Composed Indicator of Community Forest Governance in San Miguel Topilejo, Mexico City
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
General comments:
The paper entitled as “Composed Indicator of community forest governance in San 2 Miguel Topilejo, Mexico City.” simply analyzed community’s characteristics and social capitals. Firstly, I would suggest to apply more quantitative analysis (e.g. ANOVA or other statistic approach). After application of statistic approach, original concept or idea of the study will be improved. After above and fooling revision, I would judge that this paper is be acceptable according to journal’s aims and scoops.
General comments
The structure of the paper should be improved in especially the part of “Introduction”. “Introduction” should focus on background of: 1) accumulated research activities in the field of social capital and its relation and 2) history and governance system in Mexico. Current version was described very general aspects in both of above. Also authors are requested to add references more to enforce research question in this paper.
Specific comments:
- Title should be revised from “Composed Indicator of community forest governance in San 2 Miguel Topilejo, Mexico City.” to “Composed indicator of community forest governance in San 2 Miguel Topilejo, Mexico City”.
- Please keep consistency the word of “México” or “Mexico”.
- L51: please eliminate “CONAFOR, 2018].”.
- L80: please revise “questions ¿What” accordingly.
- L91-92: please revise how to write references in the text.
- Please mention Figure 1 in the text (e.g. research site was XXX, XXX (Figure 1)).
- L135: please revise “10,354.25 hectares” to “10,354 hectares”.
- I was not able to understand meanings of Table 2. The Table 2 should be separated into 3 or arranged to more clear.
- In some Tables, do not separate the table in 2 pages. Please re-arrange location of the Tables.
Author Response
Response to specific comments:
All of them were addressed but the last one. We presented this table in this way because if we separate it into 3 tables, it would be more difficult to understand. The tables 3, 4, and 5 have the same information and the breakdown on variables. We can eliminate table 2 if reviewer consider that it is more understandable to leave only table 3, 4 and 5.
Regarding to more quantitative analysis. We decided to build a composed indicator, and we don see any use of anova analysis or something like that, to complete the composed indicator. We make other statistical analysis to probe other hypothesis but not for this.
In relation to the reviewer´s comments to 1) accumulated research on governance, we have a very extensive review of studies that help us to bulid the composed indicator, despite our case of San Miguel Topilejo is not a good example of governance. The problem is that the explanation of the methodology is too long because is very detailed and it could make this manuscript too long. If reviewer and editor allow us to extend this paper, we can do it. 2) studies of governance show that governance is a very new issue, no more than 3 decades, and each case is a unique story. We have made other previous studies on governance, some of them have much more positive characteristics than San Miguel Topilejo, we decided to build a composed indicator because we did not do that in our previous studies.
We attach the manuscript with the changes suggested by reviewer 1
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The introduction of the article describes very well the current problems of forestry in Mexico, which are mainly related to the ongoing deforestation of the territory in favor of the expansion of agricultural land. The role of state policy, which does not pay due attention to the sustainability of forests and does not create conditions and preconditions for changing the attitudes of the population towards forests, is assessed as insufficient. Literally alarming information, in my opinion, is that since the end of the 20th century, the extent of natural vegetation in Mexico has decreased by 50%. Therefore, I consider the research activities of the team of authors of this article to be very beneficial, as they analyze the current state of forests, especially those owned by the community, characterize their management and formulate conclusions on which the competent authorities of Mexico can draw when preparing appropriate measures to led to an improvement in the condition of the forest and its management in Mexico.
The authors emphasize the important thesis that it is desirable in Mexico to change the way forests are protected from a passive form (with a ban on the use of forest resources) to a dynamic form, accepting the use of forest resources while taking careful care to preserve them. However, there is a difficult task to ensure. The problem is that it must be based on effective management with the active participation of forest resource owners through the committees of the working group on harvesting, monitoring, conservation and management of economic and social resources.
After introductory chapters on forests throughout Mexico, the authors focus on the characteristics of the area they are monitoring, ie the agrarian community in the village of San Miguel Topilejo in southern Mexico City and the results of their research.
Chapter 2 provides information on the materials and the method of solving the problem. I think that this chapter contains all the necessary data, from which the reader of the article can understand the situation in the given locality and the starting points of the research solution of the author's team.
Chapter 3 describes the results of the research survey. It is clear that the level of community forest management is determined by the research team through a composite indicator, which integrates three criteria: social capital, collective action and local forestry and conservation organizations. The results are processed in the form of texts, interspersed with tabular summaries of data. I think that the results are characterized by a suitable form from which the current situation of forestry in the region will be understood by both the reader familiar with the local conditions (ie a citizen of Mexico) and foreigners interested in the issue. I consider this fact to be important, as it will make it possible to spread awareness of the issue to the whole world.
Chapter 4 contains a very brief conclusion, which contains the authors' most important findings, such as: that the level of community forest management in San Miguel Topilejo is low, there are no formal standards and rules for forest management, informal rules are imposed by management and government; community members have little influence on decision-making processes for forest protection and management, etc.
I have no fundamental comments on the content and form of the article. The article is based on a set of quality and reliable information that the authors have processed in a very good way. As I have already mentioned, the article can be a very good source of information and inspiration for those interested in the system of community forest management. Perhaps the only thing I would recommend adding in the article is the Discussion chapter (which is a common part of scientific articles and is not mentioned in the present article). Another recommendation of mine is that, within the possible chapter of the Discussion (or elsewhere, eg in the Conclusion), concrete proposals for solutions (improvement) of the current state of forest management in community forests in San Miguel Topilejo be clearly formulated.
Author Response
We thanks to reviewer 2 for his/her kind comments. We think he/she understand very well our ideas and explanations in this manuscript.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
no comments
