Evaluating Goal Programming as a Backcasting Tool to Assess the Impact of Local Stakeholder Determined Policies on the Future Provision of Ecosystem Services in Forested Landscapes

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors, 

I had the opportunity to go through the revised version of the paper “Evaluating Goal Programming as a Backcasting Tool to Assess the Impact of Local Stakeholder Determined Policies on the Future Provision of Ecosystem Services in Forested Landscapes” you have submitted to Forests. 

I attach a file including comments and remarks directly within the paper. 

In general terms not all the comments/issues raised during the first review round have been addressed: they are highlighted within the attached file. Please notice that also many “minor” issues have been disregarded and not addressed.

I have two additional remarks regarding the revised version you have submitted:

(1) I believe the changes in wording from “Expert group involvement” to “National level stakeholder involvement” (page 20 of 30) is not appropriate because the former is much more appropriate to indicate the kind of exercise you have performed. Please go back to the original version otherwise you have to make extremely clear your stakeholders only represent part of the different range of interests on forest management at the national scale. From your paper it is absolutely evident that these people have been approached to benefit from their experience and technical knowledge, however stakeholder involvement is more than this.

(2) The “Conclusions” sessions is too generic and builds on “feelings” (lines 213-214-215) rather than robust evidences: I am convinced there is much room for improvement here.

I strongly recommend you to take into consideration comments left behind and additional ones if you want to develop your paper to a form that is appropriate for publication.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1, 

Thank you for the feedback, we have now included the majority of it and offer responses to your comments in the attached pdf. These comments are added to the supplementary pdf you sent as a result of your most recent review. There are some places where adjustments were made based on your comments, but in a different part of the document. In this case, we flag that for you with review comments specifying "Response to Reviewer 1".  

Yours Sincerely,

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the updates.  Normally the authors would provide a letter explaining how they addressed comments.  I did not see that here.

There are still typographic issues such as abbreviating SFM several times.  What definitely needs to be changed are line 37:  "focus to an known as sustainable forest management"

(Looks like words are missing).

And Lines 27-30: This last sentence must be rewritten.  Maybe "We believe the backcasting approach has promise for future use in other landscapes, given the success of this approach in our study."   Or something like this.  Is this some reason to expect it would not work in other nations too?

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2

Thanks for your feedback. We have gone through the document again for typographic errors making several amendments. 

We have also amended your point in the Abstract and fixed the broken sentence at the beginning of the introduction. There are comments in the Manuscript referring to "Reviewer 2", where appropriate. 

Yours Sincerely, 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

I went through the revised version of your paper "Evaluating Goal Programming as a Backcasting Tool to Assess the Impact of Local Stakeholder Determined Policies on the Future Provision of Ecosystem Services in Forested Landscapes".

As far as I can see you have addressed most of the comments/issues raised during the second review round. I believe there is still room for improvement, nonetheless in my opinion the paper has achieved a form that is suitable for publication.

BR

Mauro Masiero

Author Response

Thanks Mauro, 

Best Regards, 

Edwin