Broadening the Perspective of Zero-Deforestation Interventions in Peru by Incorporating Concepts from the Global Value Chain Literature

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript provides an interesting spatial analysis for Peru -- but I miss a clear time dimension. Zero-deforestation commitments typically 'grandfather' deforestation before time X and the current use of land deforested before X is promoted, especially if it has currently low-value uses. The further in the past X is the more stringent the commitments are. I would expect some discussion on this in the introduction and attempts to clarify the time lags involved. Between deforestation and subsequent use for cacao, coffee, or oil palm production a time-gap of at least 3-5 years can be expected. The manuscript exclusively focusses on spatial associations, and uses only two observation points in time 2013–2018, reducing the likelihood of associating the two processes.

Useful references to this debate can be found in: 
https://www.tropenbos.org/resources/publications/etfrn+news+58:+zero+deforestation:+a+commitment+to+change

The second point in the conclusions "(2) aimed at improving the use of deforested lands" depends critically on a decision before which year deforestation is not included in ZD commitments.

Elsewhere in the tropics patterns have been described where group A deforests lands, group B (often migrants) buy/acquire deforested lands for commodity production, providing incentives for A to continue the conversion of forests. Such patterns challenge ZD commitments as a form of leakage -- does this pattern also occur in Peru? A few sentences of discussion could be devoted to that, at least

 

Author Response

• We have added text in the discussion section to incorporate the time dimension highlighted that “Another strategy pursued by companies or other wealthy actors is to engage in deforestation [55], with the intention to subsequently grab the land or lease the cleared land for commodity production [56]. This, in turn, may promote further land clearing, challenging zero-deforestation efforts. For instance, in the Colombian Amazon, migrant farmers establish “growth coalitions” with well-capitalized and organized actors, such as drug traffickers and armed groups, to produce illicit crops in remote forested areas. Returns from coca leaf production are then reinvested in deforestation activities to further expand the forest frontier [57]. A further examination of the interactions between smallholder commodity producers and enterprise-driven agriculture will be needed to evaluate if similar mechanisms apply to Peru.”
• We have also added text to highlight that the “lack of homogeneity across commodities, regions and institutional conditions, points to challenges with regard to the definition of a reference date against which zero-deforestation initiatives would be designed, implemented and assessed”
• We have reviewed the literature suggested by the reviewer and cited it.

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript presented for review covers the current topic of deforestation. The whole thing is written logically. However, the manuscript needs to be improved in terms of editing - quoting the literature in the text (there should be numbers) and organizing the Refereces chapter in accordance with the journal's requirements, adjusting the captions of tables and diagrams. The authors should also expand the section on sustainable development and add more references to the international situation. 

Author Response

• We have carefully addressed each of the points and made appropriate changes. In addition, to the clean version of our manuscript we are attaching a copy with track changes.

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper offers some insights to the sustainability in general by exploring the spatial associations between deforestation and some crops’ production areas in the Amazon region in Peru.

From reading the manuscript, we can say that the 4 set objectives within the introduction are approach along the paper.

1.-. To provide an overview of the geographical distribution of both deforestation and cacao, coffee and oil palm production in the Peruvian Amazon.

2.- To present the results of analyses that we conducted to explore the association between deforestation and commodity crop production.

3.- To present several scenarios in which ZDSC interventions may operate in Peru.

4.- To discuss how on-the-ground zero-deforestation interventions may combine existing approaches and tools and argue for the integration of concepts within the global value chain literature so more significant gains can be made.

In addition, the introduction explains in a deep way the state of the art of the study field. Nevertheless, some improvement from my side:

Lines 30-32. It would be better to also introduce data from CE concerning Climate Change. https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2019/08/4.-SPM_Approved_Microsite_FINAL.pdf

The introduction, at the end, should express the clear objective/aim of the research.

Table 1. In order to better show this table, I would recommend authors to change the columns with the rows and vice versa. Therefore, the names, figures and everything appearing on the table could be bigger and easy to read.

Table 2. why figure 69 is written in italics? Corresponding to cacao to Low deforestation-low commodity crop production. Whereas the rest are written without italics.

 

 

 

 

Author Response

We have carefully addressed each of the points and made appropriate changes. In addition, to the clean version of our manuscript we are attaching a copy with track changes.

Reviewer 4 Report

A good idea behind the article, but text and presentation need important revisions before acceptance. I would see a better description of the methodology, with pros&cons clearly discussed. I would also see a clear discussion of the originality and novelty of the approach, I don't see here any clear information on that. I would see a complete discussion on data sources and opportunities for generalization to a broader scale. Finally., I urge authors to have checked their language usage by a native reader. Especially long phrases should be avoided.

Thank you.

Author Response

We have added the following text in the discussion section to the address reviewer’s comments “The methods presented in this study followed a three-step approach to understand deforestation-commodity relations at different spatial scales, whereby we narrowed down Peruvian Amazon-wide correlations to subnational and district levels. Ideally, high-resolution crop and deforestation data should be used to better examine these relationships, but remote sensing datasets that can identify agricultural land uses for the entire Peruvian Amazon are currently not available. Alternatively, we obtained official survey-based crop datasets from the Peruvian Ministry of Agriculture or MINAGRI, along with deforestation data at the district level from Peru’s Ministry of the Environment or MINAM. The use of these relatively coarse datasets may have influenced our results to some extent. To our knowledge, however, they are the finest available. We also noticed that the overall deforestation and crop production patterns are in general agreement with the literature and public information. Despite this, the outcomes of this study provide novel insights for overcoming barriers to zero deforestation in the context of unclear deforestation-commodity relations. More specifically, reducing tropical deforestation requires a range of approaches and policies that are customized to respond to the complexity and dynamism of the drivers of deforestation at the landscape level [30].”

In addition, to the clean version of our manuscript we are attaching a copy with track changes.

Round 2

Reviewer 4 Report

good revisions overall.