Integrating Key Insights of Sociological Risk Theory into the Ecosystem Services Framework
Robert Gale
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript "Integrating key insights of sociological risk theory into the ecosystem services framework" presents a tentative to link ES /SES with societal risk, aiming to increase society perception and, in this way, contribute to more efficient science/society connections.
The work is well-written and the several ideas/theories presented support (partially) the discussion.
Anyway, some parts of the work are quite "hard" to read, namely because several theories are presented and not linked with real world case studies. Please more objectivity: less sentences, the fundamental ones to explain each idea within the manuscript.
The authors use mostly biodiversity loss as core, even though the relation between biodiversity loss with the theories is vague and, in some parts, difficult to understand....
I believe that an effort should be made to reduce a bit same parts were several sentences linked by “Furthermore” “Moreover” create some difficulties for grabbing the reader (Societal risk explanations).
Also, I would ask for a more objective text in explaining the theories (ES/SES and Risk), maybe using tables summarizing the main concepts; the major differences…
The images are in general okay, although the last figure adds few values to the discussion and links between ES/ SES and societal risk.
Some ideas, like Irritation…are a bit odd to me, but I believe interesting.
The discussion is to generalist (is one of the most fragile parts of the work) and in this way is not able to summarize main conclusions and ideas: I suggest more effort in the interplay, maybe by finishing the work with “real-world case studies”, where the theories application and linkage is explained - could use known case studies, showing the importance in integrating this societal risk into ES/SES…I also suggest, in this part to use a what if analysis.
Author Response
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Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
General comments:
- The aims of this ms is to illuminate how risk theories could contribute to ecosystem services research. I see the value of this contribution and agree that the risk theories could be better integrated in the ES framework. However, how to operationalize it in practice still needs more explanations.
- The text is well written in general, with extensive descriptions of the selected risk theories. However, this turns into a concern, as it makes the text too long, with multiple and extensive quotations, and references, which could be significantly reduced without losing content. If so, the space could be used to give more clear examples of how to apply this concept in the ES community.
- My main concern is that the paper mention three different topics in parallel, without clear connections between them. While the main topic, the contributions of risk theories to ES research, is clear, the other two topics, regarding multifunctionality and data collection method for socio-cultural preference assessments are separate questions that don’t add much to the main one and could be ignored.
- Another concern is that references to other authors from the ES community using risk theories are largely missing. As it is currently presented it seems to be the first attempt to link ES to risk theories, but other authors have made some connections too. Therefore, the paper should more clearly highlight which are the novel contributions of this work.
- Finally, the writing style seems more appropriate to a commentary or opinion piece, as it contains many rhetoric questions and plain language commentaries. In addition, some editing is needed, check the use of brackets, grammar (articles missing, mixed subject I/we), and avoid colloquial language (“looking now at”, “we will now take a closer look at”, etc).
Detailed comments:
- Introduction
- The differences between cultural and sociological theory should be explained
- Is there any previous research linking ES to risk theories? For example, Sandra Lavorel and colleagues have used a similar approach related to climate change mitigation. This existing literature should be acknowledged and the distinct contribution of this work clearly highlighted.
- How the concept of “world risk society” is different from “a global risk for humans”? It should be more clearly explained if you refer to the same idea or not.
- ES
- How these approaches differ from the metrics employed to assess ES? If talking about ecological and economic approaches to assess ES, then social approaches should also be added, as all ES can be assessed from these three different approaches (as in the cited papers from Martín-López et al. 2014 Ecol. Indic., Felipe-Lucia et al. 2015 AMBIO). In this sense, the Science-Policy approach would be out of this typology, as it doesn’t provide a method per se to assess ES.
- Demand is not considered in the ecological approach, but in the social-ecological one.
- Ecological risk could reduce the potential supply of ES, not the material supply
- The economic approach is used not only to demonstrate value but also to compare values of ES (eg. in different contexts) in equal terms.
- It seems that the social-ecological approach mentioned here refers only to the social approach to assess ES, while this should refer to the combination of both ecological and social approaches, including questions on demand.
- ES-risk
- The beginning of this section is repetitive with the previous section – most of the paragraph could be removed.
- The link to sociological risk is not well introduced
- The meaning of constructivist and realistic approaches should be briefly explained
- The introduction to the different authors is quite unbalance; eg, mentioning full name, and nationality for the first author but not for the others.
- Missing clear connections to ES in the first two theories described
- Discussion
- The demand aspect could be better introduced if more explanations and context is given in the discussion section.
- Figure 5 requires more explanations: why is science in the society bubble and not in the natural or in between? Shouldn’t the global change drivers be the “irritation”? as depicted it seems that ES are not linked to the other bubbles. The arrows from Media are too short to know where they go.
- Refer to the number of the figure rather than to “the following figure”
- While I see the value of this contribution and agree that the risk theories could be better integrated in the ES framework, it is not currently well argued how to make this connection. Concrete examples could help, as well as perhaps include risk in the well-known cascade framework rather than in the Luhmann’s framework, which is new to the ES community.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
In terms of organisation and description, the research involving your contribution to the field needs to be delineated more clearly to be persuasive as new findings. The current version has more to do with a literature review than the investigation of research questions about what drives societal demand for ecosystem services, and how your reported key insights are revealed. The concluding sentence in the abstract and mention of 'attitude' is not explored in the paper. Attitudinal studies constitute a vast literature but the term is used only one in the paper and may not be relevant. My suggestion is to separate out analysis from description more systematically by focusing more clearly on your contribution.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
In my opinion, the article is very good. It is very well written and makes a very good reflection on the real risks of loss of SE and the perception of stakeholders of ES demand. The paper provides a vision from different fields of research and comparing different perspectives studying this phenomenon.
I understand that as it is a review of conceptual frameworks, this research does not emphasize more specific aspects of these theories, for example, in the case of SES. In this framework, there are mathematical models that analyze the effects of interactions between nature and society without considering them with equal weight. These models use the capacity of the system to front-facing the changes to analyze the weigh the importance of the structures that compose it.
The systems resilience front a perturbation is another topic that remains a bit in the air in this review that could be explored in-depth in future research.
My sincerest congratulations
Best regards
Author Response
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Reviewer 5 Report
This is a very interesting study regarding the comprehension of biophysical an anthropogenic relations of ES. The introduction is well-structured and effectively narrates the bloom of ES research and implementation.
The second section, which refers to ES classification schemes, is an apt approach to understand the multiple perspectives engaged in ES domain.
In general, this manuscript successfully reveals the socio-cultural patterns of ES, as well as their complexity and mutli-dimensionality, urging to further investigate and engage various competent bodies, authorities and individuals to ES approaches.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The author replied or reviewed extensively the work in accordance with my suggestions.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The author has undertaken a very exhaustive revision of the manuscript to address reviewers concerns which has resulted in a greatly improved version. The text has been shortened considerably and new summary tables and figures are provided. While the text has been improved considerably, it would still benefit from native speaker edit services (e.g. break too long sentences, add commas, check connectors, etc.).
Minor comments
Section 1
Too long sentence: “ Given this background it is perhaps surprising that while risk is sometimes considered by ES researchers [11-14], the focus has been on ‘real’ objective risks, while the subjective perception of risks by society, and how these shape ES demand and use, has received little attention so far and lacks a standardized theoretical framework.”, I suggest to cut after” real objective risks”, giving examples of what that might be, and then have a separate sentence with the subjective part.
The statement “While biodiversity loss represents a ‘real’ and scientifically measurable risk to stakeholders who demand and use ES” is also debatable… how can this risk be objectively measured? It is often based on models and assumptions.
Section 2
Suggest rewording: Measured instead of controlled in “ES are rationally, physically and objectively controlled”
Fig. 1 green box has two ends (different shaded of green)? This should be explained in the caption.
Revise this sentence “Within the users of this approach is small but a steadily growing research community,”
Section 3
Although the text in nicely written in general, there are some sections where text doesn`t flow well. I suggest to have the text revised by a native English speaker to improve it, checking eg. the suitability of connectors used and the logical structure of the paragraph. For example, the following sentence starts with the SES approach but then mixes the socialecological risk theory.” The SES approach highlights both nature and society, thus making it a way to scientifically approach the question of how society deals with and is affected by environmental impacts and risks [10,23], and whether the behavioral response to risk changes their ES demand. Therefore, sociological risk theory offers”.
In addition, in the first sentence I suggest to replace “highlight” by “integrate” or “combine”
Rephrase: To provide an overview of their categorization – do you mean of risk?
how did you arrive to the conclusion that SES approaches are more constructivists than realist?
Although the ES approaches take realist, as well as structural and individual, perspectives, a consideration of the ES framework from the constructivist level has only been touched upon by the SES approach.· this explanation should be added to the text
Section 4
Revise this sentence “A second key insight of this perspective is, while it is not always possible to control supply, it is possible”
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The substantial revisions have strengthened your review and you have found your voice as an author on this project idea. A project inserting a sociological risk theory into the ecosystems services framework is well worth pursing. My comments are in the spirt of adding depth and nuance:
- On the title: the mention of Sociological Risk Theory - as a singular theory - this might require revision to reflect the plurality of views, or it could be specified more clearly to refer to a specific sociological theory of risk that could be integrated into the ESF.
- Daily published an account of the ESF, but not the first article, or the first real insights. 1997 is already late in the development of ESF work.
- Best to trim back some overarching claims. There is a 100 year+ history of 'human ecology' to which sociologists and geographers have contributed. It is ok to critique sociology for its shortcomings, but I would not generalise this to the social sciences, including geography.
- Geographers, for example, have contributed extensively to human ecology literature and the concept of 'adjustment' -- see for example, George Perkins Marsh (1864); Man and Nature: Or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action; Barrows (1923) Geography as Human Ecology; Gilbert F White (1945) 'Human adjustment to floods', Tim O'Riordan (1971), Perspectives on resource management & (1981) Environmentalism; Kenneth Hewitt & Ian Burton (1971) The Hazardousness of a Place; and Susan L Cutter ((1983) Living with Risk. You have one article referencing Tim O'Riordan -- but some of his work would cover risk perception, ecosystem services etc from long before this. O'Riordan is well know for his ecocentric-technocentric worldview typology (relevant in part to your Figure 4). There's a huge literature and I'm not suggesting you need to read it but more to understand that ecosystem services as a concept has a long gestation period, so also theories of risk perception for which there is a strong social science contribution. I've sketched the surface of historical context only.
- On sociology, my opinion is that Beck's key concepts and phrases are exceptionally insightful; and more ought to be made of his contribution as a sociologist by sociologists and others.
- I am also impressed by the ecological modernists which don't figure in your account, but may also be worth a note: For example, Martin Jänicke, Gert Spaargaren, Maarten Hajer, and Arthur P.J. Mol. What do they have to say about risk that might be relevant?
- You might want to consider the work of Alan Schnaiberg (1980) and Stephen Cotgrove (1982) -- not necessarily to include, but to tie in with the history of sociology on environmental topics.
On balance, I suggest a more modest claim about deficiencies in the social sciences, but an opportunity to fill a gap in sociology, and to view this as an initial project raising research questions to examine in later papers.
Author Response
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