section. In the conclusion section, the authors should clearly be explicit of the contributions of this paper to the existing knowledge on adaptation in the study region.
6.  
7. Generally, the standard of writing should be improved significantly. There instances of incorrect grammar and typographical mistakes throughout the paper. This sometimes masks the clarity of the paper.

Reviewer 3 Report

While this literature review is important, it requires significant edits for the English (e.g., grammar, spelling, punctuation, word choice, etc.).

There are many run-on sentences that are confusing; incomplete sentences and sentences that start with numbers.  

In general, the wring needs significant improvement, and tables and figures labeling are inconsistent.  

Define acronyms; add lines to the tables to clearly separate categories.  

Please see the highlights and comments in the attached document. 

 

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

(i) The manuscript has included a number of sections/sentences directly from a few published papers, which is a sort of plagiarism. Attached you can find the report "ithenticate" report. 

(ii) Authors should cite the original paper of PRISMA statement, not Pickering and Byrne (2014) and Pickering et al., (2015). Correct citation of PRISMA can be found at: http://www.prisma-statement.org/PRISMAStatement/PRISMAStatement

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf