Quantifying the Preference of Stakeholders in the Utilization of Forest Resources

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Overall comments:

Introduction suffers by inadequate background circumstances and poor description of the rational of the study. There is enormous literature available in the area, literature review could be improved. The framework/methods chosen accord with the state of art. However, the descriptions are hard to grasp. MS misses a clear description about the site selection, sampling intensity determination and selection of households (farmers) for the survey. The results are somehow understandable, but could be clearer. The linkage between results and methodology section need to be improved. Most of the findings in the result section are not supported by convincing arguments and evidences (see L154- L267). Most important, the results need to be critically compared with national and international literature (major weakness!). The conclusion section lacks consistency with the content of discussion and result section. The conclusion hardly speaks about the generalization of the findings.

 

The authors might need to work nomenclature and terminology (for example, ‘the implementation of returning farmland to forests’, ‘…return the Grain plots to forestry’; ecological tourism vs ecotourism’, ‘Develop economic forest industry’ ‘to manage economic forest’). I recommend for ‘English language editing’.

Detailed comments to the Author

 1. Introduction

The overall goal and the specific objective the research are clearly and logically stated. The background circumstances that created the conditions for the work to be carried out that led to the paper is not described adequately. I did not see any additional information which one can see any of the ‘park-people’ conflict contexts (elsewhere)/literature.

 

• In L20-L22, it is said “As of September, China has established 2750 nature reserves. ……..”. But L 22-23, “At present, all kinds of natural reserves in China have reached 11029.” This creates confusion. Clarify it.
• L27: ‘Exploit’ sounds negative; may the resources are major components of the livelihoods of the IPs. Therefore, I suggest to replace ‘exploit’ with another suitable word.
• L38: Add more literatures
• L40: Instead of ‘wisdom’- ‘traditional knowledge and customary practices’- could be better.
• L40-42: Rephrase this sentence. For example, in L 42, ‘methods’ is not necessary.
• L42: ‘Participatory contextual methods’ or ‘participatory methods’? Methods do not provide the reference for policy making. Research methods are used to collect the data and analysis.

2. Political Ecology and Forest Resources Utilization

• Is this your research framework? If yes, describe how the framework provides with tools to answer your research question. Add a paragraph linking ‘Political Ecology and Forest Resources Utilization’ with your research.

3. Materials and Methods

3.1 Study area

• The selection of study area is not clear. ‘…..because it has advanced concepts in ecological protection and people’s livelihood development’ is not convincing criteria. Provide more justifications- why, among 67 reserves, Wolong Reserve is chosen for the study.
• L87: hm2?? Is it km²?

3.2 Data sources and processing

• L108: basic sectional data??
• Elaborate: (i) How did you determine the total sampling intensity (number of households) of 943? (ii) How did you distribute it among the reserves? (iii) How did you select the households for interview?
• Describe: Were they close- or open-ended questionnaires? What were the major questions?
• Table 3: Units are missing (income, fuelwood); Forestry revenue ratio to what? Total income??
• Table 3: You have electric, gasoline and diesel, and coal costs, but again Energy consumption expenditure. Are not the former energy costs?

4. Results

Statements or findings from L154-267 are presented without empirical evidences (facts, figures).

L255: ‘In terms of government support policies,….’; what are they?

L256: ‘replace firewood with electricity’ has a greater impact- where are the facts & Figures to produce this result?

L258: ‘Conservation also allows local farmers more free time to manage economic forests ‘- how and how much? Present the facts and figures to support this statement. Furthermore, ‘manage economic forests’- is not understandable.

L260-261: The opening of roads may encourage deforestation and forest degradation. This is completely ignored here.

L261- 263: This is again a statement without any facts and figures. The authors should present fact and figures to come up with a statement.

 

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment. Thank you so much .

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Tittle: Quantifying the Preference of Stakeholders in Utilization of Forest Resource

 

This manuscript needs a substantial level of improvement .

Abstract:

1. The result part is insufficiently stated in the abstract. The research result is very complicated to use by farmers.
2. The last sentence of the abstract is an indication of immature writing. I suggest dropping it.

Introduction section:  

1. The idea presented in line 38 to line 42 inconsistent the idea authors attempted to explain in the first sentence. I suggest thinking in cool mind and make the points coherent to the first sentences and meaningful. It requires how this is meritorious over other studies or how this study makes contribution of new or precise information over previous studies.
2. The research problem/question is supposed to be explicitly explained in the last paragraph. But the manuscript has not stated the problem explicit in the paragraph. It has stated review of historical process of forest utilization. This part is merely stated in the result section.

Political ecology:

3. The political framework is just defined but the authors little linked to method and result sections. I suggest carrying forward the section 3.3 Participatory scenario of forest utilization and explain the model in the political ecology framework.
4. Figure 1 could be illustrated and explicitly explained in more meaningful ways.

Method:

1. The results showed many stakeholders data were used in this study, but authors stated the sample size of 943 households. They have not stated number of samples of other stakeholders such as staffs and politicians. Sample size of each groups needs separated. Table 4 in result section the authors stated number of participants of a workshop. This is not sufficient to make such strong conclusion.
2. The authors claimed the study is based on participatory scenario analysis. But the method does not tell the reality. A participatory method collects data in group discussion and consensus. But this study used a questionnaire survey of 943 peasant households. This looks methodological flaw.
3. The title of Table 3 is incomplete.
4. The scenarios as stated in Table 5 supposed to be explained in method section.

Result

1. Table 5 stated historical timeline. The historical timeline requires date, if not possible to get such data they are stated tentative periods ( 18^th centuries or 50 years ago or before entering to communism era).  That information is supposed to be written in details instead of summary in table.
2. It would be meaningful if the authors presented real terms of villages and stakeholders. Table 6 could be part of summary in discussion section.
3. Table 7 presented very abstract summary. The information is very vague and little meaningful. Each scenario including status quo requires explanation in details.

Discussion

1. This section is about discussing the results with scholarly logics and bench marking with similar other study. The discussion is not well focused to the points of the results.

Conclusion:

The substances in the conclusion section are very poor. The section is supposed to draw conclusion specific to the result points. The result part has little explained issues related to political ecology, but the last paragraph highlighted the its application. Thus the writing can be considered extremely poor.  

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment. Thank you so much.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Most of my queries are addressed. I still see problem on presentation of sample size. On one side the authors claimed they followed participatory approach to identify the management. If so the information is supposed to be collected in group discussion. On other side it stated the information is collected by using household survey questionnaires.  I suggest further clarifying the issues so that the presentation avoids confusion on method for potential  readers.  

Author Response

In response to the reviewer's comments, an explanation has been added to L218-228.