Natural Assurance Schemes Canvas: A Framework to Develop Business Models for Nature-Based Solutions Aimed at Disaster Risk Reduction

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an important contribution of the use of NBS in multiple settings, and has furthered the opportunity to understand the value generated through NBS.  

The demonstration examples provided are current and relevant to the overall literature concerning the financing and valuation of NBS. 

Acceptance of NBS to manage DRR can only assist in the pursuit of managing climate change. This paper provides a methodology to determine the benifits both tangible and intangible. 

There are minor modifications of expression or sentence structure at lines :

46,  suggest- "losses caused by" 

157,  suggest - "allows capture of "

333, suggest - "there is large variability"

334, -  suggest - "which skews the interpretation"  

401, suggest - "nevertheless tied to the risk"

414, suggest "fully implemented"

I find that some of the sentence structures are often a bit long and more defined as lists of elements running over 4 or 5 lines.  Maybe, these could be tightened to reflect a more concise and perhaps clearer emphasis.  

e.g. 445-449, 454-458, 462-467, 483-486, 513-517, 536-541, 548-553.

This may improve the readability,  and give the paper a bit more edge, in terms of the  findings. 

Author Response

The author appreciates the suggestions for improvement provided by the reviewer and has addressed them as described below:

46, suggest- "losses caused by"

Answer: the suggested formulation has been applied.

157, suggest - "allows capture of "

Answer: the suggested formulation has been applied.

333, suggest - "there is large variability"

Answer: the suggested formulation has been applied.

334, - suggest - "which skews the interpretation"

Answer: the suggested formulation has been applied.

401, suggest - "nevertheless tied to the risk"

Answer: the suggested formulation has been applied.

414, suggest "fully implemented"

Answer: the suggested formulation has been applied.

I find that some of the sentence structures are often a bit long and more defined as lists of elements running over 4 or 5 lines. Maybe, these could be tightened to reflect a more concise and perhaps clearer emphasis.

e.g. 445-449, 454-458, 462-467, 483-486, 513-517, 536-541, 548-553.

Answer: the suggested sentences have been revised, enlightened and concentrated to give a more concise message.

This may improve the readability, and give the paper a bit more edge, in terms of the findings.

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors provide an article which shows an approach for the development of business ideas regarding nature based solutions. Coming from a practical point of view the real benefit of the framework is not clearly visible. The practical relevance of the framework should be worked out more clearly. Therefore overall the questions which need to be considered are: What is the real benefit of the framework? Why should it be used in practice?

Line 54: insert a short example for a NBS to make it easier for the reader to understand. The topic is very abstract.

Please do not use the personalized form “we” in the article

Line 266: Please exchange the arrows with words

Figure2: This figure is not supporting the content of the paper and rather irritating….

Figure 3-5 contain way too much information and are rather overstaining the reader. It seems like these were taken out of a project report rather than developed for the paper.

Author Response

The authors thank the reviewer for the critical view and suggestions for improvement. However, there are a few points that we find in the need to refute providing detailed explanations and motivations. Here below we address all the reviewer’s comments one by one.

REVIEWER 2

The authors provide an article which shows an approach for the development of business ideas regarding nature based solutions. Coming from a practical point of view the real benefit of the framework is not clearly visible. The practical relevance of the framework should be worked out more clearly. Therefore overall the questions which need to be considered are: What is the real benefit of the framework? Why should it be used in practice?

Answers:

What is the real benefit of the framework?

It facilitates identifying and organizing the information required to build a business model for DRR NBS and communicate it to the public/investors. This is the main purpose and value of the framework. It provides an organized logic to show the information, which is lacking in other business model canvas tailored or not to NBS. Besides, the framework is specific to highlight the risk reduction value of NBS, which other frameworks don't.

Why should it be used in practice?

Using it will help actors interested in promoting or implementing an NBS to identify in an organized way the resources and agents they need to engage. Showing the relevant information to investors and the public for attracting interest, acceptance and funding is not always straightforward. The proposed framework (with higher or lower detail) provides a visual tool to facilitate this task, and that is the main value for its use in practice. In fact, we have already received proofs of interest from other projects to use the canvas for the identification of NBS business models in their case studies (e.g ACT on NBS, Cyprus case study).

The answer to these questions is provided several times along the text, and the practicality and usefulness of the framework is specifically addressed in the discussion section. Particularly specific explicit reference to the benefits and practicality of the framework are made in the following lines:

Line 29: Abstract: showing an eye-shot summary of critical information to attract funding.

Lines 127-133: Hence, the NAS canvas can be used for the identification of potential business models and the required elements for NBS implementation, but also serves as a comprehensive methodological framework to describe the features of an NBS implementation project. It also helps to diagnose the type of information required and available or not available to document the results in a structured and clear way that is useful for engaging and convincing investors and promotors, and potentially attract interest on this type of project initiative.

Lines 173-189: The canvas is a quick visual way to compile the key information in a simple eye-shot format. However, it can sometimes get difficult to read and follow and falls short of space when more detailed descriptions with substantial information need to be reported. Therefore, a sequential NAS canvas methodological framework is presented consisting of a flow of steps that can be reported in a table format for detailed descriptions. The steps are structured in a linear sequence of blocks that cluster the different components describing how the value provided by the NAS flows from the supply to the demand side, and the different elements required in this process. This set of steps also allows to provide a structure and logic that underpins the canvas display (the NAS canvas tool) presented in section 2.3, which also facilitates the reading and understanding of the more visual and traditional canvas format.

Discussion: lines 456-498. These two paragraphs justify the keys of the usefulness of the presented framework AND TOOL: “The importance of feasible and innovative business models for financing and mainstreaming NBS implementation, as well as the need for tools and approaches to identify these, has been increasingly raised by various institutions assessing and promoting the role of NBS in a green and sustainable economy and recovery [24-26]. These include some national and supra-national governmental institutions such as the European Commission [27]. A proof of this is the inclusion of research lines to explore the business model potential for NBS in most of the NBS based projects funded under several calls of the Horizon 2020 program since 2016. These initiatives have resulted in an array of new or adapted tools to describe NBS-related business models. Some examples include different adaptations of the traditional business model canvas [7,8,28-30], as well as catalogues of successful examples documented around the world [31,32]. Although these might appear similar, in fact each of these tools has been developed with a different focus and applied to different contexts and scales, and thus provide different features that may be better suited and specific for some NBS projects than to others. Table 2 provides an overview of some of the most recent tools on business models for NBS, highlighting their focus and scale of application.

Table 2 illustrates where the NAS canvas stands and how it differentiates from other existing tools, as the only one tailored specifically for DRR and CCA related NBS and strategies (composed of one or several measures) at any possible scale, from large basins and aquifers to localized interventions in urban areas. This specific suitability stems from the application of the NAIAD framework across nine demo cases that spanned different geographical scales (neighbourhood, urban, medium and large scale catchments) that accounts for the assurance and insurance values as risk reduction or avoided damages and costs as the primary services and main value provided by this type of NBS, whose accountability is critically important to provide evidence of their effectiveness not only in biophysical terms but also in economic and social terms.”

Line 54: insert a short example for a NBS to make it easier for the reader to understand. The topic is very abstract.

Answer: an example of NBS has been included to facilitate understanding.

Please do not use the personalized form “we” in the article

Answer: the article has been revised and all the "we" forms have been removed.

Line 266: Please exchange the arrows with words

Answer: The arrows have been exchanged by words.

Figure2: This figure is not supporting the content of the paper and rather irritating….

Answer: The authors do not agree with the figure not supporting the content. Furthermore, this figure is the most essential in the paper as it presents and provides the blank tool template that can be uptaken and used by the reader. The colour code makes explicit the origin of each of the components (i.e. traditional canvas, ppp canvas or naiad framework) so it facilitates comprehension of the tool development process. Finally, it illustrates the logic of how the elements have been located and displayed in the canvas, following the supply - flow of services - demand logic. This figure has been used to present the NAS canvas in several conferences with very good acceptance and positive feedbacks. Therefore, the authors insist in keeping the figure. Furthermore, the authors must say that they find the appreciation of "irritating" unnecessarily despective and totally inappropriate and out of context.

The authors wonder if this comment by the reviewer may have a mistake and he would mean to refer to figure 1. Figure 1 may be a bit redundant and the authors were not completely convinced if it was worth including it, so in this case we would agree with the reviewer and be happy to remove it. We await a clarification on this point to apply the necessary change. Nevertheless, we still consider the use of the adjective “irrigating” totally inappropriate.

Figure 3-5 contain way too much information and are rather overstaining the reader. It seems like these were taken out of a project report rather than developed for the paper.

Answer: The authors acknowledge that the information contained in figures 3-5 is quite dense. However, it is considered necessary and of essential value for the readers who may want to deeply understand examples of business models and how to apply the canvas, including the type of information the components should contain. In our view, the article presents the results at two levels for two type of readers: for readers with a more general interest in understanding the concept of business models for NBS and looking at some examples, the level of information in the figures may be unnecessarily high. However, the text in the results section is aimed to highlight the main findings and most outstanding aspects of each example case, providing a more general overview. Therefore, these readers may ignore the figures and focus their attention on the explanatory text.

However, there is a potential second category of readers who may actually become interested in using or applying the canvas in their work. For these readers, the figures provide essential information on the level of detail recommended to disclose in each component, the type of information they can find both quantitative and qualitative, inspiration from the examples, etc. Therefore, we consider the figures of critical value.

This said, the authors would also like to point out that of course the canvases were made specifically for the paper. The paper is not the objective of the research, it is only the vehicle to communicate and disseminate the results, as all scientific articles should be considered in science. The NAS canvas template was initially developed in Word format sheets that were completed for the different examples by the project team and the corresponding local stakeholders, reiteratively revised and validated, and finally passed through a formatting process to condense the essential information and make them fit within one page to facilitate visualization. As a result, carefully formatted “tables” were generated for reproduction in reports and articles. Transferring these tables to other word templates with different formatting features (margins, etc.) was extremely cumbersome. The authors tried to copy paste the tables to insert them into the Sustainability template, but the formatting was lost and it became extremely difficult to fit the table within one page. Therefore, a decision to save the canvas tables as images and insert them as figures in the paper was taken. If this procedure is not considered appropriate by the editors or the reviewer, given the quality of the resulting images or for any other reason, the authors could consider trying to copy-paste the canvas tables in the template and undertake the editing and formatting required to fit them within one page, playing with the font size. However, we fear to find ourselves in the need to reduce the font too much or to have to delete some of the information that, as previously argued, is considered essential.

We leave the figures as they are in this version and wait for a consideration and decision on this matter by the editors and reviewer in light of the provided arguments. Should it be considered essential, the authors commit to carry out the mentioned cumbersome editing of the canvases to have them included in table format.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have responded to the comments and made appropriate adjustments within the manuscript. I would recommend it for publication. 

Reviewer 2 Report

The reviewer would like to apologize for the word " irritating". English is not my native language and in my mothertongue this word has not such a strong meaning.

Could Figure 3-5 be moved to the appendix? The contents of the illustrations cannot be grasped directly by the reader, but require specific examination.