The Potentials and Challenges of Achieving Sustainability through Charcoal Producer Associations in Kenya: A Missed Opportunity?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors

Your manuscript is interesting but rather long.

please consider some changes:

in line 112 you have repetition from lines 59/60 - please change that.

Many of your tables are enough so you do not need Figures presenting the same numbers. It will shorten your paper too.

Concretely Figures 2, 4, 5, and 7 are not necessary.

You mentioned from lines 102- 107

That you will based on focus group discussions and supplemented by literature, explore four different aspects that characterise the institutions and influence their functionality. 
1. Institutional set-up
2. Governance
3. Policy implications and

4. Sustainability - Later in the results there should be clear connections with those 4 aspects. - Please add some sentences to provide that connection.

Your Discussion chapters are quite long and comprehensive still interesting and relevant. Maybe some parts are not well connected with rsearch findings like value chains and financial support. Try to present this connection.

Kind regards

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We greatly appreciate all you comments on our manuscript and we have done our best to address each of the flagged issues. we hope it is satisfactory and you will be happy with our revisions. Detailed responses are below.

 

Reviewer 1

Dear authors

Reviewer Comment: Your manuscript is interesting but rather long.

Response: The manuscript is significantly reduced in the revised form now. Sections reduced include the discussion (section 4 – line 591-1592) and graphs 2,4,5 and 7 deleted to reduce redundancy.  

please consider some changes:

Reviewer Comment: in line 112 you have repetition from lines 59/60 - please change that.

Response: Deleted line 112-113.

Many of your tables are enough so you do not need Figures presenting the same numbers. It will shorten your paper too.

Response: Agreed and deleted.

Concretely Figures 2, 4, 5, and 7 are not necessary.

Response: The figures have been deleted.

Reviewer Comment: You mentioned from lines 102- 107

That you will based on focus group discussions and supplemented by literature, explore four different aspects that characterise the institutions and influence their functionality.  
1. Institutional set-up 
2. Governance 
3. Policy implications and

4. Sustainability - Later in the results there should be clear connections with those 4 aspects. - Please add some sentences to provide that connection.

Response: The aspects have been adjusted in line 168-170 to align with the connected sections in the results as section 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4

Reviewer Comment: Your Discussion chapters are quite long and comprehensive still interesting and relevant. Maybe some parts are not well connected with research findings like value chains and financial support. Try to present this connection.

Response: Thank you. The discussion chapters are significantly reduced. This revision has also brought out a number of coherence issues which we have managed to fix particularly in the discussion section.

Kind regards

-------------------

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors present a paper which considers the potential of charcoal production associations (CPAs) to contribute to the sector's sustainability through the enhancement of various capacities within these associations. At present in Kenya, these associations are operating illegally and this appears to be the consequence of an apparent failure for these associations to have sufficiently contributed to addressing some of the on-going environmental impacts of the sector in the nine years subsequent to the Forest Act 2009, which located the CPAs at the core with responsibility for maintaining the forest ecosystems and to stem illegal logging, etc.

The rationale behind Kenya's ban on charcoal production in 2018 is suggested by the authors as due to continued deforestation and poor forest management, and although the Forest Act was intended to address these issues, it appearently failed to do so. The authors provide some detail into the nature of such failures and uses focus group discussions with members of 18 CPAs from two counties to identify barriers and the scope for addressing these.

The question underpinning the paper then is given in line 98 as "can Charcoal Producer Associations bring about sustainability within the charcoal sector?" and this is then linked to the potential contribution of the sector to Kenya's sustainable development trajectory.

As such, this is a reasonable, and potentially important, question to raise. However, this being said as it stands, there are a number of serious concerns I have about this paper being published in its current form. These are elaborated on below.

(1) What would make the paper's contribution to knowledge more explicit however, is if the contribution of the charcoal sector within the Kenyan economy can be stated in order to present the reader with a context of significance. So, for example, what contribution does the sector make to national GDP, employment, income generation, as well as to the informal values, such as heat for cooking and thermal comfort, lighting, etc. Moreover, what are the risks to women, for example, who may be tasked with fetching wood for charcoal production, especially if these operations are at a smaller scale. In short, a context that locates the charcoal production sector within the larger Kenyan system will help identify the significance of the author's work. The authors are encouraged to address this in a few paragraphs near the beginning of their paper in order to set the scene. This is referred to in lines 627 and 628, but never actually stated.

(2) The actual number of focus groups held is buried in the text, but it would appear that each CPA constituted a focus group. To make this explicit lends clarity to Table 1, and as male participants constitute the majority of participants, it isn't necessary to then also give the number of female participants as doing so is already implied as there is no indication in the text that participants self-identified as anything other than male or female.

(3) There is a blurring of category contents in Table 2. For example, the category "Environmental conservation" seems to be a huge catch all for anything that mentions environmental dynamics, including the self-referential 'environmental conservation' to dust storms and (again) conservation. Due to the wide scope of this category, this would benefit from being more finely tuned - for example, differentiating between those environmental dynamics which concern impacts/ consequences and those which actually concern conservation (e.g., tree planting)? Similarly, the category 'Benefits maximization form charcoal sector' - in addition to correcting the typo ('form' = 'from') - again the category of 'benefits' is very broad and includes environmental conservation (e.g., number of trees). For these categories to be meaningful for analytic purposes, unless there are strong reasons to do otherwise which need to be stated, these categories should be mutually exclusive. Doing so would also make Fig 2 more meaningful.

(4) A further concern is the unnecessary use of bar graphs which do not add to the clarity of description. For example, Fig 4 is a redundant graph as all it does is to recount the expectations already given in Table 3. One or the other would suffice.

(5) There is also an apparent tension between the benefits of joining a CPA (Fig 2) and the expectations of doing so. The benefits appear to mostly concern 'environmental conservation', although this is not reflected in the expectations (n = 11), which instead suggests an economic emphasis, which is correspondingly low in the list of motivations. This doesn't appear to have been picked up on or discussed by the authors. An explanation would help clear up this apparent lack of alignment between motivations to join a CPA and the expected benefits for doing so. In brief, how do the authors account for this difference between motivations and expected benefits? Do the expected benefits not act as motivations? Certainly having attendant welfare benefits would seem like a legitimate, and compelling, motivation to join a CPAS, but this is described as a benefit. This may be a language issue, but expectations of benefit and motivations are, in terms of behavioural drivers, quite aligned generally, so this lack of alignment here raises the question as to why this is the case in this study.

(6) The value of Fig 3 is dubious and this would work better as a table. Also, to be pedantic, the legend is misleading as these benefits are themes raised by focus group participants.

(7) Section 3.2.3. "Compliance" is ambiguous. Does this suggest that CPAs, even though they are apparently at the heart of the Forest Care Act, are themselves not standardised as implied by the variability of rule compliance among members? Moreover, the authors do not appear to critically address the low frequency of (expected) compliance with 'sustainability', even though the reader was led to believe that this was one of the main drivers for the role CPAs were intended to play in the aforementioned act. This warrants a comment from the authors to explain why sustainability is so comparatively low on the list. Again, Fig 5 is redundant as it does not show any new information.

(8) I'm troubled by the following statement in lines 234 and 235: "In Tana River, each group interviewed was identified as a charcoal producer association (CPA), as the lowest level of identity". Unless I missed it, the focus group discussions were held exclusively with CPAs, so why is this sentence required? Including suggests that there are some groups which were not actually CPA members, which undermines the research method and gives me pause to question the legitimacy of the study itself. How many participants were not then members of a CPA and why were they included in the study?

(9) While the lack of knowledge about sustainability is stated, at no point do the authors provide any means through which this deficit can be meaningfully addressed. yet, in their conclusion they also state that "There is high potential within the CPAs for sustainability of the sector" (lines 638 and 639) and even that "CPAs are incredibly essential stakeholders in achieving sustainability" (line 643). This is as maybe, but moving CPAs from their current position to a newly informed and sustainably enlightened position is not addressed, and this is a significant caveat in this paper. While no silver bullet solution is expected, having done the field work and the analysis, some speculation on how this potential might be realised would go a long way to translating field work to policy making, and add gravitas to the authors' work.

(10) Finally, the paper should be proof read before submission as there are a number of missing words, incomplete sentences, and typos that warrant correction.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We greatly appreciate all your comments on our manuscript and we have done our best to address each of the flagged issues. We hope it is satisfactory and you will be happy with our revisions. Detailed responses are below.

Reviewer 2

 

	Yes	Can be improved	Must be improved	Not applicable
Is the content succinctly described and contextualized with respect to previous and present theoretical background and empirical research (if applicable) on the topic?	( )	(x)	( )	( )
Are the research design, questions, hypotheses and methods clearly stated?	( )	( )	(x)	( )
Are the arguments and discussion of findings coherent, balanced and compelling?	( )	( )	(x)	( )
For empirical research, are the results clearly presented?	( )	( )	(x)	( )
Is the article adequately referenced?	( )	(x)	( )	( )
Are the conclusions thoroughly supported by the results presented in the article or referenced in secondary literature?	( )	( )	( )	( )

 

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors present a paper which considers the potential of charcoal production associations (CPAs) to contribute to the sector's sustainability through the enhancement of various capacities within these associations. At present in Kenya, these associations are operating illegally and this appears to be the consequence of an apparent failure for these associations to have sufficiently contributed to addressing some of the on-going environmental impacts of the sector in the nine years subsequent to the Forest Act 2009, which located the CPAs at the core with responsibility for maintaining the forest ecosystems and to stem illegal logging, etc.

The rationale behind Kenya's ban on charcoal production in 2018 is suggested by the authors as due to continued deforestation and poor forest management, and although the Forest Act was intended to address these issues, it apparently failed to do so. The authors provide some detail into the nature of such failures and uses focus group discussions with members of 18 CPAs from two counties to identify barriers and the scope for addressing these.

The question underpinning the paper then is given in line 98 as "can Charcoal Producer Associations bring about sustainability within the charcoal sector?" and this is then linked to the potential contribution of the sector to Kenya's sustainable development trajectory.

As such, this is a reasonable, and potentially important, question to raise. However, this being said as it stands, there are a number of serious concerns I have about this paper being published in its current form. These are elaborated on below.

Reviewer Comment: (1) What would make the paper's contribution to knowledge more explicit however, is if the contribution of the charcoal sector within the Kenyan economy can be stated in order to present the reader with a context of significance. So, for example, what contribution does the sector make to national GDP, employment, income generation, as well as to the informal values, such as heat for cooking and thermal comfort, lighting, etc. Moreover, what are the risks to women, for example, who may be tasked with fetching wood for charcoal production, especially if these operations are at a smaller scale. In short, a context that locates the charcoal production sector within the larger Kenyan system will help identify the significance of the author's work. The authors are encouraged to address this in a few paragraphs near the beginning of their paper in order to set the scene. This is referred to in lines 627 and 628, but never actually stated.

Response: Thank you for flagging this. we have addressed it in the revised document. The economic value, consumption rate, actors participating, and their dependents details included to contextualise charcoal significance in Kenya within the first paragraph of the introduction – lines 52-67.

Reviewer Comment: (2) The actual number of focus groups held is buried in the text, but it would appear that each CPA constituted a focus group. To make this explicit lends clarity to Table 1, and as male participants constitute the majority of participants, it isn't necessary to then also give the number of female participants as doing so is already implied as there is no indication in the text that participants self-identified as anything other than male or female.

Response: Table 1 was deleted and the information on the general information attendance of CPA members provided in a paragraph – lines 261-267.

Reviewer Comment: (3) There is a blurring of category contents in Table 2. For example, the category "Environmental conservation" seems to be a huge catch all for anything that mentions environmental dynamics, including the self-referential 'environmental conservation' to dust storms and (again) conservation. Due to the wide scope of this category, this would benefit from being more finely tuned - for example, differentiating between those environmental dynamics which concern impacts/ consequences and those which actually concern conservation (e.g., tree planting)? Similarly, the category 'Benefits maximization form charcoal sector' - in addition to correcting the typo ('form' = 'from') - again the category of 'benefits' is very broad and includes environmental conservation (e.g., number of trees). For these categories to be meaningful for analytic purposes, unless there are strong reasons to do otherwise which need to be stated, these categories should be mutually exclusive. Doing so would also make Fig 2 more meaningful.

Response:- yes, we appreciate the feedback.  The clusters may seem broad but what we have tried to do was based on the translated scripts of the discussions with the communities from which we extracted what was mentioned and categorize it. At a community level, the discussions were not farmed along these categories as we did not want to create bias in terms of what they put as a priority or not. Changing the text details of what they provided may be difficult and hence maintained the section as is, with some clarifications and minor typos suggested.

Thank you, we have corrected the typo in table under category “benefits maximization from charcoal sector.” Table 1

Reviewer Comment: (4) A further concern is the unnecessary use of bar graphs which do not add to the clarity of description. For example, Fig 4 is a redundant graph as all it does is to recount the expectations already given in Table 3. One or the other would suffice.

Response: Thank you for flagging this. The graphs have been deleted (figure 2, 4, 5, 6 and 7), thus remaining with the tables for any details

Reviewer Comment: (5) There is also an apparent tension between the benefits of joining a CPA (Fig 2) and the expectations of doing so. The benefits appear to mostly concern 'environmental conservation', although this is not reflected in the expectations (n = 11), which instead suggests an economic emphasis, which is correspondingly low in the list of motivations. This doesn't appear to have been picked up on or discussed by the authors. An explanation would help clear up this apparent lack of alignment between motivations to join a CPA and the expected benefits for doing so. In brief, how do the authors account for this difference between motivations and expected benefits? Do the expected benefits not act as motivations? Certainly having attendant welfare benefits would seem like a legitimate, and compelling, motivation to join a CPAS, but this is described as a benefit. This may be a language issue, but expectations of benefit and motivations are, in terms of behavioural drivers, quite aligned generally, so this lack of alignment here raises the question as to why this is the case in this study.

Response: Thank you for this insight. Initially, members decide to join CPAs because they see the value in protecting their communal assets (forests) as a group. Once they become members, they realise the value of social and financial capital created and thus expect social welfare benefits. Environmental conservation now becomes an intrinsic expectation that they do not keep mentioning. Overall, the point is if the conservation of the resources, which generates the raw material for their product (charcoal), is not there it is impossible to achieve the benefit generation expectations.  Motivations to join – line 271-278 and expectations – line 311-316.     

Reviewer Comment: (6) The value of Fig 3 is dubious and this would work better as a table. Also, to be pedantic, the legend is misleading as these benefits are themes raised by focus group participants.

Response: Thank you. Figure 3 deleted to reduce the redundancy of similar benefits mentioned in table 3.

Reviewer Comment: (7) Section 3.2.3. "Compliance" is ambiguous. Does this suggest that CPAs, even though they are apparently at the heart of the Forest Care Act, are themselves not standardised as implied by the variability of rule compliance among members? Moreover, the authors do not appear to critically address the low frequency of (expected) compliance with 'sustainability', even though the reader was led to believe that this was one of the main drivers for the role CPAs were intended to play in the aforementioned act. This warrants a comment from the authors to explain why sustainability is so comparatively low on the list. Again, Fig 5 is redundant as it does not show any new information.

Response:- Overall, in the Act there are some minimum compliance attributes described, however, those are too general for implementation at the CPA level in many cases. That is why the detailed compliance measures within the CPAs are not standardised, thus the varying details in by-laws and process as highlighted in section 3.2.3. Further address on the low frequency of sustainability in compliance is addressed in lines 345-359.

Figure 5 is deleted in the revised document as suggested.

Reviewer Comment: (8) I'm troubled by the following statement in lines 234 and 235: "In Tana River, each group interviewed was identified as a charcoal producer association (CPA), as the lowest level of identity". Unless I missed it, the focus group discussions were held exclusively with CPAs, so why is this sentence required? Including suggests that there are some groups which were not actually CPA members, which undermines the research method and gives me pause to question the legitimacy of the study itself. How many participants were not then members of a CPA and why were they included in the study?

Response:- Omitted and rephrased. CPA’s were on average, larger in Kitui than in Tana River. Due to their size in Kitui, and for easier governance, CPA’s were further divided into Charcoal Producer Groups (CPG’s). Despite this, comparison was between CPAs in both counties – line 379-380.

The sentence (now rephrased) was intended to indicate the sizes and organisation of CPAs in both counties. All focus group discussions held, and results presented are exclusively from discussions with CPA members within the two counties.

Reviewer Comment: (9) While the lack of knowledge about sustainability is stated, at no point do the authors provide any means through which this deficit can be meaningfully addressed. yet, in their conclusion they also state that "There is high potential within the CPAs for sustainability of the sector" (lines 638 and 639) and even that "CPAs are incredibly essential stakeholders in achieving sustainability" (line 643). This is as maybe, but moving CPAs from their current position to a newly informed and sustainably enlightened position is not addressed, and this is a significant caveat in this paper. While no silver bullet solution is expected, having done the field work and the analysis, some speculation on how this potential might be realised would go a long way to translating field work to policy making, and add gravitas to the authors' work.

Response: The way forward section in the discussion provides information on the improvement of knowledge and skills in realising this through capacity building, restoration schemes, policy support, financial and regulatory incentives and stakeholder engagement – section 4.2 (lines 857-1592).

Reviewer Comment:  (10) Finally, the paper should be proof read before submission as there are a number of missing words, incomplete sentences, and typos that warrant correction.

Response: The paper has been proof-read and the necessary grammatical errors corrected.

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper describes the functions of the Charcoal Producer Associations and how they can support the charcoal industry in Kenya. Given the importance of the industry and its economic and environmental effects, the subject discussed is of enormous interest.

The development of the work and the methodology are clear and appropriate, but, even so, I would like to propose some recommendations for improvement.

First, regarding the definition of the sample, the number of FGDs and the distribution of the participants in each FGD by association are not clear. It would be appropriate to show more information about the composition of the FGDs. Moreover, in line 150 the authors say “…complemented the quantitative information with recordings…”. What kind of quantitative information are they referring to? So far only the FGDs have been described.

Second, in the first paragraph of the section 3.2.1 it is stated that the “strong internal motivation for environment conservation” is the main motivation. However, in the second paragraph the economic benefits are highlighted as the most common expectation. These paragraphs should be revised to improve consistency.

Third, Figure 3 (lines 203-207) has been placed at the end of section 3.2.1. From my point of view, it should be moved to section 3.2.2 which is where those factors are discussed.

Fourth, there is a section 3.3.1 but there are no more sections within section 3.3. Is it really necessary to differentiate section 3.3.1? It would be more appropriate to unify titles 3.3 and 3.3.1.

Fifth, in section 3.5, the comments should be revised and adapted to the Figure 8. For example, the comments give a lot of relevance to “Increased forests destruction”, but in the figure it is one of the least relevant factors.

Finally, line 462 indicates “Figure 9 shows the various parameters the of relation between the CPAs and their associated communities”, referring to “societal advancement”, but Figure 9 does not show information about this topic. The content and writing of this sentence should be revised to make it clearer.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We greatly appreciate all your comments on our manuscript and we have done our best to address each of the flagged issues. We hope it is satisfactory and you will be happy with our revisions. Detailed responses are below.

Reviewer 3

 

	Yes	Can be improved	Must be improved	Not applicable
Is the content succinctly described and contextualized with respect to previous and present theoretical background and empirical research (if applicable) on the topic?	(x)	( )	( )	( )
Are the research design, questions, hypotheses and methods clearly stated?	( )	(x)	( )	( )
Are the arguments and discussion of findings coherent, balanced and compelling?	(x)	( )	( )	( )
For empirical research, are the results clearly presented?	( )	(x)	( )	( )
Is the article adequately referenced?	(x)	( )	( )	( )
Are the conclusions thoroughly supported by the results presented in the article or referenced in secondary literature?	( )	( )	( )	( )

 

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper describes the functions of the Charcoal Producer Associations and how they can support the charcoal industry in Kenya. Given the importance of the industry and its economic and environmental effects, the subject discussed is of enormous interest.

The development of the work and the methodology are clear and appropriate, but, even so, I would like to propose some recommendations for improvement.

Reviewer Comment: First, regarding the definition of the sample, the number of FGDs and the distribution of the participants in each FGD by association are not clear. It would be appropriate to show more information about the composition of the FGDs. Moreover, in line 150 the authors say “…complemented the quantitative information with recordings…”. What kind of quantitative information are they referring to? So far only the FGDs have been described.

Response: Thank you for flagging this. it was meant to be ‘Qualitative’ rather. Thanks once again.

Reviewer Comment: Second, in the first paragraph of the section 3.2.1 it is stated that the “strong internal motivation for environment conservation” is the main motivation. However, in the second paragraph the economic benefits are highlighted as the most common expectation. These paragraphs should be revised to improve consistency.

Response: Thank you for this insight. The interpretations you noted are correct based on the data. Below is an explanation for the observed variation which we clarified in the revised document. Initially, members decide to join CPAs because they see the value in protecting their communal assets (forests) as a group. Once they become members, they realise the value of social and financial capital created and thus expect social welfare benefits. Environmental conservation now becomes an intrinsic expectation that they do not keep mentioning. Overall, the point is if the conservation of the resources, which generates the raw material for their product (charcoal), is not there it is impossible to achieve the benefit generation expectations. Motivations to join – line 271-278 and expectations – line 311-316.    

Reviewer Comment: Third, Figure 3 (lines 203-207) has been placed at the end of section 3.2.1. From my point of view, it should be moved to section 3.2.2 which is where those factors are discussed.

Response: Figure 3 deleted since the tables present similar details 

Reviewer Comment: Fourth, there is a section 3.3.1 but there are no more sections within section 3.3. Is it really necessary to differentiate section 3.3.1? It would be more appropriate to unify titles 3.3 and 3.3.1.

Response: Sections adjusted to include the unification of 3.3 and its subsequent section – 3.3.1 to 3.3.4.

Reviewer Comment: Fifth, in section 3.5, the comments should be revised and adapted to the Figure 8. For example, the comments give a lot of relevance to “Increased forests destruction”, but in the figure it is one of the least relevant factors.

Response: The first paragraph in this section (line 544-580) gives the context of the current operational charcoal ban in Kenya. The subsequent lines (582-587) highlight the effects of the bans faced by the CPAs in Tana River and Kitui counties.

Reviewer Comment: Finally, line 462 indicates “Figure 9 shows the various parameters the of relation between the CPAs and their associated communities”, referring to “societal advancement”, but Figure 9 does not show information about this topic. The content and writing of this sentence should be revised to make it clearer.

Response: Sentence rephrased to show “…the relations between the CPAs and their associated communities in improving their society through welfare contributions, social projects and conflict resolution” as shown in table 2 – line 844-846

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I thank the authors for addressing the concerns raised previously. I think that they have done so carefully and thoroughly.

Please upgrade the quality of Fig 4. The graphic (not content) is very amateurish and looks hand drawn. Surely any decent word processing/ presentation software can provide the shapes and 'plus' signs necessary to bring this to the standard required for publication.

Otherwise, well done to the authors. I look forward to seeing this in print soon.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We are extremely grateful for the comments and suggestions you have given on our manuscripts. we have replaced figure 4 with a more professional figure that is clearly readable. We have also made some minor typos as suggested e.g. in the abstract. 

We are so grateful once again. 

regards,

Lalisa Duguma