Sustainability Assessment of the Societal Costs of Fishing Activities in a Deliberative Perspective

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

First of all, I would like to congratulate the authors for their work. A great effort of revision and theoretical argumentation is perceived and connects with the work's central objectives.

 

I have understood this paper as a theoretical exercise. An attempt is made to establish a review of approaches to carry out a sustainability assessment from a deliberative perspective. However, as an academic exercise, I think this work is interesting and profound in some points, so I believe it is an article that can be published. In that sense, it seems to be the anchor point for promising future research.

 

In general, I think this work is well-argued and original. The bibliographic review and the theoretical exposition are satisfactory. The central theme, the discussion, and the thought of case studies are relevant to the global fisheries resource management agenda, thus adding knowledge to the field of study. There is the will to make the results extrapolated to different contexts of coastal fisheries, which may be a strength of the article.

 

As a critical note, in some points of the text, the theoretical load is a bit dense (point 2), so it could be advisable to download the text of theoretical argumentation and take it to a section in the Annex. However, this recommendation is not mandatory, and it is up to the authors to take it

 

I think it is a work interesting enough to be published.

Author Response

In the corrections made, particularly in sections 2 and 3, I tried, through the composition of tables, to make explicit the articulation of the steps of INTEGRAAL method, the tools used and the deliberative approach and, on the other hand, through the articulation of the issues with the dimensions of vulnerabilities. I also tried to make more explicit, in the summary, in chapters 1 and 7, the challenges of such an approach, showing the complementarity between the multi-actor and multi-criteria analysis and the single-criteria analysis.

Reviewer 2 Report

Please see the attached comments.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Corrections have been made to address all of the comments you have made. The challenge of this article is indeed to mobilize a diversity of forms of knowledge, to structure their presentation, to allow a better appropriation by different actors (in terms of understanding the problem, representation, decision support, to support the development of new forms of fisheries governance). The summary has been corrected in order to better put into perspective the challenges of constructing a societal cost of fisheries, on the one hand, as a social process, and, on the other hand, in defining the type of guiding concepts, frameworks and information sets that might be appropriate for decision support. Tables have been developed to make the steps of the INTEGRAAL approach more explicit in relation to the tools used (and the forms of dialogue that may occur during this process). In Section 2, material has been added to enhance understanding of the issues associated with sustainability assessment and deliberation. Line 30: Change made - but have failed to be effective and helpful to define sustainable fisheries management trade-offs Line 40-43: Highlight the issue of vulnerability and assessment as a social process involving actors. Tables have been developed to present the relationship between performance issues and vulnerability dimensions. Line 49-54: Tabulation and putting into perspective the generic dimensions of vulnerability with the fisheries performance issues defined in the assessment process. In table 2 and 3, Species has been replaced by Target Species Line 124-129: Details on sustainability assessment are given In section 7, elements specifying the challenges of the construction of a monetary valuation as a social process involving not only the substantive dimension of the monetary valuation, but also the procedural and contextual dimensions allowing the mobilization and the appropriation of such an approach.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The revisions look good to me.