Assessment of Carbon Footprint Negative Effects for Nature in International Traveling

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

 The aim of this paper is to estimate the carbon footprint of aircraft and road transportation due to international and domestic touristic trips to Marrakech/Morocco between 2010-2018. In this research, the preferred means of transportation and the distances travelled by the tourists who visited Marrakech/Morocco between 2010-2018 were used as a data set. Carbon footprint calculations were made according to each transportation vehicle preference, the total carbon footprint was calculated at the same time.

In overall, the paper is well written and technically sound. However, there are several concerns that need to be addressed:

 

1. The contribution is not clearly stated in the introduction part. This should be improved.

2. The novelty of the methodologies should be summarized.

3. Some important literature related to vehicles is missing. For example, references such as DOI: 10.1109/TITS.2022.3196623 and https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apm.2022.05.013 should be included to provide a comprehensive overview of the existing research in the field.

Moderate editing of English language required.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thanks for your comments we made some improvements based on your
comments. We hope our work looks more suitable for publishing.

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the paper its great to see research in this area. Please incorporate some relevant present and past literature on destinations that have measured the CF of destinations such as Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Hawaii Taiwan etc and please develop further with your study. Please contextualise your study into the body of knowledge from previous studies.

 Please expand and develop on methodolgies to measure emissions eg. bottom up/ top-down 

Please incorporate the DOI with the references in the bibliography and expand the reference to incorporate other destinations as previously stated

Methods:

 On the basis of the destination's performance in terms of arrivals and their origins, by country, overnight stays and average length of stay, an analysis will be made of the destination's carbon footprint in order to produce an ecological portrait of the destination.(can we have a case study in methods section, possibly a table).

 - Table 1. Please have an exact breakdown of tourists from destinations within the continents rather than the overview. 

- "All distances covered by vehicle type were determined by the researchers. It was confirmed on "Google maps " and a double-sided check was made. In order to eliminate the uncertainties regarding the preferred vehicle type and the distances covered during the data compilation process, the preferred vehicle type for travel and the journeys made within the borders of Morocco were confirmed by the Ministry of Tourism"... how exactly was the distance determined? this needs to be elaborated on further, with formulas, assumptions stated, international references etc. The lack of transparency creates barriers to replicating the study at an international level. Please look at the Icelandic, Queensland (Oz), taiwan and Irish studies - how they are transparent and explain their methods clearly so other destinations can replicate them.  

 It would be advisable to state that this is bottom-up approach.

 Federal Environment Agency of the German Government [49]- why did you use these emission factors? The reference provided states "The reason for
not including foreigners was the use of an emission factors table (Federal Environmental
Office, 2014; see next section for more explanations) which only applies to Germany."

 - why is it not refered to distance rather than far-away ? 
- major development required and proofreading

 

Results:

 - 7148.90 tCO2eq (0.007149) for 8 years based on 17.2 million, total distance 37,102,517 km / 8,110,000 tCO2eq (8.11 MtCO2eq) for one year based on 22.6 million tourists that stayed at least one night?

 -0.416kg  compared to.... 524 kg CO2eq per tourist per year (Ireland)... ranging from 1.1 to 3.2 tons of CO2-eq (Iceland).

There is a Big differences here. Why? 

You need to be clearer in the level of detail in the methodology

 

 

,

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thanks for your comments we made some improvements based on your
comments. We hope our work looks more suitable for publishing.

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for the opportunity of reading and reviewing your manuscript. The paper addresses a highly important topic, is well structured and well written. It is also in the scope of the journal. The added value is however limited, due to the conclusions which are quite general and previously known.

I have several suggestions regarding the content and style:

1.There is no Literature section. In the Introduction there is also a brief review of literature. I suggest that the title of this section reflect the content

2.It is not clear information about the data, and why it is limited to 2018 year. The title of Table 1 speaks about number of arrival and total tourists but there are data only about tourists. Please correct this

3.It is not clear how the distances in Table 2 were calculated, please clarify this

4.in section 3 there is a simple calculation of carbon footprint and the discussion in section 4 is very general

5.in the final section please consider including limitations, more specific and research related conclusions, implications and recommendations etc.

Overall the paper could be interesting if revisions are performed.

Good luck!

The language is fine

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thanks for your comments we made some improvements based on your
comments. We hope our work looks more suitable for publishing.

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is appropriately revised. 

English is good.