Stakeholder Expectations of Future Policy Implementation Compared to Formal Policy Trajectories: Scenarios for Agricultural Food Systems in the Mekong Delta

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The question "Is the content succinctly described and contextualized with respect to previous and present theoretical background and empirical research (if applicable) on the topic?" is marked as "must be improved" from following reasons.

1. What means keywords "implementation" and "against" in the title "Mapping stakeholder perceptions of implementation against formal policy trajectories: Scenarios for agricultural food systems in the Mekong Delta"? The title should be changed according to the content af article.
2. "Figure 1. Socio-Agricultural scenario matrix for 2050" compares sustainable intensification at one extreme with agriculture sustainability, not with sustainability of extensive agriculture. Neither sustainable intensity nor extensity are based on scientific data but "Flood & Drought" and sometimes on"Agricultural Production" in attached scenarios. This imbalance is partly corrected in Figure 2 where intensity is at both ends of vertical dimension. But, low and high sustainability is again not defined by scientific but political arguments in sentence of discussion "Research on stakeholder preferences shows successful government persuasion of regional stakeholders to accept the agri-business industralization" with attached citation. Therefore, question "Are the arguments and discussion of findings coherent, balanced and compelling?" is also marked as "must be improved". The other citation of discussion operates with argumennt of non-existence, what shows wrong research design. Therefore, also question "For empirical research, are the results clearly presented?ismarked"must be improved and question "Is the article adequately referenced?" as should be improved.

The question "Are the research design, questions, hypotheses and methods clearly stated?" is marked "must be improved" because the development of new research findings for extensity and intensity is not considered when sustainability is evaluated. Keyword "future" is mentioned 33 times but always in connection with stakeholders, especially the agri-business, which agri-business will dominate in agricultural production over commune system and socio-agricultural systems. These consructs are asymetric.

The question "Are the conclusions thoroughly supported by the results presented in the article or referenced in secondary literature" is marked "must be improved because conclusions are not based on developed scenarios but on discussion of "strategic delta plans", which were approved by politicians.

Author Response

Point 1. The title has been clarified to make it clearer and remove the word against. We continue to use the word implementation as the paper does address how stakeholders see policy actually happening on the ground  - which is termed implementation. However the title is rearranged to make this clearer.

Point 2. Thank you for this point. The Author recognise that the labelling of the 2 diagrams needed to be more consistent  and have corrected figure 1 to reflect the exact wording of figure 2.

The reviewer points out that the the definition of sustainability is derived from political arguments.  In this case they are derived from the perceptions of stakeholders interviewed prior to the workshop. The intention was to capture the expertise of the government and civil society experts as to the effective definition of  sustainability supported by the literature. The Authors recognise that this can be made clearer and have modified the text regarding our interactions with stakeholders accordingly (L101). 

In regards to the asymetric nature of the stakeholder perspective against possible technical advances in the fields of sustainable agriculture, this work focuses on stakeholder perceptions versus those that are provided by central and regional government. We are interesting in the stakeholder perception of the future, as reflected in the modified title. The authors feel that the development of arguments for or against this process fall outside the remit of the paper but might constitute future work. 

The conclusion attempts to compare the stakeholder perceptions with the delta plan in order to see if the expectations of the stakeholders in the workshop align with the Delta plan. The Authors have modified the conclusion to make that point clearer here. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The research area of the paper is crucial and extremely interesting. Nevertheless, there are improvements required, as follows:

There is a need for in-depth theoretical studies. The author/s mentioned the research problem is relevant to the sustainable idea, but there is a lack of background. Moreover, the political economy of the agricultural sector in the studied area/Asia, should be discussed.

Both discussion and conclusions should be rewritten. The discussion chapter is too narrow. I would recommend discussing other studies (in-depth literature review is needed) and the general situation in the countries/Asia. The conclusions chapter includes parts that are much more suitable for discussion one. 

Author Response

Point 1. The point is recognised and we have added a paragraph on the general principles of agricultural sustainability in Asia at line 86 whilst ensuring reasonable use of space in the article.  The additional references have been added to the reference list. 

Point 1. While the paper is not a political economy one, we recognise the importance of this and have added some information, however a political economy analysis would be a different paper in our view. We have, however, anchored the sustainability discussion in the literature on sustainable intensification in both the introduction and the discussion sections, which crosses into themes of political economy

Paragraph 2. The point is recognised and additional contextual material has been added to the discussion to provide a broader Asian comparison.  Also the conclusion has been tightened up and focused somewhat. All new references are in the reference list  and attempts have been made to restrict excessive growth of the overall text length. 

Paragraph 2.  The authors have expanded the discussion section to pick up again the sustainable intensification theme, expand on the studied area, and explain the relevance of our findings for areas that experience similar change, in particular the GBM delta / river system, but also major river systems and deltas more generally. The conclusion has been revised in line with the revision of the discussion. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Explanation of authors about title of article "We continue to use the word implementation as the paper does address how stakeholders see policy actually happening on the ground  - which is termed implementation" doesn't fit to the ne title "Stakeholder expectations of future policy implementation compared to formal policy trajectories: Scenarios for agricultural food systems in the Mekong Delta". The explained meaning of "implementation" as "how stakeholders see policy actually happening on the ground" is closer to "observation of observers". There is also a contradiction between past "actually happening", "future policy implementation". The very long title demonstrates lacking methodological knowledge of collection and processing hedonic data. The structure of respondents (Fig. 3e) especially, the majority of sustainable idealists and intensive business as usual is not representative of the population and results are not processed to overcome this disparity. Keyword "respondents" appears only once in the article. I am mentioning the structure of respondents as one of possible approaches to improve representativeness of the article. As "This paper aims to: (i) develop a transferable methodology" the representativeness should be taken seriously. Other two aims "; (ii) understand district level stakeholder ..." and "(iii) establish how in turn these district/delta perspectives align with national and regional ..." are far less ambitious. The conclusion "policies are ambiguous, and at worst contradictory ..." shows that none of the three aims was reached. Therefore, objectives should be redesigned according to core findings (scale between ambiguous and contradictions at its extremes).Added citations to text do not refer to the scenario method, which needs to be supported to justify its place in the title of this article. 

Author Response

The authors have carefully considered the comments from reviewer 1. We make the following response.

1) We find the written style of the response very difficult to follow. We did so in the first set of response but made a full attempt to answer comments as best we could. For the main part and particularly towards the end this review is incomprehensible

2) The word Implementation refers to the action on the ground as opposed to what is simply proposed in a policy. As such it is the correct word. The study looks at what stakeholders in the workshop feel will/might actually be implemented as opposed to what is suggested in the policy. This is a misunderstanding by the reviewer which is not the case with reviewer 2

3) Hedonic research/data refers to Hendonism - which focuses on happiness and defines well-being in terms of pleasure attainment and pain avoidance. The Authors fail to see any connection between our work and this research field whatsoever and question why the reviewer has brought it up

4) The reviewer seems to assert that the authors should in some way manipulate the data such that it is "representative". Representative of what? The method involved engagement with 60+ representing most districts on the Mekong delta. This was a substantive achievement and offers an excellent opportunity to capture decision makers insights. We fail to see what the reviewer is try to say.

5) As Authors who have worked hard on this document we would appreciate a more constructive tone of review

6) None of these points are raised by the first reviewer who has cleared the paper for publication

 

Reviewer 2 Report

I have no comments or suggestions for Authors.

Author Response

Appreciated

Author Response File: Author Response.docx