PCLM-D-23-00153

Climate-resilient aquatic food systems require transformative change to address gender and intersectional inequalities

PLOS Climate

Dear Dr. Rahma Adam

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Climate. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please submit your revised manuscript by 13 January 2024.. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at climate@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pclm/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Ferdous Ahmed

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: I don't know

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Climate does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The manuscript strengths lie in the rigor of the research method employed and the ability to highlight how gender intersecting with other socio-economic variables determines vulnerability to climate shock and stresses, resilience and adaptive capacity to climate adaptation and mitigation measures. The method was conducted rigorously and satisfactorily with appropriate controls and adequate sample sizes.

The authors acknowledged the paucity of representative quantitative data on key factors that influence the adaptive capacity and resilience of women aquaculture farmers and hence used the 2019 Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey to augment. However, nothing was mentioned on the level of availability or adequacy of quantitative data on influential key factors for women fishers and fish workers in the SSF. It was not clear if literature review provided adequate information or data required. This brings me to ask if the key factors were the same for women and men in aquaculture and SSF taking into considerations that in some SSF value chains, entrepreneurial women fish traders hold power over fishermen who depend on them for fishing inputs and other needs.

The paragraph from line 425 to line 435 does not fit under agency. In a comment, I have proposed moving it to 3.2.2 Access to—and control over—resources where loss of control and access to fishery resources and space are addressed.

The manuscript describes research with data for all socio-economic variables listed except indigeneity to support the conclusions. Synonyms such as aboriginal, native or endemic could be used to search for additional data or information on indigeneity intersecting with gender and/or other socio-economic variables with respect to climate change impacts on AFS.

Defining, and highlighting the inter-relationships between gender equality and equity with respect to climate change, climate mitigation and adaptation are essential to unpack and lock in, the logic of how gender-transformative processes lead to climate- resilient AFS. Both gender equality and gender equity should be included as key terms.

Enhancing positive climate adaptation and mitigation measures is important at local levels. I assumed there are examples of nature-based solutions in, or gender-responsive climate –smart aquaculture and small-scale fisheries initiatives that deserve to be further promoted as actionable strategies or approaches.

Other issues are indicated in comments added on the manuscript.

Reviewer #2: The article used three different analyses to explore gender and intersectional inequality in aquatic food system under changing climate. The article is a bit long, but well organized and well presented. It however suffers from some limitations as listed below.

Introduction: The article misses a clear knowledge gap that prompted this research. This should be placed in appropriate location of the Introduction before the research objective(s) and research questions (see below).

Introduction: It is not clear what is the overall objective of this research, although it reads “We investigate how gender and other intersectional characteristics influence climate change resilience in aquatic food systems.” (Lines 89-90) and “In this paper, in order to unpack the impacts felt by people of various populations on climate change within aquatic food systems and the measures they take to cope with the changes, we do three things.” (L 99-101). It would be better to give an overarching objective of this research, then unpacking it by presenting several research questions this research is trying to answer, after the knowledge gap in the Introduction.

Conceptual Framework (section 2.1) should be described separately from the Methodology (section 2). In Methodology section only describe how it was done.

Conceptual Framework’s description could be shortened. The definitions could be put in a table, if citing relevant references are not enough.

Lines 129-145: These definitions are taken from different sources. In climate change, risk is now considered as a function of hazards, exposure and vulnerability (IPCCC Sixth Assessment Report). Authors need to revisit the definitions used in this article.

L 231: Please explain why this time period was selected (i.e., between January 2017 and October 2022).

L237: All relevant “Additional information” should be link to the respective documents kept in a publicly accessible repository and hyperlinked in the manuscript.

L300: The list of references should only contain the references those are cited in the present article, not all of those, which were included in the review.

L 332: Why was this particular national database used in analysis? Please share the rationale.

Section 3.1: Findings should be arranged based on literature review, and analyses of IHH and BIHS — in this sequence. This should be followed throughout the manuscript.

L 381: This paragraph should go to the beginning of this sub-section.

Text in Table 2 shouldn’t be repeated in the narrative part of the sub-sections 3.2.1-3.2.4.

L 495-502 & 504-539: It should be made very clear which data/information is coming from which sources/analysis.

L 565: The figures in the text does not match with the Figure 5. Please check if all figures are correct. Also, data in the figures should not be repeated in the text.

Figure 0’s caption should be self-explanatory: lines’ styles, directions, sheds, etc.

Also, all figures: Captions should be self-explanatory.

L 1283 and 1292: Differences between the bars are not marked with asterisks, like Figure 5. Please check.

L 1303: Single asterisk is not given in the Figure 5, but mentioned in the caption. Need to check all captions for clarity.

Same data shouldn’t be presented both in tables and figures. E.g., Table 3 and Figures 3 and 4.

References section: Too many references are listed here. It needs to be reduced.

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6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Haseeb Md. Irfanullah

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PCLM-D-23-00153_REF0.pdf

Climate-resilient aquatic food systems require transformative change to address gender and intersectional inequalities

PCLM-D-23-00153R1

Dear Rahma Adam

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'Climate-resilient aquatic food systems require transformative change to address gender and intersectional inequalities' has been provisionally accepted for publication in PLOS Climate.

Before your manuscript can be formally accepted you will need to complete some formatting changes, which you will receive in a follow-up email from a member of our team. 

Please note that your manuscript will not be scheduled for publication until you have made the required changes, so a swift response is appreciated.

IMPORTANT: The editorial review process is now complete. PLOS will only permit corrections to spelling, formatting or significant scientific errors from this point onwards. Requests for major changes, or any which affect the scientific understanding of your work, will cause delays to the publication date of your manuscript.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact climate@plos.org.

Thank you again for supporting Open Access publishing; we are looking forward to publishing your work in PLOS Climate.

Best regards,

Ferdous Ahmed, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

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Reviewer Comments (if any, and for reference):

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: I don't know

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Climate does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Every comment has been satisfactorily addressed. The manuscript is straightforward, unambiguous, and concise. The conclusion is drawn based on the evidence in the data.

Reviewer #2: Thank you for revising the manuscript by addressing my comments.

I however did not check the overall structure of the revised manuscript. I believe the authors did that by maintaining consistency and avoiding contradictions, while address two reviewers' comments.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Haseeb Md. Irfanullah

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