Natural Capital, Institutional Quality and SDG Progress in Emerging Market and Developing Economies

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This submission investigates if environmental impacts, natural capital depreciation and effective governance have impacted progress in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) to achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from 2000 to 2019. The manuscript follows a logical structure and methodology. It provides valuable policy and academic contributions, highlighting that its critical improving environmental management, natural capital use and institutions and governance for the sustainable development and long-term welfare improvements of many EMDEs, particularly relevant to low and lower-middle-income economies.

Although, from the reviewer's perspective, there are no critical concerns related to this submission that can make a significant contribution to the SDGs' state of the art, please find below some additional issues that the author(s) might consider to improve the submission quality further. 

C1. In addition to the availability of the 99 EMDEs, is there another rationale for selecting the indicators presented in table 1?

C2. The authors could reflect on the possible influence of the time elapsed since improving environmental impacts, natural capital depreciation and effective governance on the EMDEs SDGs performance, as some benefits need time to materialized, as is the case of benefits from adopting ISO Management Systems (https://doi:10.1108/IJQSS-02-2021-0031).

C3. Please clarify the correlation coefficient used (Spearman, Pearson, …) and support the choice.

C4. The author(s) provided a valuable and detailed discussion and conclusion. Nevertheless, they might consider the following additional issues:

• In addition to improved environmental management, natural capital use and institutions and governance, long-term progress towards EMDEs SDGs also depends on improved Quality Education (SDG4 ) which has significant synergies with many other SDGs (https://doi:10.3390/su12083359).
• The SDGs synergies and trade-offs represent an opportunity for policy and decision-makers by suggesting that the frequently linear development paths of economic growth ahead of social equity and environmental protection might be challenged by other systemic approaches, that offer multiple solutions and drivers for different contexts (https://doi:doi:10.1080/17449626.2019.1639532; https://doi:doi:10.3390/su12083359).
• In addition to the three relevant policies proposed in section 5, the author(s) could consider the adoption of digital transformation (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.119869; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13063107; https://doi:10.3390/su12145650; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.119869) and of novel business models such as Circular Economy (https://doi:10.3390/su10072521; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.112811; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.132890)

C5. The author(s) could address the possible research limitations. Namely, the concerns concerning the reliability of indicators for some countries and the use of indexes based on the arithmetic mean (which assumes that different targets and indicators are perfect substitutes for each other without accounting for positive synergies or negative externalities); https://doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.05.022; https://doi:10.3390/su12083359).

The reviewer congratulates the author(s) for such a valuable study and wishes them the most success with their research.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Additional coments:

1. What is the main question addressed by the research?

The paper proposes an indicator of institutional quality.

 

2. Do you consider the topic original or relevant in the field? Does it

address a specific gap in the field?

 The research topic is interesting and relevant.

 

3. What does it add to the subject area compared with other published

material?

 

An update of the trends of the research line.

 

4. What specific improvements should the authors consider regarding the

methodology? What further controls should be considered?

Analyze and proposes a new mesurement to institutional quality.

 

5. Are the conclusions consistent with the evidence and arguments presented

and do they address the main question posed?

Yes they are, but they are limited.

 

6. Are the references appropriate?

Yes, references are appopriate.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper is very well written.

What other indicators were considered for analysis and why weren't they used? A paragraph or two on this would help strengthen your argument, in my opinion. 

In Section 5, Conclusions, a sentence or two for each policy recommendation and the expected outcome of implementing that policy would also strengthen the argument. 

Otherwise, I think the paper is very good.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Authors analysed the natural Capital, Institutional Quality and SDG Progress in Emerging Market and Developing Economies.  For me the aim of this paper is not clear. SDG kas 17 targets, so it would be more interesting if authors compare all these targets for example considering to GDP level, or institutional quality. In this paper I do not understand why only some aspects were considered, because SDG is very broad definition. Furthermore, the policy implications are not reasonable, because all papers suggest it without any background. So if taxes are important, why the impact of this factor was not analysed. The statistical analysis also is very poor.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 4 Report

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