Sustainability of Local Communities in a New Oil and Gas Region: The Case of Eastern Siberia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review the manuscript entitled “Sustainability of Local Communities in the New Oil and Gas Region: the case of Eastern Siberia”. The paper features a thoughtful design, although some problems still need to be resolved. I list below some comments to further develop this paper.

 

1.       This paper deals with the theme of community sustainability, which is defined as “the preservation of socio-cultural identity and demographic development indicators, as well as the improvement of the well-being of the local population in the short and long term”. However, with this broad definition, why do you choose extractive industry and sustainability of new oil and gas region? It seems to focus more on the ecosystems and the environmental impact. Besides, why your findings at the local level are important in sustainability development studies? Some further work on setting a clear trajectory in the introduction would help guide the reader through the paper.

 

2.       In the materials and methods part, the data generation methods used for this article should be explained in detail, such as the period of data collection, the process of semi-structured interviews, and the design of questionnaires. Besides, data collected from other sources may be needed for triangulation and relevant comparisons of different data inputs to minimize bias.

 

3.       The paper needs to clearly outline the context in the introduction. In the conclusion part, the authors mentioned “The results can also be useful for other regions and countries planning to exploit their oil and gas reserves”. It will be beneficial to introduce how the communities' sustainability in Eastern Siberia is similar to or different from other countries, and how findings are relevant to and can be transferred to other settings.

 

4.       There is a need for more discussion of the results, especially the challenges and problems in community sustainability, to provide valuable recommendations for policy-makers, regional and local authorities.

 

5.       The paper in its current form doesn’t provide a meaningful contribution to the extant literature. What exactly is new about your research? What is the theoretical contribution of your paper? The contribution to the literature is unspecific and should be improved significantly. The authors should clearly demonstrate the contribution of this paper and in what manner it is different from previous papers.

 

6.       There are quite a few areas where the meanings of sentences are somewhat unclear. For example, in Lines 497-501, “Equally important is the preservation of indigenous peoples’ culture, which is directly linked to preserving the ability of villagers to be engaged in traditional activities, which is necessary to move towards not only local but also national and global sustainable development goals”. I suggest the authors carefully proofread the manuscript.

Author Response

Thank you very much for the detailed review and valuable comments on the paper!

 

Point 1:      This paper deals with the theme of community sustainability, which is defined as “the preservation of socio-cultural identity and demographic development indicators, as well as the improvement of the well-being of the local population in the short and long term”. However, with this broad definition, why do you choose extractive industry and sustainability of new oil and gas region? It seems to focus more on the ecosystems and the environmental impact. Besides, why your findings at the local level are important in sustainability development studies? Some further work on setting a clear trajectory in the introduction would help guide the reader through the paper.

 

Response 1: The study focus of community sustainability assessment is highly relevant to areas with rapidly changing conditions. The oil and gas territories of new development Eastern Siberia are an example of such areas. Local communities face new problems and challenges, but also positive effects that are best identified by research at the Local (micro) level, and these are not only environmental but also socio-economic consequences. It is important to understand what mechanisms of sustainability local communities have and what governance (or other decision-makers) actions can be taken under the new conditions. Similar studies are being carried out in various countries, the edited version of the paper includes an overview of the scientific research on this topic and the contribution of the research conducted to this area of sustainable development studies.

 

 

Point 2: In the materials and methods part, the data generation methods used for this article should be explained in detail, such as the period of data collection, the process of semi-structured interviews, and the design of questionnaires. Besides, data collected from other sources may be needed for triangulation and relevant comparisons of different data inputs to minimize bias.

 

Response 2: Very valuable point, I completely agree that in the first version of the paper this part was poorly presented. This section has now been improved with more detail.

Additionally, in the end of this document, a working version of the database (collected for all municipalities of the study area) generated during the study is presented.

 

Point 3: The paper needs to clearly outline the context in the introduction. In the conclusion part, the authors mentioned “The results can also be useful for other regions and countries planning to exploit their oil and gas reserves”. It will be beneficial to introduce how the communities' sustainability in Eastern Siberia is similar to or different from other countries, and how findings are relevant to and can be transferred to other settings.

 

Response 3: I agree that this is too broad a statement, so I decided to delete this sentence. Nevertheless, there are similarities in governance issues in the context of industrial development of natural resources in Eastern Siberia with other northern Russian regions and Arctic countries where natural resource extraction takes place: in the interaction between companies and indigenous peoples; in finding a balance between national (or regional) development priorities and local community interests; in considering the uneven spatial impact of industrial activities on local social-ecological systems, etc. I added several sentences in the text explaining the author's position about these similarities.

 

Point 4: There is a need for more discussion of the results, especially the challenges and problems in community sustainability, to provide valuable recommendations for policy-makers, regional and local authorities.

 

Response 4: The discussion of the results has been expanded taking into account this aspect.

 

Point 5: The paper in its current form doesn’t provide a meaningful contribution to the extant literature. What exactly is new about your research? What is the theoretical contribution of your paper? The contribution to the literature is unspecific and should be improved significantly. The authors should clearly demonstrate the contribution of this paper and in what manner it is different from previous papers.

 

Response 5: The literature review on the local level of sustainability widly presented position on the importance of taking into account the views of locals in order to achieve sustainability at the local level. These researches using qualitative and quantitative methods provides original results that present new aspects for the social-economic development of study areas, which is important not only in theoretical but also in practical terms for the decision-makers. However, the analysis of the studies shows an underdeveloped issue of differentiation of social perception depending on the type of communities. Usually, respondents from study areas are presented as a general population, and a common list of positive and negative effects on the socio-economic development of communities in the zone of influence of industrial developments is formed. This paper provides an author's approach that take settlement type into account when studying issues of local residents' perceptions of current and future development. More details about the contribution of the research are presented in the edited version of the paper.

 

Point 6: There are quite a few areas where the meanings of sentences are somewhat unclear. For example, in Lines 497-501, “Equally important is the preservation of indigenous peoples’ culture, which is directly linked to preserving the ability of villagers to be engaged in traditional activities, which is necessary to move towards not only local but also national and global sustainable development goals”. I suggest the authors carefully proofread the manuscript.

 

Response 6: Thank you for this important note, some sentences in the first version are really written unclear. I tried to reduce the number of such areas in the editted version. Specifically, according to the mentioned sentense, I reformulated it in order to more clear express the idea.

"Equally important is the preservation of the indigenous peoples' culture, which is directly linked to preserving the ability of indigenous and local people from small settlements of the area under study to be engaged in traditional activities, which is necessary to move towards not only local but also national and global sustainable development goals [78]."

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Based on the example of local communities located in the areas of new oil and gas development in the north of the Irkutsk region, this study aims to investigate the impacts of extractive industry on the communities' sustainability through the residents’ perceptions of present and future settlement development. The authors have carried out constructive work. The following aspects require further improvement before publication.

1. The incremental contributions of this study should be highlighted in the text.

2. Grammatical and linguistic errors should be eliminated with the help of professionals.

Author Response

Thank you for the review and valuable comments on the paper!

Point 1:     The incremental contributions of this study should be highlighted in the text.

 Response 1: In the edited paper in sections 2 "Local level in sustainable development research", 5 "Results and discussions", and 6 "Conclusion", are written in more detail about the specifics of the conducted study and its contribution to this research field.

 

Point 2: Grammatical and linguistic errors should be eliminated with the help of professionals.

Response 2: In the edited version of the papaer the text was reviewed by a specialist to exclude grammatical and linguistic errors.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This is a very interesting article and covers the critical points of the environmental issues in the regions. However, the paper needs serious improvements before being considered for publication in the journal.

 

Line 80: ‘qualitative data are supported by quantitative analysis of socio-economic data.’ – what kind of qualitative data? This sentence has come out of a sudden. The author needs to elaborate a bit more or eliminate the sentence.

 

Line 83: ‘The article consists of following sections: introduction; local level in sustainable development research; socio-economic characteristic of the study area; description of materials based on the article and the methodological frame- 85 work used; presentation of results and discussion; and findings.’. Usually, the authors write, ‘This paper is structured as follows.’ Then the authors provide not just the titles of the chapters but what they entail in short.

 

There are a couple of problems in Chapter 2. ‘Local level in sustainable development research’. First, this chapter is very descriptive (which is acceptable to a certain extent). However, the paper generally needs a theoretical underpinning, which is almost absent in this paper. The author can include a clear theoretical discussion here or write a small chapter. The whole paper needs a theoretical framework on which the discussion will based. For example, sustainability and social attitude among the local population toward the MNEs, mining and extraction industries, sustainable community, etc. There are many papers about these issues. Secondly, the author can add more recent papers about the Far East's economic problems as part of the description. For example,

§  Lukin, A., & Yakunin, V. (2018). Eurasian integration and the development of Asiatic Russia. Journal of Eurasian Studies, 9(2), 100–113. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euras.2018.07.003

§  Sosnovskikh, S. (2022). Implementation of the Territories with Special Economic Regimes in the Far East of Russia. International Journal of Economic Policy in Emerging Economies, 16(2/3/4), 344–367. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJEPEE.2021.10035916

§  Han, H. (2017). Russia’s Far East Development within the Context of the New International Economic Environment. Problems of Economic Transition, 59(10), 736–752. https://doi.org/10.1080/10611991.2017.1416834

§  Anna Kuteleva, Klavdiya Chernilevskaya, Polina Salnikova & Egor Shevchuk (2022) Russia's Actually (Non-)Existent Neoliberalism: The Development of the Russian Far East as Discourse and Practice, Europe-Asia Studies, 74:6, 968-989, DOI: 10.1080/09668136.2022.2072814

 

I suggest merging chapters 3 and 4 into one. After, I would label ‘Case Study’ instead of ‘Study Area’ for clarity.

 

Line 227-228: ‘The total number of respondents is over 100 male and female with an age range of 18 to 70.’ – this is very vague. So, how many respondents exactly? I think an additional table with more detailed data on ‘education, health care, culture, etc.’ would be useful. Also, the author mentioned both interviews and questionnaires. We need precise data on how many interviews and questionnaires and more data about the respondents in each category. Otherwise, at the moment, this is just vague.

 

Line 237: The author writes ‘quantitative data from state statistics, strategic planning documents of regional and municipal levels, as well as data on municipal programs, open reports of mayors of districts and heads of settlements on socio-economic development of the study areas were used’ – so what kind of government statistics have been analysed? What documents? We need examples here (or, better, even a list of documents and variables); otherwise, it is very vague.

 

Line 224: ‘the final DB for municipalities includes’ – the text after that is confusing. Are these variables derived from the questionnaires? Or statistics? Or both? Numbers in brackets are confusing too. The author needs to create a table and describe everything with better clarity.

 

Findings chapter is informative; however, three major issues are there.

1) Where is the questionnaire data?

2) Where is the statistical data?

If the author doesn’t use questionnaires and statistical data in its analysis and discussion, perhaps, it wasn’t worth mentioning those in Methodology. All I can see now is the reliance on interview data and some data extracted from the documents (the author needs to specify the sources where specific data have been taken from). If the author wants to keep the ‘questionnaires’ and ‘statistics’ in Methodology, we need to see some analysis in the Results chapter.

3) There is no Discussion here. Returning to my point at the beginning, this paper has no theoretical underpinning. Once the author provides that in the Literature Review, then they can discuss how their results contribute to the existing academic debate and studies in general. Otherwise, at the moment, this chapter is descriptive rather than analytical.

 

Line 502: the author needs to be more specific regarding how this paper is useful to policymakers, government authorities, etc. Also, it’s better to use the word ‘paper’ rather than ‘article’. Finally, better proofreading would beneficial.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 3 Comments

Thank you for the detailed review and valuable comments on the paper!

Point 1:      Line 80: ‘qualitative data are supported by quantitative analysis of socio-economic data.’ – what kind of qualitative data? This sentence has come out of a sudden. The author needs to elaborate a bit more or eliminate the sentence.

 Response 1: This sentence in incorrect wording has been deleted in this place, and added in other place in a revised form. “The author's approach of synthesizing qualitative and quantitative data is proposed to study the issues of local communities’ sustainability in the conditions of industrial development.”.

 

Point 2: Line 83: ‘The article consists of following sections: introduction; local level in sustainable development research; socio-economic characteristic of the study area; description of materials based on the article and the methodological frame- 85 work used; presentation of results and discussion; and findings.’. Usually, the authors write, ‘This paper is structured as follows.’ Then the authors provide not just the titles of the chapters but what they entail in short.

Response 2: I agree that in this form, the description of the paper content does not make sense. Since the text of the introduction has been expanded in other points, this part of the introduction has been deleted.

 

Point 3: There are a couple of problems in Chapter 2. ‘Local level in sustainable development research’. First, this chapter is very descriptive (which is acceptable to a certain extent). However, the paper generally needs a theoretical underpinning, which is almost absent in this paper. The author can include a clear theoretical discussion here or write a small chapter. The whole paper needs a theoretical framework on which the discussion will based. For example, sustainability and social attitude among the local population toward the MNEs, mining and extraction industries, sustainable community, etc. There are many papers about these issues. Secondly, the author can add more recent papers about the Far East's economic problems as part of the description. For example,

• Lukin, A., & Yakunin, V. (2018). Eurasian integration and the development of Asiatic Russia. Journal of Eurasian Studies, 9(2), 100–113. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euras.2018.07.003
• Sosnovskikh, S. (2022). Implementation of the Territories with Special Economic Regimes in the Far East of Russia. International Journal of Economic Policy in Emerging Economies, 16(2/3/4), 344–367. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJEPEE.2021.10035916
• Han, H. (2017). Russia’s Far East Development within the Context of the New International Economic Environment. Problems of Economic Transition, 59(10), 736–752. https://doi.org/10.1080/10611991.2017.1416834
• Anna Kuteleva, Klavdiya Chernilevskaya, Polina Salnikova & Egor Shevchuk (2022) Russia's Actually (Non-)Existent Neoliberalism: The Development of the Russian Far East as Discourse and Practice, Europe-Asia Studies, 74:6, 968-989, DOI: 10.1080/09668136.2022.2072814

 

Response 3: The theoretical framework has been added to the chapter 2 "Local level in sustainable development research". Since the main focus of the paper was on the attitude of local communities to the consequences of industrial development and the issues of community sustainability it was important to focus on existing studies in this area.

Thank you for the valuable comment on general economic problems of study area, in the context of this paper it was more important to consider Eastern Siberia and its current role in the economic development of the country. Thank you for the references, some of them was included in the paper. The economic situation for projects implemented in the Far East has a slightly different specificity. I added the text for Eastern Siberia in the introduction.

 

Point 4: I suggest merging chapters 3 and 4 into one. After, I would label ‘Case Study’ instead of ‘Study Area’ for clarity.

 

Response 4: If it is not critical, I would leave these chapters as they are, because in any case, even after merging, the sub-chapters will remain the same.

 

Point 5: Line 227-228: ‘The total number of respondents is over 100 male and female with an age range of 18 to 70.’ – this is very vague. So, how many respondents exactly? I think an additional table with more detailed data on ‘education, health care, culture, etc.’ would be useful. Also, the author mentioned both interviews and questionnaires. We need precise data on how many interviews and questionnaires and more data about the respondents in each category. Otherwise, at the moment, this is just vague.

 

Response 5: I completely agree that in the first version of the paper chapter “Materials and Methods” was poorly presented. This chapter has been improved with more detail about respondents, interwiews and questionaries.

 

Point 6: Line 237: The author writes ‘quantitative data from state statistics, strategic planning documents of regional and municipal levels, as well as data on municipal programs, open reports of mayors of districts and heads of settlements on socio-economic development of the study areas were used’ – so what kind of government statistics have been analysed? What documents? We need examples here (or, better, even a list of documents and variables); otherwise, it is very vague.

 

Response 6: The documents that were used to obtain data and statistic that were taken from the official website of state statistics on municipalities are presented in detail.

Additionally, in the end of this document, a working version of the database (collected for all municipalities of the study area) generated during the study is presented.

 

Point 7: Line 224: ‘the final DB for municipalities includes’ – the text after that is confusing. Are these variables derived from the questionnaires? Or statistics? Or both? Numbers in brackets are confusing too. The author needs to create a table and describe everything with better clarity.

 

Response 7: There are both sources of variables. Now in the text this points described with more detail and clarity.

 

Point 8: Findings chapter is informative; however, three major issues are there.

1) Where is the questionnaire data?

2) Where is the statistical data?

If the author doesn’t use questionnaires and statistical data in its analysis and discussion, perhaps, it wasn’t worth mentioning those in Methodology. All I can see now is the reliance on interview data and some data extracted from the documents (the author needs to specify the sources where specific data have been taken from). If the author wants to keep the ‘questionnaires’ and ‘statistics’ in Methodology, we need to see some analysis in the Results chapter.

3) There is no Discussion here. Returning to my point at the beginning, this paper has no theoretical underpinning. Once the author provides that in the Literature Review, then they can discuss how their results contribute to the existing academic debate and studies in general. Otherwise, at the moment, this chapter is descriptive rather than analytical.

 

Response 8: 1 and 2 are presented on page 13 with more details added in the edited version. 3 the discussion part has been expanded.

 

Response 9: Line 502: the author needs to be more specific regarding how this paper is useful to policymakers, government authorities, etc.

 

Response 9: Material on practical significance of results for decision-makers and local authorities was added in the paper.

Also, it’s better to use the word ‘paper’ rather than ‘article’ – I’m agree

Finally, better proofreading would beneficial – I’m agree.  Proofreading is done. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I appreciate the authors’ efforts on this version of their work by following my suggestions. In general, the topic is  interesting and the research design is clearly stated. But lastly, I still have a few concerns the authors need to address.

1.       The abstract should be revised as it cannot attract readers’ interest. The background is a bit long, it will be better to go straight to the theme. Besides, it is difficult to understand why the findings are important.

2.       The authors mentioned, “The study is based on the example of local communities located in areas of new oil and gas development in the north of the Irkutsk Region (Eastern Siberia, Russia). This is the first time such a study has been carried out in these areas.” However, such a statement cannot be called a theoretical contribution. The authors should clearly demonstrate how this research contributes to previous literature about the sustainability of local communities.

3.       The conclusion should be more concise and to the point. For example, “These findings can be used by decision-makers, regional and local authorities, oil and gas companies, and other stakeholders.”, the specific recommendations for different stakeholders still need to be clarified.

Author Response

Thank you very much for the review and additional important comments!

Point 1:  The abstract should be revised as it cannot attract readers’ interest. The background is a bit long, it will be better to go straight to the theme. Besides, it is difficult to understand why the findings are important.

Response 1:

The abstract is revised taking into account this comment.

Point 2: The authors mentioned, “The study is based on the example of local communities located in areas of new oil and gas development in the north of the Irkutsk Region (Eastern Siberia, Russia). This is the first time such a study has been carried out in these areas.” However, such a statement cannot be called a theoretical contribution. The authors should clearly demonstrate how this research contributes to previous literature about the sustainability of local communities.

Response 2:

The mention of " This is the first time such a study has been carried out in these areas" in this case does not imply a theoretical contribution, it refers more to the practical value (for study area) and extension of the research cases in different geographical settings on this research topic.

The theoretical contribution of the article is presented in the next chapter (Local level in sustainable development research) “…However, the analysis of the studies shows an underdeveloped issue of differentiation of social perception depending on the type of communities. Usually, respondents from study areas are presented as a general population, and a common list of positive and negative effects on the socio-economic development of communities in the zone of influence of industrial developments is formed. This paper provides an author's approach that will take settlement type into account when studying issues of local residents' perceptions of current and future development…”

And further on in the discussion and conclusion of the paper, the theoretical contribution is mentioned.

Point 3: The conclusion should be more concise and to the point. For example, “These findings can be used by decision-makers, regional and local authorities, oil and gas companies, and other stakeholders.”, the specific recommendations for different stakeholders still need to be clarified.

Response 3:

Conclusion was edited.

Thank you for pointing out the practical importance to various stakeholders. Throughout the paper, I mention several times how the results can be useful for regional and local authorities, and write almost nothing about how they can be used by other stakeholders. I believe that it would be correct to delete the sentence "These findings can be used by decision makers, regional and local authorities, oil and gas companies, and other stakeholders" and end with the sentence "However, the findings from the comprehensive approach involving social research can be applied in practice as guidelines for community development planning for different types of settlements."

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper is ready for publication. However, I recommend that the author still checks this work for English editing. 

Author Response

The paper is ready for publication. However, I recommend that the author still checks this work for English editing. 

Thank you for the review! The English editing service will be used.