Additionality and Leakage Resulting from PES Implementation? Evidence from the Ecuadorian Amazonia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1.Does the time change of the national forest policy affect the relevance of this study to PES and SBP?

2.How to determine the average annual net deforestation rates is correct and confirmed with such long-term period 190-2018 from SBP enrolled areas before and after SBP implementation?

3.The buffer zones around SBP analysis does not have the directionality of unequal weight according to the actual environmental conditions. Will the difference of environmental conditions affect the results?

4.Is it possible to provide a transfer matrix analysis of multi-period land cover between years 1990, 2000, 2008, 2014, 2016, and 2018?

5.Table 1, The change in 28 years does not seem to be great in different study sites. Whether the forest management pattern has not changed much, it is recommended to explain the possible reasons in detail.

6.The linear trend line in fig. 3 should have its statistics information to illustrate the reliability of the trend line.

7.

4.2. Additionality and self-selection:

8.Whether the forest management plan is the main factor of influence the avoided deforestation absent an initial deforestation risk.

9. PES design should consider the differences between time and place, what variables should be considered in this study?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The research presented by Gordillo et al. Aimed to assess the additionality and leakage effects of payments for environmental services (PES) in Ecuador. They compared defforestation rates of protected areas to that of (1) the same area before management (temporal comparison); (2) adjacent areas that are not protected (spatial comparison); and (3) the buffer zone surrounding the protected areas (extended spatial comparison). With the data, they concluded that PES significantly reduced defforestation rate spatially but not temporally suggesting that there is leakage effects but no additionality effect of PES. The overall presentation of the paper follows clear logic flow and is easy to understand. The analyses are appropriate. The results and conclusions are convincing. Below are some minor points that the authors might want to consider.

 

Comments

L16: it’s not until L42 in the introduction where the meaning of additionality and leakage are explained. Using those terms in the abstract without definitions may leaves some audience confused.

 

L189: In my opinion, section 2.4 should be moved to just after section 2.1 Study sites.

 

L233 and L244: The section titles seems unnecessarily long and plain. Consider changing to something more informative. For example, ‘No change of deforestation rate before and after SBP’.

 

L482: I I believe the sentence can be polished to deliver the message more clearly.

 

L510: A low peak? Maybe the authors mean ‘valley’?

 

L 599: Table 2 should be Table A2?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf