Implementation of Economic Instruments in the EU Forest-Based Sector: Case Study in Austria and the Czech Republic

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Main comments:

The topic is well presented and of interest to the forest-based sector.

- Table 1. "Core documents and respective codes used during the analysis" makes Austrian
  and Czech funding schemes appear as connected to EU funding scheme. Are these really
  the only funding schemes impacting the forest sector in these counties? What about
  national schemes?

- The Economic Incentives "threads" and "weaknesses" section in figure 6 are much
  smaller than the "opportunities" and "synergies"  components.

    - Your SWOT analysis is misleading because it only sources feedback from within the
      core documents. What external documents could be added to open the perspective?

    - The article lacks an explanation of the damaging effect of subsidies to wood
      energy. Such policies can be damaging to the environment and should appear in a
      prominent way in the SWOT analysis. On this topic, See for example Searchinger
      https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04133-1 "EU climate plan sacrifices
      carbon storage and biodiversity for bioenergy".

- Table 4 is the most valuable contribution of your paper. You should do a better job of
  describing SWOTs, maybe by pointing to difficult trade-offs between different forest
  ecosystem services (biodiversity, tourism, versus timber provision). These should be
  then associated with insights on how EI policies help improve (or not) the provision
  of those services. It can then lead to an explanation of the unintended negative
  consequences of narrowly defined policies. As a hypothetical example: a policy
  focusing narrowly on carbon sequestration in intensively managed plantations would
  fail to generate sufficient habitat for biodiversity. The SWOT analysis points to some
  of these aspects, but you could provide a better description of these trade-off issues
  by using them as the central narrative ark of your discussion.

- Describe the technology behind the Atlas text analysis software and how it is relevant
  to a SWAT analysis. What other qualitative approach could have been used?


Lines 102,104

> "For example, during 2014—2020, the EU contributed approximately 8.1 billion euros to
> the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development, including some measures to
> support sustainable forest management and conservation."

It may be worth specifying that the EU Common Agricultural Policy distributes a lot of
subsidies to agriculture, but that there is no such policy for the Forest sector.

Lines 143,144

> as they have comparable areas, the share of forest area, and gross value added of the
> forestry industry

Remove "the".
Suggestion:
... as they have comparable areas, share of forest area, and gross value added of
the forestry industry

Lines 148, 151
> The European Union is an economic and political organization made up of 27 Euro- pean
> countries to promote cooperation where part of their sovereignty has been delegated to
> common institutions to democratically make decisions on matters of common interest
> such as health, environment, climate, foreign relations, security, justice, and
> migration.

This very generic description can be removed.

Lines 152, 157

> The EU has some of the highest environmental standards in the world to protect the en-
> vironment and biodiversity, minimize risks to human health, and promote the transition
> to a circular economy [56]. For this reason, the EU was selected as an area of study
> to identify and understand how the use of economic instruments for sustainable manage-
> ment, improvement of processes in the forest-based sector, and the conservation of
> forests and their ecosystem functions are applied.

A nice value statement that doesn't bring much to your research question. The statement
about high environmental standards in the EU is also repeated later line 195. The
paragraph above can be removed.

Lines 171,172
> still need to be observe.

Suggestion: observed

Lines 177, 179

> "what existing economic instruments and financing schemes have been implemented for
> the forest-based sector in the EU, Austria, and Czechia? In addition, what are the
> SWOT aspects of the economic instruments identified in the forest-based sector?" >

You should mention these research question earlier in the introduction. For example from
lines 123, "This article aims to identify the EIs that are used in the EU forest-based
sector"...

Line 201

> AT02, CZ01, and CZ02

Specify for the reader that these documents contain the Czech and Austrian forest
strategy and forest law.

LIne 223

> we used ATLAS.ti Windows Version

Please describe the technology behind this software in a short paragraph. Is it using
word embeddings? Does it encode the text in feature vectors?

Line 228

> Table 1. Core documents and respective codes used during the analysis [25,31,32,57,60–73]

There are only EU funding programmes in the table. Are there no national funding
schemes? If no, can you explain that national schemes are only the translation of
European schemes into national law.

Line 249

> Figure 3. Qualitative Content Analysis process, adapted from [75,76]

The bottom right part of the figure, after "example of strength coded" is illegible.
Remove it.


Lines 333, 335 and Table 3

> Five hundred thirty-four (534) quotes were extracted from the core documents re- lated
> to the SWOT aspects of using, implementing, and managing the forest-based sector's
> economic instruments and financing mechanisms (see Table 3 and Figure 6).

What is the meaning of "strengths Gr=202" and "weaknesses Gr=125" in table 3?
Do they refer to positive versus negative language present in the core documents?


> Figure 6. Sankey diagram SWOT aspects identified in the core documents.

The labels on the left are very small, can you make them bigger, at least the same size
as the main text of the article? They might be oriented vertically if that fits better.

Lines 424, 425

> "However, environmental taxes are constantly opposed because their economic effects
> are difficult to understand."

This statement is very debatable and needs to backed by a source.

Lines 437, 440

> "Cap-and-trade systems face market uncertainties" [...]
> "For this reason, the core documents analyzed minimally mention this mechanism."

Market uncertainties are a phenomenon, it's not an explanation for why cap and trade
systems are ignored or problematic. The literature that you cited can certainly provide
a perspective on the limits of cap and trade systems. In particular the sale of carbon
credits from forests has been criticized for not achieving additionality. You should
mention that literature to explain threads and weaknesses of carbon markets.

See for example on the topic of carbon offset:

- West et al 2023 "Action needed to make carbon offsets from tropical forest
  conservation work for climate change mitigation" https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.03354

    > "Our findings show that most projects have not reduced deforestation. For projects
    > that did, reductions were substantially lower than claimed.

From line 441 onward

> 4.2. SWOT analysis of forest economic instruments 441
> In Table 4, ....
> Austria has made more significant progress ...
> On the other hand, Czechia presents a more limited use

Table 4 is the most valuable contribution of your paper. Unfortunately, the analysis
remains at a very high level. It is frustrating that you never enter into the details of
those strengths and weaknesses. Table 4 mention the business potential of the tourism
industry and the negative impact of some plantations on biodiversity. Trade-offs between
ecosystem services (such as biodiversity, recreation, water provision) and timber
provision merit ample explanations. Instead of structuring your analysis by country, you
could describe all strengths together, then all weaknesses together, then all threads,
then all opportunities. Even better, you could structure your discussion by main
trade-off types. I think that would improve readability and also help draw a narrative
ark between the challenges inside the forest sectors.

Line 446

> "formulation, evaluation, and restructuring"

restructuration

Lines 471, 472

> "the forest-based sector has been minimized, mainly relegated to using and ex-
> tracting wood."

What does minimized mean in this context? According to the statistics you cited in
introduction and when expressed in financial terms, the size of the Czech forest sector
is greater than the Austrian forest sector. Do you mean that environmental services
have been minimized in policy documents with respect to traditional forestry aspects?


Best wishes for the revision.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your feedback on the manuscript. Your comments were incredibly helpful in enabling me to refine and clarify my approach and to ensure that the message regarding economic instruments and financing mechanisms is more precise and easily understood by readers.

I am pleased to report that I have made the necessary improvements to the document, and I hope these changes have addressed your concerns and met your expectations. I look forward to continuing the publication process and working towards a successful outcome.

Please see the attachment with the explanation of all of the comments.

Best regards, 

Carolina Huertas

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This research examines the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of economic instruments as political tools to promote environmental stewardship, through qualitative content analysis of forest policy documents from the EU, Austria, and the Czech Republic. Findings suggest that the EU uses financing programs to effectively distribute resources and align with environmental objectives, but differences in the application and management of economic instruments exist between countries. The identified challenges and improvement areas provide suggestions for policymakers to enhance financing mechanisms for sustainable forest management in the EU.

 

Page 1, lines 39-42: Not clear. Please reformulate.

 

Page 2, lines 77-78: “Bearing in mind that the European Union (EU) has one of the most efficient environmental regulatory frameworks in the world”: This statement could be accurate, but can you please provide the sources you've relied on?

 

Page 8, Figure 4: I am having trouble comprehending how Threats can contribute to the attainment of Economic Instruments' objectives.

 

Pages 15-17: One critique of subsidies and funds is that they can disrupt market prices, even though forest owners may find them beneficial. These instruments may not accurately reflect the true economic value of environmental services, instead reflecting the value granted by a regulatory authority. Can you share your thoughts on this issue?

 

Pages 15-17: How can you ensure that you have identified all the weaknesses when the measures are already implemented? While it may be understandable to question legal texts under discussion, in most cases, there is no structural questioning involved.

 

 

Pages 15-17: Please elaborate on the limitations of your approach. For instance, you may consider the fact that economic instruments in the EU forest-based sector are part of a broader range of policy tools that must be coherent at the global level, without having adverse effects on other sectors, whether they are substitutes or complements to the forest-based sector.

Some sentences could be improved.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your feedback on the manuscript. Your comments were incredibly helpful in enabling me to refine and clarify my approach and to ensure that the message regarding economic instruments and financing mechanisms is more precise and easily understood by readers.

I am pleased to report that I have made the necessary improvements to the document, and I hope these changes have addressed your concerns and met your expectations. I look forward to continuing the publication process and working towards a successful outcome.

Please see the attachment with the explanation of all of the comments.

Best regards, 

Carolina Huertas

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

Your reply to my comments are satisfying and provide a good description of the changes implemented.

I am disappointed by the fact that you replaced table 4 by lists of bullet points. The bullet points should be combined in coherent paragraphs of text.  For example looking at "4.2.3. Opportunities of the EIs..." you could extract the main keywords from the bullet list such as "agroforestry", "tourism industry", "sustainable forest management", "dialogue among stakeholders", "circular economy" etc.... Then group some of these keywords. It would greatly enhance your paper if you could illustrate links between the keywords with a network graph for example (this is optional). For the actual descriptive text, you could start the ""4.2.3. Opportunities" paragraph with sentences on practical notions such as "tourism industry" and "agroforestry". Then place general notions such as "climate change mitigation and adaptation" or "circular economy" at the very last. This is just an example. My point is not to tell you exactly how to formulate your section "4.2. SWOT analysis", but just to encourage you to group items in the bullet list and to find links between then.

Lines 615-616

> "The absence of a standard legal framework for forest policy

> in the European Union can result in a

> lack of coherence in forest management"

This is the reason why grouping and highlighting links between policies is important. It is a hard task that if attempted will make your work more valuable.

Best regards,

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your feedback and suggestions regarding replacing Table 4 and bullet point lists. Your suggestions have given me valuable information to improve the clarity and coherence of the SWOT analysis.

I am pleased to report that I have made the necessary improvements to the document, and I hope these changes have addressed your concerns and met your expectations. I look forward to continuing the publication process and working towards a successful outcome.

Please see the attachment with the explanation of the comments.

Best regards, 

Carolina Huertas

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the updates.

Thank you for the updates.

Author Response

No manuscript changes are requested in the second revision.