Facing Climate Vulnerability in Mountain Areas: The Role of Rural Actors’ Agency and Situated Knowledge Production

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is an interesting contribution to the larger debate on social dynamics and climate change adaptation, resilience, and climate risk perception. 

In general, the paper is very rich, especially due to its empirical depth and efforts made by the team. Nevertheless, some major points are undermining this generally good paper.

English language: Please see my comment in the “quality of English language” section below. Just to point out here some major work on language editing is highly advisable as flawed wording and grammar at times undermine the contribution. 

Scientific background: The author's team seems to be interdisciplinary, which is great. However, the paper would gain a lot of strength to be more concise on where exactly it wants to contribute. This is not to suggest a specific discipline but to better outline a certain theme/issue area. In the beginning, des SES is mentioned prominently, in the conclusion it cites “climate resilience” and in between it becomes clear that “social science” is involved. It would be great if you could briefly outline on which (interdisciplinary) sources you’re building. This would help to better understand the argument. And avoid confusion. In the theoretical section you mention the approaches “realism” and “constructionism”, but from which fields? Which understanding? Here I don’t understand why “agency” should help to overcome this dichotomy. Depending on the field, there are different ontological assumptions with regard to realism and constructivism. 

Theoretical argument: I think your contribution can be a really great push in the social science work on climate change to highlight how diverse ways of knowing climate change is relevant to understand human-nature interactions. However, in the very brief theoretical part you discuss agency as a central point, which is understandable. But the other aspect that is central to the paper is “knowledge production”. I would expect more elaboration on this. Here anthropological work could be helpful (See Schnegg, M. (2019). The Life of Winds: Knowing the Namibian Weather from Someplace and from Noplace. American Anthropologist, 121(4), 830-844. doi:10.1111/aman.13274)

It would also be necessary to be more clear about the own positionally: In the final section, the authors claim that “lay” knowledge is “as valid as those of experts”. At the start, the article sounds like “lay” people are potentially wrong and expert knowledge is also privileged over “lay” (which already is a certain framing, see the discussion on indigenous, traditional, local knowledge) knowledge. It is not clear how authors see this. Only in the end, i.e. the concluding section, the authors give a different perspective and argue that the co-production seem to be important. To highlight this in the beginning and be more clear about the theoretical debate on knowledge production would help to strengthen the argument. 

 

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

As a non-native English speaker, I’m well aware of the challenges of writing in such detail. The article has, especially with regard to empirical findings, a lot of strengths. However, they get lost at times due to wording, grammar, or syntax that is partially flawed. Of course not to a degree that the argument is not understandable, yet there are a number of mistakes. I strongly suggest language editing and proofreading. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article ‘The climate change vulnerability in mountain areas: perceptions and resilience actions in Alto Molise (Italy)’’ is interested article, however, it require changes. Moreover the technical, novel side of the paper is very week. Following are the comments for the authors to improve the article:

Ø  The article title is a general statement, authors are suggested to re-write the title with the research impact and novelty perspective.

Ø  A lot of research is going on the climate change vulnerability in mountain areas. How authors claim the new aspect for the need of this publication?

Ø  Problem statement should be mentioned at the start of the abstract, why the study is important? What is the novelty aspect?

Ø  What is the base of selection of this study? Author should define some specific criteria.

Ø  Moreover, the literature review and introduction is very general and short. Authors should focus on this section with the state of the art literature.

Ø  The keywords should be specific.  

Ø  Abstract start with a very common line, which should be avoided: Mountains can be described as socio-ecological systems (SESs), a complex set of relations that involve natural aspects and human communities

Ø  There are few old references, authors are encouraged to add latest literature.

Ø  Authors have used person nouns at different places i.e. we etc. please avoid those in technical writing.

Ø  Article include many tables and very less number of figures and almost zero figure in results section. This must be mixture of table and figure. This must be addressed for further processing of the article.

Ø  Further, the conclusion section needs to be write again. Only focused conclusion of the study is required. It is lengthy at the moment.

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

minor

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

All comments have been addressed. Paper is much clearer now, which underlines its important contribution on how climate risk/adaptation research can be done. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Language is much better compared to first version, a final revision for a very few minor language issues would be good. 

Author Response

We proceeded to carry out the required final review. Thank you for your contribution

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Accept

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Accept

Author Response

We proceeded to carry out the required final review. Thank you for your help.