PCLM-D-24-00089

Exploring the nexus between environmental degradation and living standard in Bangladesh: Evidence from ARDL and ECM Technique

PLOS Climate

Dear Dr. Pramanik,

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 note that we have only been able to secure a single reviewer to assess your manuscript. We are issuing a decision on your manuscript at this point to prevent further delays in the evaluation of your manuscript. Please be aware that the editor who handles your revised manuscript might find it necessary to invite additional reviewers to assess this work once the revised manuscript is submitted. However, we will aim to proceed on the basis of this single review if possible. 

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jul 22 2024 11:59PM. 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,

Joanna Tindall

Staff Editor

PLOS Climate

Journal Requirements:

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

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: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

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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

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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

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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: I have read the paper titled "Exploring the nexus between environmental degradation and living standard in Bangladesh: Evidence from ARDL and ECM Technique." This study has the potential to contribute to the existing literature, but significant work is needed to improve it to an acceptable journal level. Therefore, below, I list several suggestions to improve the overall quality of the paper.

1. In the abstract, the author needs to provide the impacts and implications of the findings discovered by the study and what could be the implications of existing or future policy issues in the overall case study area. In addition, I suggest that the author(s) keep the abstract as brief as possible. It would be good to take a closer look at your abstract to make it more accessible in a non-technical language.

2. If the authors use abbreviations, they must be used in a systematic way (e.g., ARDL, ECM, MDGs, ADF, PP……….. etc). Kindly explain it once, and then use its abbreviation.

3. What makes your work novel? What advancements were made compared to the most recent cutting-edge comparable studies conducted by your/other groups?

4. The major defect of this study is that the debate or argument is not clearly stated in the introduction. Hence, the contribution of this manuscript is weak. I suggest the authors enhance the contribution part.

5. The explanation of the variables is poorly written. Kindly write clearly regarding the measurements of the studied variables.

6. I advise the authors to integrate a more economical/financial discussion of their results. Why is their research necessary? In addition, link your findings with previous research studies.

7. All Tables and Figures need appropriate references in the text.

8. The policy formulation part is missing in the study. Please suggest some concrete and relevant policy implications based on the obtained results.

9. Limitations and future research directions are missing.

10. Lastly, there are many punctuation and grammatical mistakes in the manuscript. Therefore, the author(s) need to correct these issues thoroughly. In addition, it is recommended that long sentences be changed to short sentences, which are easier to read.

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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.

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Reviewer #1: No

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[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

PCLM-D-24-00089R1

Exploring the nexus between environmental degradation and living standard in Bangladesh: Evidence from ARDL and ECM Technique

PLOS Climate

Dear Dr. Pramanik,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Climate. Although the reviewer has recommended your manuscript positively, after careful editorial 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.

(1) The study identifies an optimal lag length of 1, however, applies best-fitting lags of 4, 2, 3, 1, 4 for the ARDL model, which is confusing. If the optimal lag length is identified as 1, it is unclear why a different best-fitting criterion has been used. The authors need to clarify this or redo the analysis using any of them given appropriate justification. Also, nothing is mentioned about how or based on what criterion the best-fitting lags of the ARDL model have been obtained. If the optimal lag length of 1 is used, all the rest analyses will be changed and hence will result in a completely new manuscript.<o:p></o:p>

(2)  The authors claim that the data for all variables are normally distributed since their test JB statistics are not statistically significant. However, they do not consider 10% significance as a benchmark of significance for the table containing the JB statistics.<o:p></o:p>

Furthermore, their claim of normality is clearly under question as I have run the normality test using the same JB test. Please refer to the attached file on the JB test, which clearly shows that the JB statistics for LNCO2 and LNGDP are clearly significant at 5%. Further, considering the whole dataset, the ALL data JB statistic is also significant at a 1% level. These results suggest that the null can be rejected and thus the data are not normality distributed. There are two implications for such misreporting: (1) all following analyses including ARDL and else fall questionable and prove to be unreliable and invalid when such a non-normal dataset is used; and (2) the authors seem to have misreported the results which question their research ethics and integrity (even the results of all the rest analyses could be misreported to present biased results). <o:p></o:p>

Also, while in the above section 5% level significance (ignoring significance of any variable that associates p-value >5% but <10%) is taken as a benchmark for statistical significance, in section 4.7 Granger Causality they use 10% as a benchmark for interpreting the results. This indicates that the authors use the significance level according to their will and their biased intention in interpreting the findings. This also significantly violates the research ethics and norms.<o:p></o:p>

In addition, I ran the ARDL using the reported data (although not reported with these comments) but found significant differences with the lag length and results reported in the paper. I would strongly recommend the authors confirm data normality first, re-run all analyses, and then resubmit the paper including the results obtained directly from their software as an attachment to the resubmission so that they can be verified and confirmed. The authors are requested to justify and clarify their position elaborately.<o:p></o:p>

(3) Although the results reported seem to be a misrepresentation due to using a non-normal time series dataset and misrepresented JB statistics, the ARDL ECM (short-run) results are not explained. The authors imply report the table and explain the 'ec' value but do not explain and justify the results presented in the table. There are certain results that require thorough and solid arguments otherwise they appear unacceptable. For example, the results suggest increases in energy consumption (ENC) reduce CO2 emissions which is clearly against the reality in the context of Bangladesh where fossil fuel is the basis for almost 100% of all forms of energy consumed. The authors need to justify this finding and provide clear policy implications against these results (the current policy implication section does not cover the short-run findings and needs overall expansion with specificity). Explanation and justification requirement also applies to the Granger Causality test as to why ENC does not cause CO2 where it shows a short-run impact (the two are contradictory). 

(4) The paper is loosely written and the English language needs thorough improvement. For example, for Table 2, the authors state, "the null hypothesis that these variables are normally distributed since their test statistics (or p values) are larger than the 5% significance level". The statement is linguistically confusing as it is not the test statistics but instead the p-values that need to be compared with the significance level. <o:p></o:p>

Please submit your revised manuscript by 04 September 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,

Suborna Barua

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

Journal Requirements:

1. We would like to request for copy editing.

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Please respond to the above-mentioned comments and resubmit.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

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

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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

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

-->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

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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

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-->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: All comments are duly addressed by the author(s).

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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

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[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: JB test (1).docx

PCLM-D-24-00089R2

Exploring the nexus between environmental degradation and living standard in Bangladesh: Evidence from ARDL and ECM Technique

PLOS Climate

Dear Dr. Pramanik,

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.

I am still not convinced with the author responses to my previous observations (as follows), and thus need further attention from the authors without which this paper cannot be considered for acceptance.

(1) If the optimal lag length is identified as 1, it is unclear why a different AIC best-fitting criterion (1, 0, 0, 0, 1) has been used. The authors need to justify this or redo the analysis using any of them (either 1 for all variables or whatever AIC suggests) appropriate justification.  

(2)  The authors claim that the data for all variables are normally distributed since their test JB statistics are not statistically significant. Their claim of normality is clearly under question as I ran the normality test using the same JB test. Please refer to the attached file from my previous email on the JB test, which clearly showed that the JB statistics for individual variables, such as LNCO2 and LNGDP are clearly significant at 5%. Further, considering the whole dataset, the ALL data JB statistic is also significant at a 1% level. These results suggest that the null can be rejected and thus data for these variables are not normality distributed. If these results are accepted (as I have found) the data used for the entire paper does not meet the fundamental criteria to run ARDL or ECM.

I would strongly recommend the authors confirm data normality first, re-run all analyses, and then resubmit the paper including the results obtained directly from their software as an attachment to the resubmission so that they can be verified and confirmed. The authors are requested to justify and clarify their position elaborately.

(3) This comment I made has not been addressed at all - although the results reported seem to be a misrepresentation due to using a non-normal time series dataset and misrepresented JB statistics, the ARDL ECM (short-run) results are not well-explained. Each result needs to be elaborated and justified by arguments and previous studies. The authors simply report the table and explain the 'ec' value but do not explain and justify the results presented in the table. There are certain results I can that require thorough and solid arguments otherwise, they appear unacceptable. 

(4) I am confused about the consistency of results across the techniques applied. For example, in the ARDL we find FPI has a negative impact on CO2 emissions. However, the Granger Causality test shows CO2 has a statistically significant causality towards FPI; how do you explain and justify this reverse causality? Is it alright to estimate an ARDL equation when one (or more) of the independent variables has (have) a reverse causality towards the dependent variable? The authors need to check and ensure that the results found in the ARDL are consistent with those of the rest of the methods. If this cannot be explained it is hard to draw a solid conclusion.

(4) Again, both ARDL and ECM results must be elaborately discussed just not merely stating their significance. Each impact found needs to be supported by arguments and literature. The Conclusion section needs significant improvement: (i) a conclusion needs to be drawn from overall findings reflecting all the results and linkage between the results of each variable; (ii) realistic and specific policy implications need to be pointed out against each conclusion drawn from the results.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Nov 14 2024 11:59PM. 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,

Suborna Barua

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

Journal Requirements:

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

PCLM-D-24-00089R3

Exploring the nexus between environmental degradation and living standard in Bangladesh: Evidence from ARDL and ECM Technique

PLOS Climate

Dear Dr. Pramanik,

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 Apr 06 2025 11:59PM. 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,

Stephane Goutte

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Exploring the nexus between environmental degradation and living standard in Bangladesh: Evidence from ARDL and ECM Technique

PCLM-D-24-00089R4

Dear Mr. Pramanik,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'Exploring the nexus between environmental degradation and living standard in Bangladesh: Evidence from ARDL and ECM Technique' 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,

Stephane Goutte

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Reviewer Comments (if any, and for reference):