Climate Change Impacts on Rice Cultivation: A Comparative Study of the Tonle Sap and Mekong River

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I recommend that the paper be significantly revised before it can be published. It is well-structured, logical, and presents some valuable empirical findings. It however has some weaknesses which need to be addressed: 1) it needs to state what gaps in the literature it is addressing and the value of the paper; 2) its literature review needs significant work – it needs to expand its discussion of vulnerability; 3) the empirical findings and discussion section need to be broader, also engage with the qualitative findings more, bring in governance aspects if possible, and the proposed solutions should be more concrete. Comparisons between the four provinces would be valuable as well as a discussion of current adaptation measures and which ones are more successful. And 4) the conclusion also need to be strengthened, including a discussion of the value of these findings and a wider engagement with the existing literature on this topic.

The abstract reads well and is clear but the sentence “The findings suggest that climate change brings both environmental and social long-term vulnerabilities; and physical and economic short-term vulnerabilities” is weak. This is nothing new and it’s vague. The authors should state what these vulnerabilities are. Also the final sentence is vague – how should local adaptive capacities be strengthened?

The introduction is generally well-written: it is easy to follow and clearly shows that agriculture is vulnerable to climate change in Cambodia. But the main problem is that 1) it is not clear what your paper is saying that is new and valuable. What has been written so far about the impacts of climate change upon agriculture in Cambodia? Is your paper saying anything different than these studies? Or is your paper using a new theoretical framework? What gaps in the literature is your paper addressing? 2) In your last paragraph, you need to outline your paper a bit more: what is its main argument or findings or at least key questions?

A small note: the first sentence of the paper could be stronger – of course climate change exists in Cambodia. Maybe “significantly affects” is better.  

The literature review needs significant work. The first paragraph of the literature review should be moved to the introduction since there’s no theory in it. You then need to extensively expand your discussion of vulnerability and look at the different bodies of literature which frame vulnerability, such as human ecology, political economy, and political ecology. I suggest you look at the article “Structure, agency and environment: Toward an integrated perspective on vulnerability.” But also you should look at Wisner et al 2004 as well as the work of Susan Cutter. You need to make an argument about why you picked your framework to analyse vulnerability – why is it the best one? And why are you using vulnerability rather than resilience?

Moreover, you need to be more concrete. You write that there are “four groups of vulnerability: physical factors, economic factors, social factors, and environmental factors.” But you need to specify what you mean by these factors. For example, how do economic factors differ from social factors?

The methods section is generally robust. My main critiques are that 1) you need to explain and justify why you picked these four districts. How are they good case studies? And 2) you need to explain which questions you asked during the interviews and who were key informants.

For the results section, it is also generally strong. It’s good that you found that a correlation with drought and floods to destroyed, house damage, disease, and suspension of children’s education. But what about the results of your key informant interviews and your qualitative findings? How did for example differing local government adaptation policy or responses affect vulnerability? Were there any differences between these four provinces due to differing practices (e.g., irrigation, water management, etc.)? Climate change does not occur in a vacuum, so it would be good for you to look at the interactions between adaptation measures and vulnerability.

Your discussion has some useful points but also could be strengthened. Once again, you should discuss the interaction between practices and adaptation. You briefly state: “Climatic-resilient communities can cope with environmental and social vulnerabilities by raising awareness, effective natural resource management, educational development, and access to good health care and services.” But this is quite vague and there’s nothing new. What has been done in other countries or in other provinces can be replicated in your four case study provinces? Were any of the four provinces less vulnerable than the others and if so, why?

Your discussion is also missing a discussion of governance which is a key factor affecting vulnerability in the literature. So it would be good to discuss this. What would be good governance practices based on your findings? Why were communities vulnerable to droughts and floods in the first place? Why couldn’t the government (local or national) build their resilience to these risks?

Your conclusion needs work. You need to engage with the wider literature here and answer key questions which are lacking:
1) What’s new and valuable about your findings both in the context of Cambodia but also globally?
2) How do your findings speak to the wider literature on climate vulnerability in the agriculture sector?
3) Was the framework you used valuable? Could it be improved?
4) What could be some future research directions based on your findings?

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewer

Thank for all your kind suggestions and comments. All your comments and suggestion are now carefully addressed as illustrated in the tables. All your suggestions and comments are very highly appreciating and do help to improve the quality of the paper. We have attached you with three different files to provide you with the detail of how your comments and suggestions are addressed; they included: (1) Article-submitted-(clean for review)-v2, (2) Article-submitted-(English-edited with track change)-v2, and (3) Article-submitted-(track change for review how comments are responded)-v2. Please kindly review Article-submitted-(clean for review)-v2 for the final revised paper and Article-submitted-(track change for review how comments are responded)-v2 for tracking of how paper is revised. This file “Article-submitted-(English-edited with track change)-v2” is shown about English copy-editing work.

With best regards

Sok Serey

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

It is an interesting article, dealing with important questions. The paper relies on thorough research and multiple data sources. Results are presented clearly and discussed in a detailed manner.

I suggest supplementing the literature review with some previous research on the relationship between climate change and rice cultivation from other countries. Experiences from other (Asian) countries are not discussed.

The research design is mixed, using both quantitative and qualitative approaches, which makes the results more robust.

However, the paper would benefit from writing specific research questions for both approaches, and perhaps even some hypotheses for the survey research. Variables of the quantitative research are not demonstrated, e.g. in a table, and there is little/no information on how qualitative interviews and focus groups were analyzed, i.e., coded and interpreted (content analysis). 

The language is generally clear, but some important findings may be phrased wrong, e.g., (p.12): "The findings of this research found that drought is vulnerable to rice paddies than floods. It is a fact that flood is probably more preventive by farmers than drought at the movement." 
I think the authors probably mean that "...rice paddies are more vulnerable to drought than floods" and "...flood is considered more preventive by farmers than..." Perhaps I am wrong, but these sentences should be revisited especially as they refer to key findings. Saying that something "is a fact" is also very strong. "At the movement" or "at the moment"?

The conclusion can be a bit broader. What are the implications for farmers and policy-making? Are there any theoretical implications? What can other (similar) countries learn from this case?

Author Response

Dear reviewer

Thank for all your kind suggestions and comments. All your comments and suggestion are now carefully addressed as illustrated in the tables. All your suggestions and comments are very highly appreciating and do help to improve the quality of the paper. We have attached you with three different files to provide you with the detail of how your comments and suggestions are addressed; they included: (1) Article-submitted-(clean for review)-v2, (2) Article-submitted-(English-edited with track change)-v2, and (3) Article-submitted-(track change for review how comments are responded)-v2. Please kindly review Article-submitted-(clean for review)-v2 for the final revised paper and Article-submitted-(track change for review how comments are responded)-v2 for tracking of how paper is revised. This file “Article-submitted-(English-edited with track change)-v2” is shown about English copy-editing work.

With best regards

Sok Serey

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript is poorly written and organized. The language makes it challenging to interpret the meaning of many important points. The article repeats the same points many times and does not seem to have a cohesive flow. The main contribution of the work is the survey collection, but the dataset is not well described or characterized, and the reported findings are a mix of analysis from the dataset, findings from the literature, and author editorial. Effort should be made to more clearly contextualize the survey information with measurable data in a quantitative manner, such as via rainfall data or streamflow records. The survey information could be presented in a more interesting and publishable manner, but not as presented here.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewer

Thank for all your kind suggestions and comments. All your comments and suggestion are now carefully addressed as illustrated in the tables. All your suggestions and comments are very highly appreciating and do help to improve the quality of the paper. We have attached you with three different files to provide you with the detail of how your comments and suggestions are addressed; they included: (1) Article-submitted-(clean for review)-v2, (2) Article-submitted-(English-edited with track change)-v2, and (3) Article-submitted-(track change for review how comments are responded)-v2. Please kindly review Article-submitted-(clean for review)-v2 for the final revised paper and Article-submitted-(track change for review how comments are responded)-v2 for tracking of how paper is revised. This file “Article-submitted-(English-edited with track change)-v2” is shown about English copy-editing work.

 

With best regards

Sok Serey

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

The manuscript "Impact of climate change on cultivated rice paddy areas: a comparative study in the Tonle Sap and the Mekong River" has already undergone major changes. However, major modifications are still needed to make it acceptable for publication. Below I send some suggestions for improving the manuscript.
- The Material and Methods item is very poor. The authors even made a location map of the study area. This is essential in studies such as the one proposed in this article.
- Another extremely important point: the article does not present statistical analyses. This is essential in scientific research. The authors performed statistical analysis but did not detail it in the M&M. Figure 2 presents some statistical analysis that the authors did not explain how it was done in M&M. The same thing happens with the ANOVA that the authors mention having done between lines 293 and 304. These issues need to be detailed very carefully in the M&M. How were the data in Table 2 obtained? Which statistical test was applied in this table? This needs to be stated in the caption.
- The conclusions of the manuscript in its current form are unacceptable. They are long and often seem that the authors are describing results rather than responding to proposed objectives. This item needs to be completely rewritten according to the proposed objectives.

Author Response

Dear Respective Reviewer

 

Thank you for your kind efforts and suggestions to improve the quality of our paper. We are always happy to revise the paper to meet the Journal's standard and requirements.

 

With best regards

 

Sok Sere, PhD

Research Office, Royal University of Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 5 Report

Drs. Sok et. al. summarize analyzes the negative impacts of climate hazards on paddy rice in the Mekong River and the Tonle Sap, focusing on the climatic variabilities. Additional information suggest that climate change brings both environmental and social long-term vulnerabilities; and physical and economic short-term vulnerabilities. This manuscript is well-organized and well-written, which is easy to follow. I recommend to accept it in the present form.

Author Response

Dear Respective Reviewer

 

Thank you for your kind efforts and suggestions to improve the quality of our paper. We are always happy to revise the paper to meet the Journal's standard and requirements.

 

With best regards

 

Sok Sere, PhD

Research Office, Royal University of Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The article is improved and becoming closer to a publishable state. The methods and results section are improved. However, there remain some significant shortcomings, particularly in the literature review and conclusion, which still need to be addressed:

• The introduction still doesn’t clearly state what’s significant and valuable about this paper either empirically or theoretically. This needs to be explicitly stated.

 

• The literature review still needs work. While the discussion of vulnerability is expanded, it still does not really discuss the concept in significant depth. It just merely cites these articles without discussing them in sufficient depth. Further and more problematically, the authors do not explain why “This research applies the four vulnerability factors defined by the UN in 2004.” Why did they pick these factors? What’s better about this framework than other frameworks? Why did they discard political economy for example? The authors added one extra paragraph but this extra paragraph does not suffice.
• But also, the authors don’t describe the literature on climate change in Cambodia in sufficient depth in the literature review. They merely list what’s been written. This is a bit lazy. They need to summarise these articles succinctly and then state what gaps in the literature their article is addressing.
• The discussion is better and now incorporates more governance elements. However, it could be clearer. For example, the authors write, “The role of commune and district authorities should be strengthened through the implementation of integrated water resource management approaches to distributing water resources equitably to all rice farmers.” But this is vague – how should they be strengthened? Also, they write: This includes the implementation of disaster preparedness activities to inform a timely and effective response to flood and drought events.” But what disaster preparedness activities do they mean? In general, they need to be more concrete and specific here.
• The authors actually discuss governance issues in their findings and discussions so it is a bit odd that they want to shy away from explicitly mentioning governance explicitly. I think you cannot discuss climate change vulnerability without discussing governance given the key role of the state. Once again, why where these farmers vulnerable in the first place? Why were some areas less vulnerable than others?
• The conclusion also needs significant work. In its current state, it is merely a summary. What we do learn more about conceptualizing and thinking about vulnerability from the study, for example? What’s your assessment of this framework – are there any critiques of it? And finally how is this study valuable beyond the context of Cambodia?

If this paper is going to be widely cited, it needs to go beyond the Cambodian context.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Respective Reviewer

 

Thank you for your kind efforts and suggestions to improve the quality of our paper. We are always happy to revise the paper to meet the Journal's standard and requirements.

 

With best regards

 

Sok Sere, PhD

Research Office, Royal University of Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript has been improved from the initial submission. It is much more coherent and readable. What is clear is that the manuscript is attempting to combine a mixture of methods and information to provide a comparative regional assessment. This is a task that requires organized analysis and communication to be achieved coherently, which is quite challenging, and this challenge was not met here. There are too many divergent findings and discussion points. The results section is a chaotic mix of results and discussion, which is followed by a discussion section. The various findings need to be much better organized and related for connected understanding of relationships between physically observed drivers, physically observed outcomes, empirically observed sentiments, and perspectives from the literature. 

More broadly, the manuscript posits the cross regional comparison as its main original contribution to the literature. However, I question what the value of this is when sufficient literature exists characterizing phenomena in each region, and the current study collates that literature but does not report dynamic findings/unique interactions from this aggregation. The survey data could be a contribution to the literature. Perhaps a manuscript of smaller scope would be of greater value than what has been presented. 

 

Author Response

Dear Respective Reviewer

 

Thank you for your kind efforts and suggestions to improve the quality of our paper. We are always happy to revise the paper to meet the Journal's standards and requirements.

 

With best regards

 

Sok Sere, PhD

Research Office, Royal University of Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

After requesting several corrections, the authors improved the manuscript and it can be accepted for publication in its current form.