Comprehensive and Integrated Impact Assessment Framework for Development Policies Evaluation: Definition and Application to Kenyan Coffee Sector

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The author build an integrated framework to evaluate the impact of new technological interventions and apply the framework to coffee sector in Kenya. 
The research topic is within the scope of the journal. The construction of the model were explained in detail. The results were presented correctly. And some meaningful conclusions were put forward.
However, before I can recommend it to be published, the following issues need to be addressed.

1. The literature review seems insufficient. From line 57 to 68, the author analyzed the limitation of present studies, and stated that research that integrate physical and input-output models is lacking. In fact, there are a number of studies that combine LCA (physical model) and input-output model. I suggest the significance and contribution of this study be further clarified. In addition, the author could explain more about the connection of the case study with the built model in the Introduction section, so that the readers could capture the important features of this study in the beginning.

There are some literatures the author could include in the review in the introduction as well as in the case study:

The social, economic, and environmental implications of biomass ethanol production in China: A multi-regional input-output-based hybrid LCA model

Unlocking climate finance potential and policy barriers—A case of renewable energy and energy efficiency in Sub-Saharan Africa

Impact of climate adaptation strategies on the net farm revenue of underutilised indigenous vegetables’ (UIVs) production in Southwest Nigeria

2. Figure 1: It appears that this fugure is directly sourced from a published reports. If so, I recommend the author remove it from the manuscript and re-plot a flow chart.

3. In the Materials and Methods the author should include the data sources according to the title of the section. The data source can also be put in the case study section, as it is closely connected to the research object and scope. I cannot check the supplementary Information. If the data sources are included in SI, the author should also mention it in the manuscript. 

4. Line 170-172. There is a duplicate sentence.

5. Figure 3. I think the last column should be 'category'.

6. In the Results and discussion, the Figure 5 and Figure 6 are briefly described. However, the readers would like to see more deeper discussion of the results, for instance, the the technological and social causes of the results, the policy implications of the findings. This is a case study, therefore the author should clarify the contribution of this case to some broad application of this farmework in the future. 

7. In the conclusion from line 500-518, the description of the research background can be reduced to two sentences. The author should highlight the major findings and conclusions of the study in this part.

8. The author should pay more attention to the use of abbreviations and the formal use of molecular formulas and numbers. For instance 'MCM', 'CO2', '9k USD', '100M USD' need to be corrected. 

Author Response

Dear Editor, Dear Reviewers,

On behalf of the authoring team we would like to thank you for the insightful comments. We have addressed all of them in the best way within our possibilities. We believe the manuscript has increased in quality thanks to this modifications, and we hope it is now closer to the required quality for publication. A detailed list of the modifications performed is attached below.

Yours Sincerely,
Nicolò Golinucci.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper proposed a wide and comprehensive analysis in a global supply chain. 

However, maybe due to the complexity of the work and the need to maintain the paper in a reasonable number of pages, some passage are not really clear to me. For instance, the author said they used multicriteria analysis in order to compare the impact of various applied interventions. Though that is not a MCDA application. Behind the fact of there are no indication about the method used (MCDA is a family of heterogenous methods, if you do not name that is worthless!), the Figure 5 do not show any MCDA results, just a graphical description of indicators. Moreover, neither the CIVIS method can be referred as MCDA (but authors did at line ln 246/7). 

I'm not saying that the work is not worthy (although I'm not sure this journal is the best one for the subject since energies issue is secondary) but authors should better explain the CIVIS framework, which is for sure multidimensional but not multicriteria (or explain how they used mcd, at least naming the aggregation algorithm). 

minor remarks: N 170-173 a phrase is repeated

Author Response

Dear Editor, Dear Reviewers,

On behalf of the authoring team we would like to thank you for the insightful comments. We have addressed all of them in the best way within our possibilities. We believe the manuscript has increased in quality thanks to this modifications, and we hope it is now closer to the required quality for publication. A detailed list of the modifications performed is attached below.

Yours Sincerely,
Nicolò Golinucci.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

My first question has not been well addressed. The authors need to indicate clearly their potential contribution by comparing with previous works (Please refer to my recommendations). However, it has not been throughly clarified. 

Author Response

Thanks for pointing this out, the following actions have been taken accordingly. 

The Authors expanded paragraph 56-71 adding lines 65-71 including the two missing studies originally suggested by the Reviewer. The Authors thank the Reviewer for suggesting the inclusion of other methodologies adopted to investigate the multidimensional impacts of adopting climate strategies on African farmers and other dimensions of sustainable development, such financial barriers. 

Furthermore, to elaborate on the potential contribution of this study compared to the ones in literature, the authors added the lines 77-80 explaining the flexibility of the framework adopted in this research. 

Reviewer 2 Report

The new version of the work is based on a coherent framework. I have no further comments, except some minor notes on the three tables 

Table 1

• Number of coffee plants per hectare: please change in Number of coffee plants and put plant/hectare in the unit of measure column.
• Fraction of shading trees to coffee plants: please report as % 
• all the % have to be under the unit of measure column not in the second one.
• References have to be uniform: always only ref. number or always the title along with number
• Cost of planting a shading banana plant: change assumption with estimation; moreover, it should explain how the value is assessed (market price?)
• Same consideration for Useful life of the shading plants

Table 2

• all the % have to be under the unit of measure column not in the second one.
• The most of the data are assumptions (again, better estimations). However, the authors didn't give any details on how they estimated such values. Please, include, even synthetically, how you chose the values.

For Table 3: consider the same comments for Table 2. In particular,  Efficiency of the old diesel generators to be replaced and Biomass to fertilizer rate cannot be just assumptions without any type of justification. 

Author Response

Thank you very much for pointing out table information lack of clarity. 

As suggested by the Reviewer, the table now shows a coherent way to refer to unit of measure. The reference column now contains only the number of the reference. Furthermore, on Table 2 some additional references were added for explicit the source of information regarding the mini eco-pulping machine that is identified for this application.  

When an estimation is needed, a synthetic comment is reported to provide the reader with an understanding of the reasoning behind each assumption. 

When no explicit reference is possible, the Authors reported estimations coming from experts' interviews and technical advisors.