PCLM-D-26-00112

Drought Adaptation Mapping in the Southern African Development Community: a review

PLOS Climate

Dear Authors,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript entitled “Drought Adaptation Mapping in the Southern African Development Community: a review.” The reviewers find the topic timely and relevant, with strong potential to contribute to the field. However, substantial revisions are required before the manuscript can be considered for publication. In particular, please strengthen methodological transparency and reproducibility (including full search strategy, screening process, and coding definitions), clarify synthesis approaches and interpretation, and provide a complete Data Availability Statement with access to the underlying extraction dataset. Addressing these concerns will significantly improve the rigor and usability of your work.

We therefore invite you to revise and resubmit your manuscript after making the above major revisions.

Please submit your revised manuscript by May 21 2026 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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Sejian Veerasamy, MVSc & PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

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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?>

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: 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

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Review comments to the author (PLOS Climate)

This manuscript provides a timely and policy-relevant synthesis of drought adaptation evidence across the SADC region. The topic is well aligned with PLOS Climate’s scope, and the overall framing around adaptation strategies, enablers and barriers, maladaptation, and transformational claims is strong. The review is likely to be valuable to researchers and practitioners because it moves beyond simply asserting that adaptation is happening and instead tries to characterize what is being done and where important evidence gaps remain.

Methods, transparency, and reproducibility

The paper describes a structured evidence synthesis approach, including explicit inclusion/exclusion criteria, a PRISMA-style screening process, and a data extraction process involving up to two reviewers plus piloting and tool revision. That said, for a scoping review intended to map evidence systematically, the manuscript would be substantially strengthened by adding a bit more operational detail to ensure reproducibility. In particular, I encourage the authors to ensure the final manuscript clearly reports the full search strategy (databases searched, full search strings, dates of search, and any limits), the screening workflow (how duplicates were handled, how disagreements were resolved, whether inter-rater reliability was assessed), and the exact definitions/coding rules used for key constructs (especially “maladaptation” and “transformation”), ideally with examples.

Statistical analysis and synthesis appropriateness

Given the nature of the study (a scoping review/evidence map), the descriptive synthesis approach appears broadly appropriate. The manuscript does not seem to hinge on inferential statistics, and that is fine for this genre. However, wherever counts, proportions, rankings, or cross-tabulated patterns are presented (eg by country, sector, adaptation type, or SDG theme), it would help readers if the authors are explicit about denominators, unit of analysis, and any rules for multi-country or multi-sector papers (eg how one paper that covers several countries is counted). If the review makes comparative or trend-like claims (eg “increasing attention” post-2019, or differences across countries/sectors), the authors should ensure these are presented as evidence patterns in the included literature rather than as direct estimates of real-world adaptation prevalence, and should flag publication/language/indexing bias as a limitation.

Data availability and underlying data

A major issue for me is data availability. In the provided PDF, I can see PLOS/Editorial Manager template language describing the requirement to provide a Data Availability Statement, but I do not see an author-provided statement that specifies where the underlying extracted data can be accessed. For a scoping review, the “data underlying the findings” typically includes the final set of included studies (with full citation metadata), the PRISMA counts, and most importantly the coded/extracted dataset produced by the extraction tool (the structured variables used to generate the tables/maps and any synthesis). I strongly recommend that the authors deposit this extraction dataset (and the extraction form/codebook) in a stable public repository (eg OSF/Zenodo/Figshare) and include a clear Data Availability Statement with a persistent identifier. If legal/ethical constraints exist, the manuscript should state exactly what is restricted and provide a mechanism for qualified access.

Presentation and interpretation

The evidence-mapping orientation is a clear strength. To improve interpretability, I suggest the authors more explicitly separate (a) what the literature reports (eg adaptation actions described in papers) from (b) what is actually happening on the ground, since the review is necessarily conditional on what is published, indexed, and captured by the search strategy. A brief, explicit limitations paragraph discussing publication bias, uneven geographic research capacity, and the “study of adaptation” vs “adaptation itself” distinction would help avoid over-interpretation.

Publication ethics and related concerns

I did not see any obvious red flags related to dual publication or ethics from the material provided. Funding is disclosed (NIH/NIEHS support is noted). The authors should ensure that any competing interests statement is complete and that all supporting information referenced in the text (eg SM3/SM4) is provided and consistent with the final extracted dataset that underlies the main results.

Overall, I think the manuscript has a solid foundation and could be publishable after revisions, but a complete, actionable Data Availability Statement plus release of the underlying extraction dataset is important for compliance with PLOS policy and for the paper’s long-term value to the community.

Reviewer #2: The authors of this scientific review deserve credit for attempting, based on previous work (141) carried-out and published by other researchers, to document and compile data on how populations have adapted to the frequency and severity of droughts in recent years. Although such data existed, it was previously fragmented and did not provide sufficient information to assess progress, limitations, equity, and key priorities. This review aimed to fill these gaps and focused on studies published since 2020 that document the geographic, sectoral, and thematic distribution of drought adaptation and management strategies. The authors focused, among other things, on examining the range of adaptation strategies implemented within SADC, identifying enabling factors and common obstacles, assessing the conditions associated with success, and analyzing the risks of maladaptation, as well as approaches described as transformative. It appears that studies are concentrated in a small number of countries, primarily South Africa, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe, and that among the seven major sectors identified, only two play a dominant role: 1) agriculture, food, forestry, fibers, and fisheries, and 2) water. Furthermore, the authors highlighted significant gaps in the literature on ecosystem-based adaptation and private-sector responses. Adaptation measures are primarily implemented at the individual or community level, whereas strategies focused on institutions and governance are more often associated with transformative changes. In short, this review provides a regionally grounded evidence base to inform assessments of progress, limitations, and adaptation pathways that ensure vulnerable populations are not left behind. The figures, tables and references are well presented. It is a comprehensive review of great scientific interest.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Observations and corrections Manuscript PCLM-D-26-00112 .docx

Attachment

Submitted filename: Note for Editor and Authors PCLM-D-26-00112.docx

Drought Adaptation Mapping in the Southern African Development Community: a scoping review

PCLM-D-26-00112R1

Dear Dr. Leah Selters,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'Drought Adaptation Mapping in the Southern African Development Community: a scoping review' 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.

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

Best regards,

Sejian Veerasamy, MVSc & PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Reviewer Comments (if any, and for reference):