Mainstreaming Climate Change Adaptation into Rural Development Plans in Vietnam—How to Build Resilience at the Interface of Policy and Practice

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Many thanks to the authors for addressing the comments. I suggest considering the paper for publication.

Author Response

We thank reviewer 1 for their constructive and useful comments in the first round of revision, and are grateful to hear they suggest considering our paper for publication.

Reviewer 2 Report

There has no problem with logical coherence of the article.

If it could add some quantifiable indicators to help illustrate the overall fieldwork results would be better.

The text is very emphatic in helping farmers deal with uncertainty in the future, but it would be nice to have more information on how the national level should be involved in the application of the proposed agenda.

Author Response

We thank reviewer 2 for their constructive and useful comments in the first round of revision. We are glad to see that their comments were satisfactorily addressed, and that reviewer 2 now has two points of improvement.

In the following we have copied the comment (marked with a bold C) and put our response after it (marked with a bold R).

C: If it could add some quantifiable indicators to help illustrate the overall fieldwork results would be better.

R: We regret that, as a qualitative study, there are no quantifiable indicators from our fieldwork. We agree that it would be interesting to see if findings from a quantitative study would support our findings from a qualitative analysis. This, however, is beyond the scope of our paper. We take the comment as an encouragement for other researchers to also engage with this topic.

C: The text is very emphatic in helping farmers deal with uncertainty in the future, but it would be nice to have more information on how the national level should be involved in the application of the proposed agenda.

R: We thank the reviewer for their suggestion to discuss how the national level could integrate adaptation into their agenda. We agree that this is an interesting point and would be nice to explore. However, this is beyond the scope of our paper as we are focusing on providing recommendations to research and development organisations for mainstreaming adaptation into their projects, while aligning to government priorities. How the government would then incorporate these suggestions would be very interesting for further study.

Reviewer 3 Report

Line 37: Typo: organizations

Line 46: I don't well understand landscape issues. Sounds a bit weird to me. I would suggest changing to "institutional issues" or similar words. 

Line 72-94: Need to define what is mainstreaming. What's the theoretical definition in the areas of rural development and climate change policies.

I think this is a key concept in this paper, so definitely needs some clarification for readers who are not familiar with the term.

Section 2 APPROACHES TO RESILIENCE: This section of the literature review is well stated and inclusive of the different schools of thought, which is good. But the authors did not manage to present what's need to be done by this study. In other words, the authors did not effectively use the literature to make an argument that there is a strong need for this study. I suggest the authors add another paragraph at the end of this section to make the argument and establish the significance of this study.

Line 252: CGIAR is well known but still needs to provide the full name for its first time in the text. Not all readers know that organization.

Section 3.2 Data collection and analysis: There is a lack of clear data collection and data analysis procedures. Did not present strong scientific practices in terms of sampling and coding. 

Line 316: The specific coding procedures or approaches are not clear. This needs more details in the method section.

Section 4 Key Enabling Factors:
Are those factors from the interview's findings? Not very clear for the result presentation. Need to explain how those factors were extracted.

Table 2:
1) The table contains lots of information which is good. But there is no description to help readers make sense of the table's meaningfulness. 
2) Why living bed along the other four components have no ideal CSV approaches?  Why those statements are ideal, according to who or what document? 

Table 3:
Similar problem with table 2. It is hard to understand what authors try to express by just reading the tables. The table is a visual aid, but how authors describe the findings needs to be stated clearly.

I understand this table is a summary of the later texts. But still needs some sort of description and tells readers the following paragraphs will elaborate the five factors.

Line 399: If landscape approach is a term, that will be needed to define.

Author Response

We thank reviewer 3 for their comments and feedback that help to clarify the text.

In the following we have copied the comment (marked with a bold C) and put our response after it (marked with a bold R).

C: Line 37: Typo: organizations

R: We thank the reviewer for pointing out this potential error. However, as we are using British English, the red incorrect spelling line under “organisations” was most likely an issue with the MS Word language feature in this part of the text. In this instance “organisations” is indeed the correct spelling.

C: Line 46: I don't well understand landscape issues. Sounds a bit weird to me. I would suggest changing to "institutional issues" or similar words.

R: We thank the reviewer for pointing out that the meaning of landscape issues may not be clear. However, we explain landscape approach in the paper and it is one of our key factors, therefore we consider that using the term in the abstract is appropriate.

C: Line 72-94: Need to define what is mainstreaming. What's the theoretical definition in the areas of rural development and climate change policies.

R: We regret that the reviewer considers the term mainstreaming unclear and lacking definition. We revised this section following the first round of review, and consider that now mainstreaming is thoroughly explained. The first sentence (lines 48-51 in the revised document) provides the definition of mainstreaming. However, the second version of this sentence was longer and perhaps confusing, therefore we have now shortened it to remove the mention of the specific IPCC report, which readers can find in the references. The paragraph then goes on to explain what mainstreaming means in terms of rural development and climate change policies (line 51-56). We have added the words “rural development” to line 52 to make it clearer that mainstreaming is integrating adaptation into rural development. Therefore, we hope that these changes make the definition of mainstreaming more understandable, and further clarify its relevance to rural development and climate change policies.

C: Section 2 APPROACHES TO RESILIENCE: This section of the literature review is well stated and inclusive of the different schools of thought, which is good. But the authors did not manage to present what's need to be done by this study. In other words, the authors did not effectively use the literature to make an argument that there is a strong need for this study. I suggest the authors add another paragraph at the end of this section to make the argument and establish the significance of this study.

R: We thank the reviewer for their positive comments on our literature review. We agree that it is important to state the relevance of the study. We have done this in the introduction section and rather than adding a paragraph to section 2, we prefer to further highlight this in the introduction. Therefore, we added the following lines in the last paragraph of section 1 (lines 110-114), before we state the aim of our study:

The existence of different approaches may, at first hand, seem to complicate the mainstreaming of climate change adaption in development. Policy makers may prefer unambiguous scientific advice that easily translates into policies. The interaction between science and policy, however, is a continuous dialogue rather than a one-off moment of solicited advice.

We hope this further clarifies the need for our study.

C: Line 252: CGIAR is well known but still needs to provide the full name for its first time in the text. Not all readers know that organization.

R: Thank you to the reviewer for pointing out this error. We have expanded CGIAR accordingly.

C: Section 3.2 Data collection and analysis: There is a lack of clear data collection and data analysis procedures. Did not present strong scientific practices in terms of sampling and coding.

Line 316: The specific coding procedures or approaches are not clear. This needs more details in the method section.

R: We thank the reviewer for this comment. In terms of sampling, we randomly selected 10 farmers, 2-3 from each T&P category, in order to get a random but representative sample from across the spectrum of adopted practices (lines 239-246). We consider this sampling method adequate for the small scale of our sample, however we welcome further specification of oversights, if any.

Regarding the coding, we have added a clarification to explain that it was based on a number of key categories, and list the main code groups (lines 259-262). We can provide the codes as supplementary material, if the reviewer considers it would further strengthen and support our methodology.

C: Section 4 Key Enabling Factors: Are those factors from the interview's findings? Not very clear for the result presentation. Need to explain how those factors were extracted.

R: Indeed, these factors are extracted from the interviews’ findings (and on-site observations) based on dominant themes across the interviews that became apparent during the coding process. They were then formed based on the knowledge and experience of authors with the study field. We have added a part to the coding section in the methodology to clarify that this was the process for the formation of the key enabling factors (line 259).

C: Table 2: 1) The table contains lots of information which is good. But there is no description to help readers make sense of the table's meaningfulness. 2) Why living bed along the other four components have no ideal CSV approaches?  Why those statements are ideal, according to who or what document?

R: We appreciate this comment and understand that the table is not fully explained. We have added to lines 266-269 to clarify the source of the data and what is meant by “ideal”. We hope this adequately explains that the table is a summary of the results from the interviews, which presents the extent of the implementation of the project’s goals. The living bed, etc are the T&Ps that were implemented in Ma village and are part of the T&P component and not components in themselves. We had hoped that the different presentation (grey and smaller font) would show the distinction with enough clarity, however, we realise this may not have been evident enough. We have now added a footnote for clarification.

C: Table 3: Similar problem with table 2. It is hard to understand what authors try to express by just reading the tables. The table is a visual aid, but how authors describe the findings needs to be stated clearly. I understand this table is a summary of the later texts. But still needs some sort of description and tells readers the following paragraphs will elaborate the five factors.

R: We understand the reviewer’s comment and have added some clarification to line 270.

C: Line 399: If landscape approach is a term, that will be needed to define.

R: We appreciate the reviewer’s comment for a definition of landscape approach. However, we consider that the context of the paragraph adequately conveys its meaning without needing to directly define it (lines 354-358). We have added “more holistic” to further explain that it is an integrated approach to agricultural systems.

Reviewer 4 Report

The purpose of this article is to identify the key adaptation factors for building resilience in rural communities.

The authors submitted an article with changes in "track changes" mode. 
This is an expression of unprofessional behavior. 
The article should be adapted to the requirements of the manuscripts by the journal Agronomy, 
including article citations which are in a different format.

The article deals with the important topic of climate change and its impact on rural communities in developing countries. 
It is as important as it can threaten the food security and agricultural income of these communities. 
Therefore, the authors focused on identifying adaptation strategies in such situations in Vietnam.

The article fits the journal's theme, in particular section "Agriculture Practices for Reducing Production Risks for
Smallholder Farmers".

The work is interesting and is written in a readable English language with a few linguistic errors.
In my opinion, however, it is more popular science than scientific work. 
It lacks a research hypothesis and an attempt to answer a scientific question, characteristic for sccientific articles. 
It is more of a literature review with interpretation.

I think the work can be shortened by focusing more on the key adaptation factors for building the resilience of rural communities. 
I have the impression that there is a lot of text at work that gives little information.
Maybe it would help to introduce more tables that would show the information in a clearer and more compact way.

The authors collected data on the basis of surveys of selected farmers. 
Unfortunately, these data are described without providing technical details, 
e.g. what percentage of farms the solutions apply to. 
It would also be worth writing what the survey looked like (maybe in additional materials). 
Could it be possible to compile the survey data using statistical methods by asking appropriate scientific questions?

Author Response

We thank reviewer 4 for their valuable comments and feedback. We would like to clarify that the manuscript is a revision following a previous round of review, which is the reason why it is in a tracked changed format. This was a requirement for re-submission. We have now applied the journal format to the paper and hope that the formatting and reference issue from the previous version is now resolved.

Following one round of review and specific comments from two previous reviewers, we have improved our paper. We regret that reviewer 4 considers our study to be more popular science and a literature review with interpretation. We are convinced that the way we conducted our research and presented the results is common practice in qualitative studies. Our paper focuses on the results and analysis of qualitative fieldwork based on farmer and key stakeholder interviews. The literature presented in section 2 is not meant as a literature review, but rather as an overall framework for analysis, following good academic standards of qualitative research. Additionally, we understand the further analysis asked for by the reviewer to emerge from a misunderstanding about the data used for our paper. This does not include survey data; we interviewed (ten) farmers and a number of key stakeholders to understand their experiences and priorities. Statistical methods would not apply in this situation. We have explained the materials and methods in section 3. This, of course, does not exclude possible errors or unclarities and we kindly welcome the reviewer to provide further specification on which paragraphs and sentences may be unclear.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

I appreciated the author's detailed editing and further explanations.

Reviewer 4 Report

The authors responded to all my comments.

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

This study deals with identification of factors of adaptation mainstreaming that lead to building resilience in rural communities, on the basis of a thoroughly explained case study in a rural community in Vietnam. The paper is clearly written and contains many interesting observations and insights. I appreciate the authors’ engagement with the interconnectedness of climate change and development, and find the coverage of the four approaches to resilience very useful.

I did not notice any methodological challenges or analytical shortcomings and believe the paper is fit for publication in the Agronomy journal.

I do have several comments that I would like to see addressed before the paper is published, and they mainly concern the authors’ board generalisations based on the findings of this case study.  While I can imagine that the insights from this case study are very useful for a smallholder context, I am not convinced that the conclusions drawn here can substantiate very general statements (and I am not sure what some of them actually mean):

• "Community spirit, proactiveness are key components of capacity building." --> What does this mean? Is this the authors' conclusion based on this case study or an insight from previous research and/or theory. What do they mean by proactiveness?
• "Adaptation to climate change is a dynamic process of increasing adaptive capacity to build resilience, rather than a state that is achieved as an outcome." --> This is a very big one. Isn’t adaptive capacity somehow a precursor of adaptation? I understand that this is a blurry area of theory but this is a very bold statement to make. Would be good to reflect upon this some more.
• "Physical climate impacts are one aspect of climate change and therefore technical adaptations have a role to play, however solutions should not be limited to technical interventions in a techno-fix approach." --> Ok, but physical impacts of climate change are the reason why adaptation is needed? I would agree that solutions are not limited to technical interventions, but somehow that doesn't follow from the beginning of the sentence.
• "This paper determined that, although community-based initiatives are an effective approach to engage local communities in their own adaptation process, care must still be taken not to focus on promoting technological interventions as the primary solution to climate risks." --> Related to the comment above. This sentence is somehow not logical.
• "Additionally, agricultural research for development should not be expected to generate the same outcomes as development." --> What does this mean?

I’d suggest that these are re-considered and perhaps adapted to the reflect the context of the case study, or otherwise they could be reflected upon within the broader adaptation science or, for example, the IPCC language and conceptualisation of adaptive capacity, adaptation, vulnerability, etc.

Lastly, the authors state that they have additional socio-demographic information about the interviewees, specifically farmers. It would be interesting to learn whether there is heterogeneity in the sample with regards to education, age, gender and experience in agriculture, and what the implications of these differences are for engaging with potential adaptation strategies.

Reviewer 2 Report

General Comment:

This study covers an interesting topic on climate change adaptation for smallholders, linking it with development issues. Mainly, the authors conducted a case study in Vietnam to understand the linkages between climate smart agriculture projects and rural development. Afterward, the authors linked survey results to different resilience approaches. The study identifies the five key factors, enhancing rural resilience in smallholders. The manuscript has a few shortcomings. Thus, I suggest considering the manuscript for publication, after addressing the following comments.

First, the method used for the brief review of literature on the dominant approaches to climate change resilience is not clear. Fore readers, it would be nice to be able to replicate the review. Section 2 highlights projects not studies. Does this mean the authors reviewed projects instead of scientific papers? Added value of this section is also not clear.

Second, the presentation of the results needs to be further enriched, including quantitative information from the survey to understand the context of this study. The results do not consist of any quantitative information, e.g., demographic information of the participants, share or number of participants providing certain answer. Additionally, it reads like a project report instead of a scientific paper. Mainly, the result section can be enriched by including interpretation of the results.

Third, the discuss section can be further strengthened by highlighting the novelties of this study compare to the existing ones. Further, the authors may consider to highlight and discuss the general messages of this case study to a wider audience.

Fourth, the manuscript consists of a lot of abbreviations. It confuses readers. When possible, please limit the number of abbreviations.

Fifth, the authors may consider to change the title of the paper to reflect its content. The current title is too wide, even to have a glimpse of the content.

Specific Comment:

L39-54: Please see also IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land, Chapter 5 (https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/chapter/chapter-5/) on impacts of climate change on food systems.

L51-54: What are these “development goals”?  Are the authors referring to SDGs?

L55: It would be better to provide what the authors mean for “development”. This term can have different meaning in different context.

L61-63: Please see also Rosenzweig et al. 2020 (https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-020-0031-z) on various co-benefits of different food systems response options.