Understanding Socio-Economic and Environmental Impacts of Agroforestry on Rural Communities

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a good paper that raised my expectations but did not meet them.

While the title states that agroforestry addresses socio-economic issues,  the paper is rather weak in this area, mentioning income, resilience  and food security in rather broad terms and very weakly concluding it "might also become a solution for the existing socio-economic issues." This sets up expectations that these issues will be clearly elaborated on, however, only a few examples are cherry-picked from the literature with no base-line or alternatives or clear case study to compare to (a standard in impact assessment) which leaves the reader wondering why this paper is being written? To throw out some ideas collected from the literature, like the simple table (there are of course many other social issues to consider, I assume this is just a starting point) provided)? Which communities "might" benefit and when?

Perhaps a more solid and clear case study that establishes the context and baseline, looks at criteria and shows costs and benefits across a range of alternatives would help the reader understand the relative impacts. 

Or the paper thesis needs to be changed to here are some examples from around the world regarding agroforestry for you to consider as they might help, they might not. We suggest considering agroforestry as an alternative and suggest using a standard impact assessment process to consider tradeoffs.

 

 

 

Author Response

We appreciate your time for reviewing our manuscript and providing constructive feedback. The paper aims to raise the awareness on the agroforestry’s impact assessment. We did not compare study cases on how impact assessments were done. We added some examples from around the world regarding agroforestry’s impact assessments (in Table 2). We collecting previous studies about the impact assessment of agroforestry in developing countries to give general picture on impact assessment.

Based on the previous studies about the impact assessment of agroforestry we collected, we highlighted that there is still limited research about impact assessment of agroforestry which covered the integration of social, economic and environmental impact in long term context. We also raise an awareness that the majority of agroforestry studies however, perform impact assessments based on the individual parameter (be it social, economic or environmental parameters separately). Thus, we added one more sub-titles about setting up the baseline: revisiting the research gap on agroforestry impact assessment.  We gave study cases as example and baseline of impact assessment of agroforestry by using Public Goods Tool (PG tool) and RISE tools as a multi-criteria analysis-based sustainability assessment which covered social, economic, governance and environmental impacts. Moreover, those tools also able identify the tradeoffs from the agroforestry.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Thiis is an interesting paper on a topic of socio-economic import. The strenghts lie in the papers clarity, organization and the relevance of the topic

The authors should however revise the paper on theses lines:

The submission seeks to explain the role of agroforestry in socio-economic transformation. The strenghtslie in the identification of a gap in theliterature but one weakneess here is that the authors make spotty comments on a number of jurisdictions. They should focus on 2-3 jurisdictions and thus provide more dtail. This will strenghten the submission

 

Second, on p3 the authors suggest regulation could be provided to fill regulatory gaps in any agroforestry agenda. This should be fleshed out especially per the provision of private regulation as the authors seem to suggest. Lessons can be drawn from the role of the Forests Stewardship Council

 

I infer from the paper thatthe authors see a need for collaboration by communities in the field of agroforestry. This willl require some insights from the work of Elinor Ostrom and how local users can organize and regulate common-pool resources wihtout state direction

 

The paper lacks insights from the role of institutions and organizations in achieving agroforestry goals. The authors suggest a national agenda of sorts works against agroforestry but do not detail this. Is there path dependence? Do bureaucracies and other elites benefit from the status quo? These questins are not answered - they should be with examples from a few jurisdictions

 

 

Comments for author File: Comments.docx

Author Response

We appreciate your time for reviewing our manuscript and providing constructive feedback.

We have elaborated and developed the paper while taking into account your suggestions, especially regarding:

• Adding 2 or 3 study cases to enhance the depth and robustness
• The authors could have provided a bit more detail from a narrower set of case studies

The paper aims to raise the awareness on the agroforestry’s impact assessment. We did not compare study cases on how impact assessments were done and give detailed information on certain study case. We added some examples from around the world regarding agroforestry’s impact assessments (in Table 2). We collecting previous studies about the impact assessment of agroforestry in developing countries to give general picture on impact assessment. Based on the previous studies about the impact assessment of agroforestry we collected, we highlighted that there is still limited research about impact assessment of agroforestry which covered the integration of social, economic and environmental impact in long term context. We also raise an awareness that the majority of agroforestry studies however, perform impact assessments based on the individual parameter (be it social, economic or environmental parameters separately). Thus, we added one more sub-titles about setting up the baseline: revisiting the research gap on agroforestry impact assessment.  

We added study cases on doing impact assessment using multi-criteria analysis-based sustainability assessment which covered social, economic, governance and environmental impacts. We added study cases on using multi-criteria analysis-based sustainability assessment such as PG Tool (Public Good) and RISE Tools. 

We provide additional part about the issues mentioned above in the last paragraph from the paper. This part explains about how institutions contribute to manage local common-pool resources, filling the regulatory gap and help the ecological system. For instance, we mentioned that some studies show strong evidence that local communities can establish institutions to manage local resources (Bray and Klepeis, 2005) and etc.

Then, we also provide study case (Binam et al, 2017) in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Senegal  (Binam et al, 2017) which assessed the effect of local institutional on adopting agroforestry innovations can be one of the examples. The effects that being analyzed focus on FMNR (farmer managed natural regeneration), income, agricultural production, and caloric intake and diet. The result showed that well-structured informal and formal institutions provide better collaboration attitude, good management and natural resource protection, as well as better livelihoods.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear colleagues!There is detailed analytical review of modern research on the topic of the article in the paper. Please take into account my recommendations for improving the manuscript.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We appreciate your time for reviewing our manuscript and providing constructive feedback. To respond (1), (2), (3)’s comment, we decided to not give more information about our detailed contribution on agroforestry, comparing methodologies and comparative analysis how the social, economic, and environmental aspects of agroforestry work in developed countries. The paper aims to raise the awareness on the agroforestry’s impact assessment. We did not compare study cases on how impact assessments were done and give detailed information on certain study case. We added some examples from around the world regarding agroforestry’s impact assessments (in Table 2). We collecting previous studies about the impact assessment of agroforestry in developing countries to give general picture on impact assessment. Based on the previous studies about the impact assessment of agroforestry we collected, we highlighted that there is still limited research about impact assessment of agroforestry which covered the integration of social, economic and environmental impact in long term context. We also raise an awareness that the majority of agroforestry studies however, perform impact assessments based on the individual parameter (be it social, economic or environmental parameters separately).

 After that we provided further information in our new sub-tittles about:  setting up the baseline: revisiting the research gap on agroforestry impact assessment. In this part we explained that based on our findings that there are limited studies about impact assessment of agroforestry which covered the integration of social, economic and environmental impact in long term context. Then, we give some example on doing multi-criteria analysis-based sustainability assessment using PG Tool (Public Good Tools) and RISE methodology.

 For (4)’s comment, our paper aims to improve the awareness on socio-economic and environmental impact of agroforestry, so we decided not to discuss about whether we have implemented or will implement certain agroforestry concepts. Yet for sure it can be interesting topics for future research and or programs.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx