A Classification and Interpretation of Methodological Approaches to Pursue Natural Capital Valuation in Forest Research

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper presents in a coherent manner an extremely interesting and current topic, even if the number of papers published on this topic in the web of schinece analyzed does not reflect the economic and social importance of the topic.

The authors present the findings in an easy-to-follow format and a logical sequence

In the introductory section you mention that natural capital can be treated as an economic asset. You are absolutely right, but I think your article could benefit from a little more insight into what you mean when you say natural capital. In the accounting balance there are balance items such as land,  and plantations, biological assets that can all be the object of your concerns.

If you consider it appropriate, you could create a mind map regarding Classification of NC initiatives emerging from the literature on forests and woodlands in the 350 Sco ish landscape to describe more simply the 7 initiatives

You need to expand the conclusions section , this being undersized in relation to the article and can include limitations and future research directions

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Please check the spelling and grammar, there are some phrases that can be reformulated.

Please check if you have included all the important bibliographic references. The arrangement on the page and overall article form is ok

 

Author Response

Comments for reviewers

Reviewer 1

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper presents in a coherent manner an extremely interesting and current topic, even if the number of papers published on this topic in the web of schinece analyzed does not reflect the economic and social importance of the topic.

The authors present the findings in an easy-to-follow format and a logical sequence

In the introductory section you mention that natural capital can be treated as an economic asset. You are absolutely right, but I think your article could benefit from a little more insight into what you mean when you say natural capital. In the accounting balance there are balance items such as land,  and plantations, biological assets that can all be the object of your concerns.

We thank the reviewer for the interesting comment provided. We decided to take it into consideration extending the meaning of natural capital because in the paper the concept of natural capital goes beyond mere economic accounting. We did this by modifying the introduction (see mainly lines 29-42).

We have originally provided a standard definition of natural capital as proposed by the economic literature that reflects the economic concept of capital. However, we realise that the classification of natural capital approach provided in this paper explores the concept of natural capital in a more extensive way that comprehends a range of natural and biological assets and ecosystem services including relational values between humans and places. We have now provided an extended view of natural capital in the Introduction considering that the concept of natural capital can be used to express a plurality of values that cannot be captured only by economic concepts. 

If you consider it appropriate, you could create a mind map regarding Classification of NC initiatives emerging from the literature on forests and woodlands in the 350 Sco ish landscape to describe more simply the 7 initiatives

A mind map can be an interesting graphical solution. We think that if all the categories were provided in this map it would be necessary to explain how and why the categories proposed are put in reciprocal relationship. However, this would go beyond the scope of the paper generating a longer paper requiring more thoughts for the discussions. Our goal was to classify approaches to valuing natural capital and refer to them to propose in the discussions how they can be used for a more participatory decision making.

You need to expand the conclusions section, this being undersized in relation to the article and can include limitations and future research directions

We have expected the conclusions emphasising limitations of the work done and better summarising ideas for future research that we treated in more details in the discussions (see section Emerging gaps and suggestions for future research: towards the integration of valuation methods).

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Please check the spelling and grammar, there are some phrases that can be reformulated.

The paper has been reviewed by coauthors that are English native speaking. We think that all spelling and grammar errors are now removed.  

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,

your overview of published approaches on investigating nature based solutions brings updated information on state of art in this field. Given high importance of NC in the context of Green Deal European policy research brings key messages for not only academia but policy makers and decision takers as well. NC accounting is one key tools for transforming EU economy towards a more sustainable format, and thus need to be investigated more in depth. The paper is in general well written and seems to be comprehensive enough, so my suggestions are directed mostly to improve the clarity of it.

I have a few general and some more detailed comments which are give in the following paragraph.

General comments

Comment #1: I think references are not cited correctly. The MDPI Forests uses numbered style [1,2, ...]

Comment #2: Table 1; the category "New solutions to needs" seems a bit vague. The entire papers is constructed around the premise that NC can be seen as a solution to unsustainable use of forest resources thus making this individual category a bit to general and not really needed. I may be wrong, and you just need to define it more clearly.

Comment #3: Figure 4; not all categories from this graph are later discussed. Why so? Is there a reason?

Comment #5: Conclusions need to be a bit more concrete so that especially policy makers can integrate the findings into their work.

Detailed comments

Comment #1: lines 287-288

"second half of the first decade of the 21st century" is too complicated. Just use a time frame e.g. 2005-2010.

Comments #2: lines 314-326

Where do these categories come from? This was not clear to me. Either explain how you defined them or refer to previous research where they were used.

Comment #3: line 515

"Nature as one of the capitals" seems a bit oddly written. Can you rephrase it?

Author Response

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Reviewer 2

Dear authors,

your overview of published approaches on investigating nature based solutions brings updated information on state of art in this field. Given high importance of NC in the context of Green Deal European policy research brings key messages for not only academia but policy makers and decision takers as well. NC accounting is one key tools for transforming EU economy towards a more sustainable format, and thus need to be investigated more in depth. The paper is in general well written and seems to be comprehensive enough, so my suggestions are directed mostly to improve the clarity of it.

I have a few general and some more detailed comments which are give in the following paragraph.

We appreciate the valuable comments provided by the reviewer. Our answers are provided below.

General comments

Comment #1: I think references are not cited correctly. The MDPI Forests uses numbered style [1,2, ...]

Citations are now reported using a numbered style. All the references are now listed in a correct way following the standard referencing approach of the journal.

Comment #2: Table 1; the category "New solutions to needs" seems a bit vague. The entire papers is constructed around the premise that NC can be seen as a solution to unsustainable use of forest resources thus making this individual category a bit to general and not really needed. I may be wrong, and you just need to define it more clearly.

The comment made by the reviewer is pertinent. NC can be considered a way to manage in a more sustainable way the use of forests and woodlands. The category “new solution to new needs” refer mainly to the possibility to overcome those issues arising from difficult relationships. We decide to reformulate this category as “Importance of collaboration”.  You can find these changes and improved description for this category in the Methods and Results, including tables and figures.

Comment #3: Figure 4; not all categories from this graph are later discussed. Why so? Is there a reason?

What the reviewer says is correct. Not all the categories (themes) proposed in the Figure 4 are discussed. It is mentioned in the discussions that four main themes (reflecting more than 70% of the papers reviewed) are discussed. We opted for a selection of what we considered to be the most important ideas fitting within some of the NC approaches explored in the previous sections to achieve the aim of the paper (see line 634-640).

Comment #5: Conclusions need to be a bit more concrete so that especially policy makers can integrate the findings into their work.

We have decided according to the comments of other reviewers to include limitations and additional research in the conclusions. We have also focussed attention on the possibility to use the themes discussed to propose the simple idea of a framework that may address natural capital valuation in participatory approaches for better decision making.

Detailed comments

Comment #1: lines 287-288

"second half of the first decade of the 21st century" is too complicated. Just use a time frame e.g. 2005-2010.

Changed as suggested by the reviewer

Comments #2: lines 314-326

Where do these categories come from? This was not clear to me. Either explain how you defined them or refer to previous research where they were used.

It is now explained in the methods that these categories are internally produced. Although they are subjective, they reflect a range of ideas emerging from the literature and align with the ideas of natural capital valuation for decision making proposed in the UK guideline ENCA. See literature reference ENCA 2023.

Comment #3: line 515

"Nature as one of the capitals" seems a bit oddly written. Can you rephrase it?

We recognise that there are approaches based on the integration of multiple capitals (e.g., human, social, economic, manufactured, financial, natural). Under this framework (see Capitals Coalitions, 2021 - https://capitalscoalition.org/publication/principles-of-integrated-capitals-assessments/), we may consider that natural capital can be considered one of the capitals needed by a society to produce wellbeing. This is now better stated in the description of this group of papers describing the integrated relationships between NC and other types of capital. We have reformulated the title of this category as “Nature in relation with multiple capitals”. A better description of this category is provided in the methods and results.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

A classification and interpretation of methodological approaches to pursue natural capital valuation in forest research

The paper reviews natural capital valuation approaches in the context of woodland, 7 forest, and riparian ecosystems. It is a very interesting topic. The article is a well-structured and very useful for researchers interested in the field. The authors analysed in the detail research progress in this area.

However, several issues need to be addressed before the paper can be considered for publication:

·       It would be appropriate in the introduction to establish the scientific hypotheses that were to be achieved through the analyses and would be evaluated in the discussions, it would contribute to a more scientific paper

·       In my opinion, the article is more of a literature review rather than a scientific paper, but it has a value added

·       Conclude the discussion by suggesting potential directions for future research in the field of natural capital valuation. Identify areas that warrant further investigation and encourage scholars to explore these topics in subsequent studies

Specific comments to the review:

1.     What does it add to the subject area compared with other published material?

The paper provides an overview of NC research in the field of forestry, which is an added value of the article. Perhaps it would be appropriate to add scientific hypotheses as I stated in my comment

The authors state that the paper proposes first overview of the “academic climate” in NC studies targeting the woodland and forest context at international scale. My comment was: It would be appropriate in the introduction to establish the scientific hypotheses that were to be achieved through the analyses and would be evaluated in the discussions, it would contribute to a more scientific paper. Scientific hypotheses such as: the prevailing methods and topics of NC research in forestry are similar to those in other environmental sectors, the priorities of natural capital valuation in forest research have changed in last 30 years, etc.

the comment was of a recommendatory nature and not mandatory

2.     What specific improvements should the authors consider regarding the methodology and results?

The methodology is well chosen and the results are described in detail

In the discussion, based on the knowledge gained from the analysis of contributions for the years 1991-2022, it would be outlined how research in this area will probably develop. Present a short philosophical polemic on how research in this area could develop. It can be expanded or followed up on the last paragraph in the Conclusion section. It can be developed or followed up on the last paragraph in the part Conclusion.

Author Response

Reviewer 3

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

A classification and interpretation of methodological approaches to pursue natural capital valuation in forest research

 

The paper reviews natural capital valuation approaches in the context of woodland, 7 forest, and riparian ecosystems. It is a very interesting topic. The article is a well-structured and very useful for researchers interested in the field. The authors analysed in the detail research progress in this area.

 

However, several issues need to be addressed before the paper can be considered for publication:

 

• It would be appropriate in the introduction to establish the scientific hypotheses that were to be achieved through the analyses and would be evaluated in the discussions, it would contribute to a more scientific paper

The intention of the paper was to address and classify typologies of NC approaches for the analysis of forests and woodlands with the goal of establishing initial gaps and propose avenues for the implementation of valuation in decision making, with focus on participatory approaches. This is now reported at the end of the Introduction before the paragraph describing the structure of the paper (Line 90-103).

  In my opinion, the article is more of a literature review rather than a scientific paper, but it has a value added

Thanks a lot for this consideration. The paper was designed to review aspects of natural capital valuation in forest context as proposed in the previous comment.  

• Conclude the discussion by suggesting potential directions for future research in the field of natural capital valuation. Identify areas that warrant further investigation and encourage scholars to explore these topics in subsequent studies

We have proposed suggestions for new research avenues in the discussions (see section Emerging gaps and suggestions for future research: towards the integration of valuation methods) and made a summary in the conclusions as suggested by other reviewers. In particular, we have highlighted new ideas about how natural capital valuation can be used and integrated in practice to propose better decision making for addressing the future challenges of forests and woodlands.

Specific comments to the review:

 

1. What does it add to the subject area compared with other published material?

 

The paper provides an overview of NC research in the field of forestry, which is an added value of the article. Perhaps it would be appropriate to add scientific hypotheses as I stated in my comment

The authors state that the paper proposes first overview of the “academic climate” in NC studies targeting the woodland and forest context at international scale. My comment was: It would be appropriate in the introduction to establish the scientific hypotheses that were to be achieved through the analyses and would be evaluated in the discussions, it would contribute to a more scientific paper. Scientific hypotheses such as: the prevailing methods and topics of NC research in forestry are similar to those in other environmental sectors, the priorities of natural capital valuation in forest research have changed in last 30 years, etc.

the comment was of a recommendatory nature and not mandatory

Thanks to the reviewer for this comment. We take this comment as very valuable, and we have amended the Introduction as suggested above by the reviewer. As proposed in the previous point, the Introduction describes why we have addressed this literature review and used results and any considerations emerged in the discussions to propose new avenues for addressing valuation approaches based on natural capital for better decision making. See Introduction from line 90 to line 103.

 

2. What specific improvements should the authors consider regarding the methodology and results?

 

The methodology is well chosen and the results are described in detail

 

In the discussion, based on the knowledge gained from the analysis of contributions for the years 1991-2022, it would be outlined how research in this area will probably develop. Present a short philosophical polemic on how research in this area could develop. It can be expanded or followed up on the last paragraph in the Conclusion section. It can be developed or followed up on the last paragraph in the part Conclusion.

It is always difficult to mention how research will develop. However, we have provided avenues of future directions for research in the discussions (see section Emerging gaps and suggestions for future research: towards the integration of valuation methods) that we think are relevant for decision making and that build on the results of our review and on the emerging gaps. This is also briefly summarised in the conclusions that provides a quick overview of the main findings from the review and the way forward that the research in natural capital valuation can take to support decision making (see mainly conclusions from line 805).

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The author responded punctually to the received suggestions. The article through the chosen topic will be of interest to the public. I have no additional comments.

Author Response

No new comments are necessary in this second round of the revision process

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors, thank you for considering all my commnets/suggestions. I have no further ones.

Author Response

No new comments are necessary in this second round of the revision process

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

comments have been incorporated and I propose to accept the paper in its present form

has no other comments

Author Response

No new comments are necessary in this second round of the revision process