Environmental Impacts: Local Perspectives of Selected Mining Edge Communities in Sierra Leone

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for this interesting contribution which has the value of starting from local and site-specific investigations to give insights on environmental issues. It is also interesting that many social issues have been pointed out as being linked to the environmental ones. Please find my comments below:

Abstract line 24-29: Please rephrase to improve clarity. Recommended strategies are not clear, only authorities and companies that can take care of restoring the ecological functions are mentioned.

Introduction: it would be useful to add a brief overview of the regulations in place in the country regarding mining activities as the authors claim that these are insufficient; furthermore, please define what edge communities are. Improve clarity of lines 57-59 and 66-70. Line 69: explain more about the adverse impacts of mining reported by the cited sources.

Materials and methods: Describe questionnaire pre-testing and tell more about the questionnaires (e.g. if these were open questions, structured questionnaires, etc, describe the content). Add an example of questionnaire when available. Explain more about the checklist guide (line 120) and add references/example. Discussion on how the different data collection approaches are used together in a holistic view is missing, e.g. what is used to complement what. Data analysis: better introduce this methodology or add references for data analysis; shortly explain the meaning of alpha and P-value for the study. Add a discussion on the use of statistics for results analysis and interpretation here or in the results section.

Results and discussion: Table 2: make clear that this is the result of the questionnaires only (if so); star (*) reference “means in the same column…” needs to be used in the table; better introduce and explain the table, e.g. that the columns next to the % represent the number of interviewed people who indicated that issue as relevant, this was not immediately clear for me. Please explain why some results are different among mining communities, e.g. about noise and loss of vegetation. Line 230: explain primary footprint. Line 269: “It was evident that iron particles from waste dumps and mining sites were washed into nearby water bodies” how was it evident? With field trips?

Mitigation measures: it is not clear whether these measures are suggested by the local communities (e.g. what they would like to see in place) or if it was asked in the questionnaires whether these are in place or not. Please specify. As rehabilitation was defined (line 380-383), also reclamation and restoration need to be explained as concepts.

Please improve clarity/rephrase/revise punctuations for the following sentences: line 35-36; line 53-54; line 71-73; 82-83; 204-205; 243-244; line 63 is environmental and socio-economic “activities” the right wording?

Author Response

The responses to the Reviewer's comments have been uploaded

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper deals with the local perspectives of environmental impacts linked to mining activities in Sierra Leone, basing on a survey of 360 people from three mining edge communities.

• The article is not well structured, especially in the introductory part: it is necessary to insert at least one simplified geographical map, to locate the study area. It would also be useful to indicate the location of the three investigated mining areas.
• It is necessary to clearly specify in the introduction the type of material extracted in the three districts (Rutile, Lunsar, Kono). Any information about mining techniques? Grade and tonnage? Ore processing? Mining dumps?
• Figure 1: it is not clear…check percentages
• Most of the parameters indicated are purely subjective, little or not scientific at all: are there no previous data on environmental contamination? quantitative data? It is only the opinion (often questionable) of people.
• The layout requires a profound revision, some typos are present.
• The bibliography must be updated with recent references
• For a possible publication, it is essential to implement quantitative data and greatly improve the introduction.

Author Response

The responses to the Reviewer's comments have been uploaded.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

All the suggested revisions were fulfilled.

 

Now the manuscript is clearer and more complete. 

Author Response

The manuscript has been resubmitted