Preserving Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in West African Forest, Watersheds, and Wetlands: A Review of Incentives

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In general the manuscript reads well and I think that it fits into the scope of journal Forests.

Line 37: Missing reference "Kabii, 1996"

Material an Methods: Could you please briefly desribe how you collected your literature.

Section 3 (lines 125-132): Here, I would suggest to add a map with the watersheds.

Lines 205, 291, 313, 588: Please check headline numbering

Lines 234-249 (section 4.3.): To my opinion, this section should be moved to section 3

Line 310: "... the inability of conservation payments to adequately compensate ES providers..." Could you please explain this more detailed?

Lines 408-449: I guess these sections should be moved to section 4

General:

To my mind, the program descriptions are a bit too extensive and the paper should focus a bit more on how programs can be implemented and obstacles be overcome.

Some spelling mistakes, some issues with the use of singular and plural, e.g. line 26 "describe" instead of "describes". I recommend a sound proof-reading.

I couldn't see the supplementary file. So, some of my comments might be answered there

Proposal: As REDD and REDD+ are an important part of your paper, why not shortly explain them e.g. in a box for readers who are not so  familiar with them?

Author Response

Please see file attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Review of Manuscript: Preserving Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in West African Forests watersheds and wetlands: A review of Incentives.

Overview: This paper attempts to review incentive-based forest conservation initiatives in West Africa by focusing on the mechanism structure, intended objectives and outcomes within a socio-cultural context of the livelihoods of the people. Generally, the authors approach to the review is fundamentally and technically good. The synthesis of ideas and linkage with the SDG brings out some novelty. My specific comments are however listed below.

Introduction: The introduction though very well written, I expected to see updated references. Most of the reference citations seem outdated. Example the information attributed to Kabii, (1996) could perhaps be found in FAO current forest outlooks on Africa. Also, Hillstrom and Hillstrom, (2003) should be updated.

 

Materials and Methods: While there seem to be nothing wrong with the approach of online and database searches in this type of review, I see that the search to proceed with analytical review is not comprehensive enough. Example, ITTO has supported a lot of conservation projects in West Africa overtime. However, I did not find a single ITTO funded projects. I also expected searches to cover most of the Forestry Research Institutes across the subregion who seem to be the implementors of most of these initiatives.

Another critical issue I expected to encounter is the time frame for the review. For such reviews, it would be important for readers to be informed about the timelines of focus.

 

West African wetlands, watershed and forests

This section provides an overall picture of the resource coverage in west Africa and highlights the diversity and estimated economic values thus far. I find this section very well written and the literature support adequate. However, the focus seems to dwell more on watersheds and wetlands with less emphasis on main land forest coverage. Again, am a bit uncomfortable with the projected economic value of above US$100,000 per hectare. What were the bases for this figure? Without the actual estimate, perhaps, it is important to compare with similar ecosystems for which some economic values have been estimated if any… Of course, this may not be the ideal situation.

Conservation projects in West Africa

The review under this section is technically good except my earlier concern that, a lot more coverage of past and ongoing projects can still be captured depending on the predefined time lines.

Outcomes.

The information on outcomes provides very useful impacts but the numbers to back these claims seem to be missing. For example on line 279, the statement on empowerment of local institutions for conservation activities seem general. In this instance, what form did such empowerment took, how many state institutional capacities were built among other things. I would use the tone provided on line 273 as a standard to somehow describe most of the outcome statements.

Discussion,

The discussion is well written, but the linkage to the key objective or the earlier sections seem to be weak. Perhaps, the problem is that it is generally voluminous and should be reduced to an appreciable number of pages without losing content. It should also be focused on the preceding sections while introducing new arguments that seem to support or prove otherwise.

One key dimension that seem to be missing either in the earlier sections or the discussion was the complex tenurial issues regarding forest coverage in West Africa and how that impacts on incentive-based conservation initiatives.

It would have also been ideal to see the impact of weak institutions and capacity to enforce laws on how these conservation-based initiatives have been rolled out in West Africa. Enforcement of laws and corruption seem to be a major challenge in the forestry sector of most African countries. Perhaps a sentence or two can briefly cheap in these governance aspects.

 

Conclusions: The concluding statements are very sound and points to policy recommendations and way forward. It provides a concise summary of the discussions highlighted in the paper.

Author Response

Please see file attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Your editing improved the quality of the paper a lot.