Co-Designing Protected Areas Management with Small Island Developing States’ Local Stakeholders: A Case from Coastal Communities of Cabo Verde

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I see this as a sound and logical study of a protected area in Cabo Verde that was proposed by civil society. Its data collection was appropriate and the results are presented logically with a degree of balance. Thus while there is support locally for the protected area there is also consideration given to some of the divisive issues that could arise such as inequality of opportunity. I think the paper is worthy of publication although the last paragraph on lessons for other places deserves further attention. One minor need is to rephrase the reference to the 8km cliffs which reads like a hight not a length!

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

 

Thank you so much for your constructive and positive feedback! We highly appreciate your time and patience for our replies.

We have addressed the suggestions made on your review. Please let us know if there is any other changes you would like us to make.

Thank you so much for your contribution.

Best regards,

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The title and the aim of the paper are informative and relevant. The abstract is concise and informative in the same time. Reference list is relevant and quite recent.  However, some improvements can be done in the literature review section having in mind the importance of topic such as collective action. For example, Ostrom (1990) (Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge university press) preceded Meinzen-Dick et al. (2004) in emphasizing the importance of collective action in agriculture, natural resource management, and rural development programs in developing countries. Collective action involves shared interests and common actions by a group of people. Almost three decades later, De Vos et al. (2018) (Relational values about nature in protected area research. Current opinion in environmental sustainability, 35, 89-99) reviewed literature on human-nature connection values and their expression in protected area research. So, my suggestion to the authors is to expand the ideas stated in lines 121-126 by adding at least five relevant academic sources. As Collective Actions are discussed in almost one fully page in the Conclusions section, expanding the topic in the Introduction part (or even creating a subchapter inside a new created Literature review) is a must.

The Introduction part does not provide enough arguments about what is already known about the topic.

At lines 54-55, the authors stated that ”Cabo Verde’s economy is service-oriented with tourism as the main contributor to its Gross Domestic Product”, but there are very few references to this topic throughout the text (in Introduction and in Conclusions as well). My suggestion is to expand the Introduction section (or a new Literature review chapter) with a brief review of the literature regarding the community-based tourism. The discussion should cover the topic of the local institutions and their role in the development of sustainable tourism.

The authors stated in the lines 472-473 that ”the NGOs have created a communication path between the communities and the authorities”. This is the only place where the authors mentioned the role of communication between communities and authorities. This topic should also be discussed in more detail in the Introduction section with key relevant academic references included. Collaboration and communication between stakeholders are crucial for achieving sustainable tourism in protected areas. The importance of communication and stakeholder engagement can help build trust, promote responsible tourism practices, and raise awareness about the importance of sustainable tourism.

The authors collected relevant data by using semi-structured interviews with seven identified community leaders and 480 questionnaires applied to a sample of general population of the local communities. At least from this perspective, the article is relevant and can bring a contribution to the literature.

After addressing the suggestions regarding the Literature review, the article can be considered for publishing. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

 

Thank you so much for your constructive, detailed and positive feedback! We highly appreciate the time and effort that you have put in the reviewer of our paper, and we acknowledge the relevance of the questions made. We also take this opportunity to apologize and thank you for your patience for our replies.

 

Now addressing the review made, we understood the need to adjust and improve the literature review according with the discussion. Since we wanted to avoid a lengthy Introduction and Section 2, we opted to adjust and improve the discussions instead, in the hope that it will address the issues you pointed. Nevertheless, please let us know if you think that the changes made were sufficient or if you should further change the Introduction and Section 2.

 

Specifically, about the collective action definition, we decided to remove some of the weight it had on the discussion, instead of elaborating its definition in the introduction. We opted to focus on the importance of community involvement in protected areas management.

About previous knowledge and publications on the topic, unfortunately, there are not many publish literature on protected areas management and community involvement in Cabo Verde. We referenced papers and case studies from other SIDS, African countries or developing countries as a proxy. We brought most referenced papers to the discussion.

 

We have tried to address and better reference the importance of collaboration between different stakeholders (communities, authorities and NGO). Please let us know if we should deepen this topic more.

 

Please, do not hesitate to make further suggestions. Your comments are greatly appreciated and they will support us in improving our paper.

Let us know if there is any other changes you would like us to make.

Thank you so much for your contribution, time and positivity!

Best regards,

The authors

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you very much for the opportunity to read the paper. I have the following comments on your work.

Background:

The starting is quite good, but there are many points to be improved. Please incorporate the following adjustments.

1. Line 41-60 is just an introduction to your study area, better to move to the methods section and put in a separate title like study area or something else.

2. In the last sentence, the authors mentioned the aim of the paper, but why they set their aim is not clear to me. Please add the research background, and literature gap and then set your objectives for the study.

The background of the study and the conclusion section should have some sort of tie. The authors aim to explore community initiatives, but they have given a conclusion on the roles of NGOs. If you want to conclude your paper on the roles of NGOs, please mention it in the background as well.

  Section 2 could be incorporated under section 3 i.e., methods.

Method section

1. How KoboCollect was administered, and how reliable the collected data are not clearly mentioned. 

2. Management model justification of using OLM should be given as the ordinary categories go from centralized to community-based (see the model justification given in the reference paper)

3. Table 1 and 2 is better to merge in the Method section and give data characteristics title (not compulsory, just an opinion)

Discussions:

The discussions have been made from very narrow perspectives. Although the authors mentioned SIDS and EEZ, they did not include these keywords in the discussions.

Those who do not know the NGO was significant at 5% in the management model in lines 283, and 285, and the discussions made in the conclusion section (468-475) are redundant. 

Conclusion

What are the implications of the study is not clear to me. Since many people are less educated, the NGOs roles should be awareness creation, education, and so on. For the community-based activities using Ologit, see Kumar Bhatta & Yasuo Ohe (2019) Farmers’ willingness to establish community-based agritourism: evidence from Phikuri village, Nepal, International Journal of Tourism Sciences, 19:2, 128-144, DOI: 10.1080/15980634.2019.1621536

Contribution to the literature has not been mentioned. Please add the limitations of your paper.

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

 

Thank you so much for your constructive, detailed and positive feedback! We highly appreciate the time and effort that you have put in the reviewer of our paper, and we acknowledge the relevance of the questions made. We also take this opportunity to apologize and thank you for your patience for our replies.

 

Now addressing the review made, we understood the need adjust some aspects in the Introduction and Section 2. We have also understood the need to improve and deepen the Discussion section. Thank you so much for pointing out such relevant issues!

 

Specifically, about this comment: “1. Line 41-60 is just an introduction to your study area, better to move to the methods section and put in a separate title like study area or something else.” – our intention is to describe Cabo Verde as a SIDS in terms of social, economical and environmental aspects. Hence the placement of this description in the Introduction. We believe that the study area description could be reserved for the protected area region itself. So, should we change the way we describe Cabo Verde as a SIDS, in order for it to look less “study area” like, or should we definitely integrate it on the methods section? We would highly appreciate your comment in this regard.

 

About the paper aim, we inserted more information and in a more objective way.

 

We have also added more information about KoboCollect application and use.

 

We provided more references and made some of the request adjustments in methods. The table 1 and 2 refer to data from different methods, interviews and survey, respectively. For this reason, we decided to maintain the two tables separately.  

 

Regarding the Discussions and Conclusions sections, we have made significant changes, as you made key relevant observations. We hope to have addressed the properly.

 

Please, do not hesitate to make further suggestions. Your comments are greatly appreciated and they will support us in improving our paper.

Let us know if there is any other changes you would like us to make.

Thank you so much for your contribution, time and positivity!

Best regards,

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

Your paper was significantly improved, but I insist of this recommendation given at the first round: communication between communities and authorities should also be discussed in more detail in the Introduction section with key relevant academic references included. Collaboration and communication between stakeholders are crucial for achieving sustainable tourism in protected areas.

After seeing this issue addressed with relevant academic sources, I will change ”major review” verdict.

I also noticed some technical problems regarding the text processing. There are many empty lines.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

 

Thank you so much for your feedback on the changes made! We highly appreciate the time and effort that you have put in the reviewer of our paper, and we acknowledge the relevance of the questions made.

 

We have expanded the literature review on the following topics: community involvement in decision-making processes and the importance of collaboration between communities (local stakeholders) and authorities.

 

We have moved part of the Introduction to Section 2. We then focused on making an Introduction about SIDS, their vulnerabilities, the importance of community involvement in decision-making processes, the importance of stakeholders collaborations, and how that contributes for sustainable development. All changes were tracked and should be signaled in red. In case some of the changes don’t seem clear or need further justification, please don’t hesitate to let us know.

 

Thank you so much for your contribution, time and positivism!

 

Best regards,

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

What specific changes were made based on my previous comments? I want them to compact in a separate document. It will make it easy to evaluate the paper.  For example, the authors' cover letter says "We have tried to address and better reference the importance of collaboration between different stakeholders (communities, authorities and NGO). Please let us know if we should deepen this topic more." How do I know that authors have changed and where it is placed?

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

 

Thank you so much for your feedback on the changes made! We highly appreciate the time and effort that you have put in the reviewer of our paper, and we apologize for not making the changes so clear.

 

We have attached a table locating all the changes made. We will attached it to our response.

Please let us know in case you need further clarifications on the changes made. We will happily give more details.

 

Thank you so much for your contribution, time and positivism!

 

Best regards,

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

The third variant improved significantly and the paper deserved to be published.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

 

We deeply thank you for your contributions. Your comments and suggestions  have challenged us to improve the paper writing and structure, as well as our capacity to think critically and expand the discussions in the paper.

Thank you so much for your time and support.

Sincerely,

The authors

Reviewer 3 Report

I am not satisfied with the author's revision. Thus, I reject the paper. I rest the authority on the editor of this special issue.

Specific reasons

I expected the authors to send me the revision report where they have specifically revised it based on my previous comments. They agreed to do that, but they just mentioned it randomly, which is not the way we communicate in academia. For example, I requested them to revise the paper with my comments, "Contribution to the literature has not been mentioned. Please add the limitation of the paper".  The author's answer is, "We added this observation in lines 558 to 565". However, I checked 558 and 565; this is nothing about the paper's contribution to the literature. Rather, they have mentioned the author's contribution to the paper, which is just in MDPI format. Further, no limitations are mentioned here. The similar happened to other comments as well (see the second last comments and other comments as well). Thus, I am going to reject the paper. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We are deeply grateful for your comments, as they have challenged us to improve the paper writing and structure, as well as our capacity to think critically and expand the discussions in the paper.

Our sincere apologies for not properly signaling the changes made during the revisions. We tried to improve and learn with this process and, hopefully, this time the revisions made are easier to identify.

We have attached the manuscript, as a word file, in which we have signaled the changes made in red. In addition, we have put your reviews as “Comments”, and the reply on the same comment. Please let us know in case you have any questions.

We have listed as well all our replies to your comments bellow. You can find all of these replies in the word document as well:

Reviewer’s comment: “Line 41-60 is just an introduction to your study area, better to move to the methods section and put in a separate title like study area or something else.”

Reply: Changes made: We move the content from lines 41-60 to Section 2, that describes the study case. We created a new sub-section on Section 2, that now is focused on giving general descriptions of Cabo Verde as a SIDS (sub-section 2.1) and on framing and detailing the study case (sub-sections 2.2 and 2.3).

 

Reviewer’s comment: “In the last sentence, the authors mentioned the aim of the paper, but why they set their aim is not clear to me. Please add the research background, and literature gap and then set your objectives for the study.”

Changes made: We deleted unnecessary information, that was confusing and that could mislead the readers about the aim of the paper (lines 175-179 were deleted). We add additional information about the research gap and the relevance of this paper to fulfill it, on lines 170-174.

 

Reviewer’s comment: The background of the study and the conclusion section should have some sort of tie. The authors aim to explore community initiatives, but they have given a conclusion on the roles of NGOs. If you want to conclude your paper on the roles of NGOs, please mention it in the background as well.

Reply: We made a brief mention to NGO’s role in PA management on lines 144-147. To address this comment, we decided to give more focus to the importance of community participation and community initiatives, in the SIDS and PA management contexts. Changes on lines 51-74.

 

Reviewer’s comment: Section 2 could be incorporated under section 3 i.e., methods.

Reply: Thank you so much for your suggestions. Nevertheless, we believe that section 2 is heavy on content, as it describes the SIDS country, the specific protected area under study and it bring all the details of the study case. Since there is not a lot of published literature on Cabo Verde, particularly regarding protected areas management and community led activities, we thought that it would be important to dedicate a section to emphasize the study site and study case.

 

 

Reviewer’s comment: How KoboCollect was administered, and how reliable the collected data are not clearly mentioned.

Changes made: we added more information on the functionalities of the KoboCollect app and added supporting reference (reference 54 - Lakshminarasimhappa, 2022)

 

 

Reviewer’s comment: Management model justification of using OLM should be given as the ordinary categories go from centralized to community-based (see the model justification given in the reference paper)

Changes made: We have made the requested changes and added additional references (lines 241-249)

 

Reviewer’s comment: Table 1 and 2 is better to merge in the Method section and give data characteristics title (not compulsory, just an opinion).

Reply: Thank you so much for your suggestion. Table 1 is the result of interviews analysis and table 2 is the results of the surveys. The data for both tables were collected with different methods and they were analyzed using different methods as well. Therefore, we would prefer to keep the two tables separated.

 

Reviewer’s comment: The discussions have been made from very narrow perspectives. Although the authors mentioned SIDS and EEZ, they did not include these keywords in the discussions.

Changes made: To facilitate the reviewer’s observation of all the changes made in Discussion, we have highlighted all added sentences in red. The comments regarding the Discussion section were very pertinent so we decided to restructure the discussion. We changed sub-section title from “5.1. Collective Actions” to “5.1. Local support for BIMA natural park”- We made this change so to give more focus on understanding and describe the strong community support for the natural park.
In addition, we made sure to give a SIDS perspective throughout the discussion. In each sub-section, we discussed the relevance of the discussed topic in a SIDS context: Sub-section 5.1. lines 397-407; Sub-section 5.2. lines 442-458; Sub-section 5.3. lines 506-511.
Since EEZ is a not the main topic of the paper, we decided not to mention the term in the introduction and, consequently, not approach it on discussion.

 

Reviewer’s comments: 1) Those who do not know the NGO was significant at 5% in the management model in lines 283, and 285, and the discussions made in the conclusion section (468-475) are redundant.

2) What are the implications of the study is not clear to me. Since many people are less educated, the NGOs roles should be awareness creation, education, and so on. For the community-based activities using Ologit, see Kumar Bhatta & Yasuo Ohe (2019) Farmers’ willingness to establish community-based agritourism: evidence from Phikuri village, Nepal, International Journal of Tourism Sciences.

Changes made: We highlighted the sentences added in red, to facilitate the reviewer’s observation of changes made. We restructured the conclusion and tried to make a clear conclusion on the implications of the study.

We have also described the roles of NGOs in a more objective way, that is supported by the results in this study (line 526-533).

 

 

Reviewer’s comment: Contribution to the literature has not been mentioned. Please add the limitations of your paper.

Changes made: We have added the limitations of the study (lines 549-552) and added the contributions of this study to the literature (lines 556-560).

 

Again, we are deeply appreciative of your comments and suggestions. They have given a great contribution to our paper.

We kindly apologize for the miscommunication regarding the signaling of changes.

Sincerely,

The authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx