Climate Adaptation and Successful Adaptation Definitions: Latin American Perspectives Using the Delphi Method

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The research is interesting and written well. My comments are as follows:

• The tile should be revised to better show the scope of the research
• The research question, aim, objective, should be presented clearer in the introduction.
• I recommend changing the heading of Section 2, it’s not common to write a question as to the heading for the literature review section
• Is figure 1 designed by the authors? If not, please cite the references in the figure’s caption.
• Figure 2 should be presented in Section 3, and should be related to the research framework of current research.
• The details for calculation and analysis should be mentioned in Section 3.
• There is a typo in the heading of Section 5
• Please add the limitation and future work in the conclusion section.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We sincerely appreciate your comments and the careful revision of our work.

Please find attached a table with our point-by-point answer to your comments. We hope these changes are satisfactory for our work to be accepted in Sustainability.

Sincerely,

Tania Guillén B.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Remove citations from the abstract

L60-75 move method related statements into the method section. Don’t need to discuss here about the Delphi method…how efficient it is etc. because in the beginning of the method you define it

 

L135 instead of AdComm, adaptation communications; NDCs, national determined contributions)

use AdComm: adaptation communications; NDCs: national determined contributions

 

L176 Of those 40, 32 (80%) answered the first questionnaire, and 20 answered the second questionnaire

Rewrite the sentence, make more clear for the reader. After 20, use percentage

 

L177-178 the second questionnaire (63% of those who answered the first round, 50% of 177 those who accepted the invitation).

rewrite and make clear the sentence

 

Make section 4.2 as 4.3 and 4.3 as 4.2

 

L280-281

Following the described methodological and implementation framework, the ques-280 tionnaires were developed between September 2020 and March 2021.

move this sentence to the questionnaire section

 

L281-283

As described in section 4.1, 32 and 20 experts participated in each of the two rounds of questionnaires, respectively. This decrease in the experts’ participation between both rounds is reported as 283 a common situation in Delphi exercises (e.g., [19], [65], [69], [72])

We already know it. So, delete these sentences. Check the entire manuscript and those repeated sentences including discussion section. No need to write the same sentence in different ways.

 

L289-292

We consulted the experts on their level of agreement with the IPCC's (2014, 118) definition of adaptation: "The process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects. In 290 human systems, adaptation seeks to moderate or avoid harm or exploit beneficial opportunities. In 291 some natural systems, human intervention may facilitate adjustment to expected climate and its 292 effects."

 

move these sentences into section 2. Change/modify also the section 5.1 headline

 

Figure 4. delete footnote 5 and explain in one sentence what is + and – just below the table

Why footnote 3 and 4? if those info already in the method, delete those from here.

 

Again, for section 5.2 modify section headline and move the definition into section 2

 

 

Section 5.1.1 and section 5.2.1 have same headlines…modify

Same suggestion for 5.1.2 and 5.2.2

 

Combine 5.1 and 5.2 section and combine figure 4 and 5. It will be helpful for the readers to compare both the key findings.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We sincerely appreciate your comments and the careful revision of our work.

Please find attached a table with our point-by-point answer to your comments. We hope these changes are satisfactory for our work to be accepted in Sustainability.

Sincerely,

Tania Guillén B.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This manuscript entitled “Successful adaptation: Latin American perspectives using the Delphi Method” was written by Tania Guillén Bolaños et al. In my opinion, this work is very interesting and has important significant value for climate adaptation. However, this manuscript was not well organized, even make readers confused. I recommend authors to rewrite or reorganize this manuscript in a good logical way.  There are some problems required to be revised carefully in this manuscript, which are listed as follows:

Major comments:

1. The abstract is not well organized, especially with less work and contributions of this manuscript.
2. As for the part of introduction, authors should introduce some work employing Delphi method in this field. Moreover, authors had better clarify how the manuscript organized in the end of introduction.
3. Line 160-161. Since authors have expressed that reaching consensus might not necessarily mean finding the right answer by using Delphi method, can the results presented in this manuscript be plausible?
4. Line 642-644. In the conclusion, I don’t think it can contribute to global adaptation to some extent due to the limited representativeness of this study (e.g., non-global experts).

Minor comments:

1. Line 16. The references used in the abstract is somewhat abnormal, and, moreover, they are not the standardized format of Sustainability. I strongly recommend authors to use another more academic and standardized way to express this sentence.
2. Line 17-21. Why did authors think the functions or, let’s say, merits of Delphi method can lead to the conclusion that “experts agreed more with the IPCC’s definition…”. I prefer to think there is a sizeable logical error.
3. Line 31-32. Authors should add pertinent references for the sentence “Latin America is one region...”.
4. Line 95-97. This sentence make readers confused, authors should rewrite it.
5. The citation format is not right throughout this manuscript (e.g. [58],[59], it should be [58,59]), check the standardized format for this journal.
6. In terms of Figure 3, authors should clarify what software was used in its caption.
7. Line 270-278. The successful adaptation value of 50% adopted by authors, far lower than 80% defined by Doria et al., maybe results in a totally wrong conclusion.
8. Figure 4. Authors should provide good-quality and fine-resolution figures in manuscript. Check all figures.
9. Line 381. What is the meaning of (0,96)?

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We sincerely appreciate your comments and the careful revision of our work.

Please find attached a table with our point-by-point answer to your comments. We hope these changes are satisfactory for our work to be accepted in Sustainability.

Sincerely,

Tania Guillén B.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Well done!

Author Response

Thanks for your positive comment. We have improved sections 1, 2, and 6 in response to your observations. Additionally, we have performed an additional English revision of the manuscript.

Reviewer 3 Report

I have checked the authors' response to my comments, and think they have addressed most comments proposed last time. However, there are still some problems in this manuscript, which can be seen as follows:

1. Do these around 80 experts have the representativeness?
2. Why did you use around 80? As for a scientific work, I think you should use an accurate number. 
3. The results presented in this study have large uncertainties or are hard to convince readers, unless authors can upload the original investigation material or data.
4. The organization is somewhat inappropriate for Line 68-70 and 77-79, because it makes introduction somewhat fragmented.
5. The conclusion need to be refined.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 3,

Thanks for your careful comments and suggestions. We have improved sections 1, 2, and 6 in response to your general observations. Additionally, we have performed an additional English revision of the manuscript.

Attached, we share with you the detailed answers, point by point, to the comments received in the second review.

Best regards, 

Tania Guillén

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

Authors have addressed all problems that I am concerned with.