Economic Productivity vs. Ecological Protection in Danube Floodplain. Case Study: Danube’s Sector between Olt and Vedea
, Mihaela Preda *, Ana Irina Lequeux-Dincă, Roxana Cuculici, Elena Matei, Alina Mareci, Gabriela Manea and Anca TudoricuRound 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Review of journal article titled: “Danube Floodplain’s restoration: economic productivity vs ecological protection. Case study: Danube’s sector between Olt and Vedea” by Vijulie et al.
The authors investigated the ecological restoration models for the Danube Floodplain: initial state model and sustainable development model balancing economy and ecology of the study area. The study emphasizes the importance of the consensus between stakeholders and the principles of sustainable development. It is an interesting topic, but the manuscript has some critical flaws:
My major concern is that this manuscript is more like a report rather than a scientific paper. In the introduction (lines 45–91), the authors spend a large effort on the situation of Danube Floodplain, the importance of the ecological restoration of the flooded area and official documents. All these small paragraphs can be merged into one larger paragraph: the importance of ecological restoration. But there is no review of previous studies on these topics. What are the challenges of the model topics? Why it is necessary to build new models? What are the advantages of the models in this study compared with others? It is hard to find research questions in this manuscript because the local communities and stakeholders are always involved in the restoration project. Therefore, the conclusion highlighting the “consensus between stakeholders” means nothing under this context.
I like the results part about the stakeholders’ opinions on the restoration models. However, so many small paragraphs made the manuscript difficult to follow. The authors should re-structure the manuscript and give a clear statement on the stakeholders’ opinions. Moreover, the advantages and disadvantages of the models should be given in a table in the main text. It is so important to compare the two models to give a reasonable justification on the models, otherwise, it makes no sense to let the stakeholders select which one is better. In the manuscript, it seems the authors try to persuade the stakeholders to select the second model.
The discussion and conclusion parts should be re-written. There is no discussion in this manuscript. I suggest some discussions on three aspects: (1) Model comparison between the two models and other models in previous studies; (2) stakeholders’ opinion and balancing strategies (3) Model uncertainties due to climate change. The information in the conclusions is NOT new. Please focus on the direct new findings of your paper.
Author Response
Reviewer 1
The authors investigated the ecological restoration models for the Danube Floodplain: initial state model and sustainable development model balancing economy and ecology of the study area. The study emphasizes the importance of the consensus between stakeholders and the principles of sustainable development. It is an interesting topic, but the manuscript has some critical flaws:
My major concern is that this manuscript is more like a report rather than a scientific paper. In the introduction (lines 45–91), the authors spend a large effort on the situation of Danube Floodplain, the importance of the ecological restoration of the flooded area and official documents. All these small paragraphs can be merged into one larger paragraph: the importance of ecological restoration.
Response:
Thank you for bringing this to our attention, consequently a new more compact paragraph was created, this will greatly improve the fluidity of the text.
But there is no review of previous studies on these topics.
Response:
Thank you pointing out methods in which the study can increase its clarity and be more useful for the interested readership. More relevant titles were introduced from the international literature on how other regions went forward and dealt with ecological restoration. In terms of research and actions on ecological restoration done at the national level: they are now more clearly presented in the introduction section. We hope this will help better understand the overall background on the Romanian reality.
What are the challenges of the model topics?
Response:
Figure 6 was introduced, it succinctly presents the advantages and disadvantages for each of the two models was included in the paper.
Why it is necessary to build new models?
Response:
At a national level it was more strongly emphasized that the main necessity for creating the models for ecological restoration stems from the fact that there is no study that presents at this level of detail how this transformation will actually look like in the chosen study area: the Danube floodplain between Olt and Vedea.
What are the advantages of the models in this study compared with others?
Response:
Due to the fact that the models proposed here are unique for the study area in terms of detailed mapping of the changes that ecological restoration will bring, we are unfortunately unable to competently present their advantages compared with other models.
It is hard to find research questions in this manuscript because the local communities and stakeholders are always involved in the restoration project. Therefore, the conclusion highlighting the “consensus between stakeholders” means nothing under this context. I like the results part about the stakeholders’ opinions on the restoration models. However, so many small paragraphs made the manuscript difficult to follow. The authors should re-structure the manuscript and give a clear statement on the stakeholders’ opinions.
Response:
The entire section 4.2 was restructured.
Moreover, the advantages and disadvantages of the models should be given in a table in the main text. It is so important to compare the two models to give a reasonable justification on the models, otherwise, it makes no sense to let the stakeholders select which one is better.
Response: Figure 6 was introduced, it succinctly presents the advantages and disadvantages for each of the two models was included in the paper.
In the manuscript, it seems the authors try to persuade the stakeholders to select the second model.
Response:
Thank you for taking the time to analyse our work and present ways of improving and clarifying its findings.
As for the section of the article that presents the discussions and interactions with the stakeholders allow us to present a bit of background. When going in the field the authors were confronted with the lack of information the general population has regarding the concept of ecological restoration and what exactly it means for their everyday reality. This is supported by the fact that most of the landowners with small farms have a limited education and knowledge about specialized views on ecology in general. As such the first question facing the authors was “what is an ecological restoration, be it partial or complete” and “what good will it do to us”. The authors had to explain the concept of restoration and what the potential benefits would be but also the necessary steps to achieve it which would request a series of sacrifices on the part of the general population.
Because of the ineffective manner in which the authors described these interactions the idea that the process was tainted emerged and we have done our best to address that.
The discussion and conclusion parts should be re-written. There is no discussion in this manuscript. I suggest some discussions on three aspects: (1) Model comparison between the two models and other models in previous studies; (2) stakeholders’ opinion and balancing strategies (3) Model uncertainties due to climate change. The information in the conclusions is NOT new. Please focus on the direct new findings of your paper.
Response:
Thank you for this suggestion, the discussion section was restructured.
Reviewer 2 Report
The restoration of ecosystems is often accompanied by trade-offs with socioeconomic development. How to harmonize the benefits and costs among stakeholders is a challenging but important issue. In this regard, the exploration of points of view from various sectors, agents or individuals is useful to approach this question. The paper attempts to use the case of restoring ecosystems in the Danube floodplain and investigate perceptions of stakeholders from the floodplain with their opinions. Several comments that need to be addressed are listed as follows.
A point highlighted is the integration of field observation, GIS techniques and social interviews. However, the integrating processes is rather vague, lacking detailed description. Please find the specific examples below.
Lines 120-128, it is not clear how to create the two ecological restoration models. The description that the model is constructed with a map using some techniques is not convincing. What does the 1912 Austria Map look like? To what degree the research aims to restore the model that is close to the 1912 map? How to consider the history of human changes (what types of human changes: population, constructed area, or else)? What is the accuracy of measurement for the comparison between the original map and the restore model? It is also suggested to display them side by side for the comparison. Similar questions for the second model, where the balance of economy and ecology is not clearly defined. For instance, were the shares of area of residential areas and wetlands actually used to reflect the so-called balance?
Line 136, describe how and why stratifying the samples to make the individuals representative for the age groups.
Lines 155-159, Add details on how to control the consistency of the two interviews by the two groups of authors. Although these two interviews were for two different types of farmers, some general questions of the interview should be designed in order to make their responses comparable. As such, it is important to make the questions consistent, albeit not necessarily identical.
Lines 167-176, this part involves the most critical problem. What is the purpose of distributing benefits of ecological restoration? This definitely leads to huge bias of the research results. As the smallholders received such “benefits” messages before the interviews, their perception would be significantly shifted towards the support of ecological restoration than the previous thoughts, which might be neutral, especially given that the perception is the central question of the present paper. The next part of informing economic growth through ecological production is even more critical. This biases the whole perception to the direction of totally positive views of ecological restoration while losing all the objectivity.
Author Response
Reviewer 2
The restoration of ecosystems is often accompanied by trade-offs with socioeconomic development. How to harmonize the benefits and costs among stakeholders is a challenging but important issue. In this regard, the exploration of points of view from various sectors, agents or individuals is useful to approach this question. The paper attempts to use the case of restoring ecosystems in the Danube floodplain and investigate perceptions of stakeholders from the floodplain with their opinions. Several comments that need to be addressed are listed as follows.
A point highlighted is the integration of field observation, GIS techniques and social interviews. However, the integrating processes is rather vague, lacking detailed description. Please find the specific examples below.
Lines 120-128, it is not clear how to create the two ecological restoration models. The description that the model is constructed with a map using some techniques is not convincing. What does the 1912 Austria Map look like? To what degree the research aims to restore the model that is close to the 1912 map? How to consider the history of human changes (what types of human changes: population, constructed area, or else)? What is the accuracy of measurement for the comparison between the original map and the restore model? It is also suggested to display them side by side for the comparison. Similar questions for the second model, where the balance of economy and ecology is not clearly defined. For instance, were the shares of area of residential areas and wetlands actually used to reflect the so-called balance?
Response:
The Austrian Map was introduced in order to allow for a comparison between the map and the first model. The Austrian map was chosen as a reference point because it is the ones that best describe an “unaltered state of the Danube Floodplain”. The most important reason for reaching for an initial state of facts stems from the existence of the The Lower Danube Green Corridor Declaration as part of the Living Danube Partnership initiated by the World Wide Fund (WWF) and agreed on by the EU signed by Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, the Republic of Moldova, and Ukraine that commit to the restoration of 900.000 ha of presently cultivated areas into wetlands as part of their effort to adapt to climate change (as the Danube Floodplain is a very important reservoir for storing the excess volume of water from flooding). Furthermore, the EU pledge in the year 2000 to finance projects that would result in the restoration of wetland in the Danube Floodplain.
The first proposed model used the Austrian map as a reference of the initial state of the Danube Floodplain. Before the embankment works were done in the study area, it was made up by permanent ponds, streams and reefs, or smaller temporary ponds (that would often dry up during summers), floodable lowlands, or higher terrains that would flood only at higher floods that would surpass the shores and grinds. The degree of accuracy between this model and the 1912 map is approximately 75% as it takes into account the existing anthropic changes done to the natural elements in the territory it presents. The main reason why the 1912 land-use image cannot be fully achieved through any ecological restoration project is that after 1960 the area experienced several agricultural improvement works (embankment works, draining of the lakes, and leveling of the terrain). This was all done in order to include in the total agricultural area of the country the lands inside the Floodplain as these were highly fertile due to the nutrients washed here by the alluviums of the Danube. The former wetlands now became arable plots, pastures, vineyards, or orchards. The only human settlement that existed before this point in time is still present in the place spot and is the present-day Poiana village, called Flămânda before. After the embankment and draining works began several other built-up areas emerged: the port developments in Târgu Măgurele, silos, industrial farms, transport infrastructure, irrigation systems, etc. When building the first model the authors’ maintained the existing human infrastructure and focused on restructuring the rest of the area. The model keeps the current village of Poiana, the transport infrastructure, and the Turnu Măgurele port.
The second model constitutes another ecological restoration project based on the existing mosaic of land-use typologies in the Danube Floodplain and aims to propose a sustainable economic-ecological capitalization of the study area. The balance between the economic aspect and the ecological benefits would be achieved through specific and punctual modifications of some of the currently agricultural lands that have formerly been ponds, swamps, or flooded areas. For example: the author proposed that the current arable surface in the study area is kept at approximately the same level but propose introducing forest shelterbelts on the arable lands. These would have an important ecological protection role. Moreover, this model contains rooms for the river, which are original distinctive elements for a land planning project in Romania, and follows a Dutch-led project. They will be placed on the former location of the Roșia and Călina lakes and will be surrounded by, and irrigate green areas (an important source of vegetables for the local population). Another method of balancing economic production with ecologic protection is the reintroduction of rice paddies around Suhaia Lake, which together with the forest shelterbelts will help moderate the climatic aridity of the study area.
Line 136, describe how and why stratifying the samples to make the individuals representative for the age groups.
Response:
The population directly impacted by any changes done in the study areas, namely the two types of farmers was sampled and the process was a stratified one. The interviews were held according to the age of the respondents (young-adults 18-35 years old - 16.87%, old adults – 36-60 years old – 49.40%, and elderly population – above 60 years old – 33.73%). The weight of each age group reflects the demographic structure of the population living in the study area (Popovici et al., 2006). The interviewed farmers formed two distinctive groups. The first group included landowners of small farms (with plots that are in general smaller than 3ha). The highest degree obtained by 82.5% of them was the high-school level while the rest of the respondents only got a primary level education. More than half of them (55%) were elderly, 35% old adults and the rest being young adults. This the target group contained mostly males (30) to only 10 females because traditionally men are the ones present at fairs organised during weekends in villages around Romania. A total of 40 landowners with small farms and 10 owners or representatives of agricultural holdings were interviewed. The 4 to 1 rapport was established because even if the landowners with small farms cover a considerably less extensive surface of the study area, their number is significantly superior, as such despite their importance in land ownership, this correspond to their numeric distribution and is a good tool to approach the social dimension as a key principle of sustainable development in the area on the other. Both the specialists and the NGOs representatives were selected regardless of their age and location, but based on their expertise. Their age reflected most of the times their position and education level. The experts were part of such institutions as: The University of Bucharest, the University of Craiova, the Association for Land Improvements and Rural Construction in Romania, The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the National Agency for land improvements, the Academy of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences, WWF Romania, the National Agency of the Romanian Waters.
Lines 155-159, Add details on how to control the consistency of the two interviews by the two groups of authors. Although these two interviews were for two different types of farmers, some general questions of the interview should be designed in order to make their responses comparable. As such, it is important to make the questions consistent, albeit not necessarily identical.
Response:
The entire section where the different stakeholders are presented and the discussions held are detailed was rewritten, in a hopefully clearer and better way. The major questions that were addressed to both groups of interviewed stakeholders included whether or not they were using the entire land area that they owned/managed, whether or not they were satisfied with the agricultural production obtained, whether or not they consider investments in hydro-improvement works as a good opportunity for them, whether or not they are happy to maintain the status quo. All the discussions ended with the presentation of the two proposed ecological restoration model and discussions with the interviewee on which one they would prefer and also what are in their opinion the direct effects that any restoration project would have on them.
Lines 167-176, this part involves the most critical problem. What is the purpose of distributing benefits of ecological restoration? This definitely leads to huge bias of the research results. As the smallholders received such “benefits” messages before the interviews, their perception would be significantly shifted towards the support of ecological restoration than the previous thoughts, which might be neutral, especially given that the perception is the central question of the present paper. The next part of informing economic growth through ecological production is even more critical. This biases the whole perception to the direction of totally positive views of ecological restoration while losing all the objectivity.
Response:
Thank you for taking the time to analyse our work and present ways that improved and clarified its findings.
As for the section of the article that presents the discussions and interactions with the stakeholders allow us to present a bit of background. When going in the field the authors were confronted with the lack of information the general population has regarding the concept of ecological restoration and what exactly it means for their everyday reality. This is supported by the fact that most of the landowners with small farms have a limited education and knowledge about specialized views on ecology in general. As such the first question facing the authors was “what is an ecological restoration, be it partial or complete” and “what good will it do to us”. The authors had to explain the concept of restoration and what the potential benefits would be but also the necessary steps to achieve it which would request a series of sacrifices on the part of the general population.
Because of the ineffective manner in which the authors described these interactions the idea that the process was tainted emerged and we have done our best to address that. The fact that when faced with choosing one of the two models most of the responded opted for the partial one, was in our opinion the proof that the authors were not biased in presenting ecological restoration as being an “one fix all” solution.
Reviewer 3 Report
The subject is important. However, it lacks a sufficient and detailed explanation on what major problems or conflicts the river basin is faced with and what are the causes. Without such a general picture, readers may not understand the values of the two restoration models discussed in the paper. A flaw of the work is the statistical analysis was missing for survey results.
The discussion and conclusions are somehow shallow.
Author Response
Reviewer 3
The subject is important. However, it lacks a sufficient and detailed explanation on what major problems or conflicts the river basin is faced with and what are the causes. Without such a general picture, readers may not understand the values of the two restoration models discussed in the paper. A flaw of the work is the statistical analysis was missing for survey results. The discussion and conclusions are somehow shallow.
Thank you for emphasizing this very important issue, as, without having a clear image of the area it is in fact very dificult to understand the reason for which we embarked in our research endevour. The folowing paragraphs were added, that, in our opinion help provide a clearer image of the study area:
The main research methods employed during this study included field observation, GIS techniques, and a key study in the form of an exploratory or pilot study using as a research instrument semi-structured interview.
These changes took place primarily between 1960 and 1980 and they coincided with a policy of nationalizing most of the private properties. After the year 1990 most of the areas in the Danube Floodplain are still being used for agriculture but their property status has changed. Most of them are still state property but were leased to agricultural holdings. The rest are privately owned either by landowners with small farms or by the above mentioned holds. As the study will present, the area’s agricultural role is less profitable in some cases.
All scientific literature identifies a major problem that has multiple facets, touches the entire Danube Floodplain and stems from two sources: the region’s history and the current reality brought over by climate change. It can be summarized as a decrease in the overall profitability of the land. In fact, it is represented by desertification and soil erosion which happened gradually and was caused by the embankments done in the floodplain. The periodical flooding ensured that the soil would replenish its nutrients and controlled its salinity level. The direct consequence is a lower agricultural yield and hence lower economic profits, but it also generated another unexpected problem: the soil, combined with a lack of supporting vegetation, was unable to mitigate the effects of the now stronger and more frequent floods and as such caused significant material damaged to the population living in the Danube Floodplain.
The authors emphasized the importance of contacting and interviewing local stakeholders and including their perception in the study as one of the major conflicts in the process of implementing any policy that refers to ecological restoration will be the divided and antagonistic position of the local population. This stems from their conservative mentality generated by the change in paradigm regarding their own ownership status over the land brought forward by experiencing two types of government and both a system of centralized economy and a free market economy each with their pros and cons.
The discussion and conclusion sections was restructured.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
I am satisfied with the response letter and the revised version of your manuscript. This time I request the authors to add some references to lines 124-133 in the revised manuscript.
Best
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
Point 1: I am satisfied with the response letter and the revised version of your manuscript. This time I request the authors to add some references to lines 124-133 in the revised manuscript.
Answer 1:
We once again thank you for volunteering your time and expertise, extremely useful in our endeavour of improving our work. In the section of the article between lines 124 and 133 we have included the following bibliographical sources:
Rădulescu, D.; Chendeș, V.; Ion, M.B. Realizarea hărţilor de hazard şi risc pe teritoriul României, conform cerinţelor Directivei 2007/60/CE. Revista Asociaţiei Române de Ştiinţe Hidrologice 2014, 9, 19-23. Posner, C. Analiza strategiilor de adaptare la inundații ale comunităților locale prin folosirea metodelor tradiționale și participative de cercetare. Studiu de caz: Valea Dunării între Giurgiu și Gostinu. University of Bucharest, 2015. Hein, T.; Schwarz, U.; Habersack, H.; Nichersu, I.; Preiner, S.; Willby, N.; Weigelhofer, G. Current status and restoration options for floodplains along the Danube River. Science of The Total Environment 2016, 543, 778-790, doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2015.09.073. Funk, A.; Martínez-López, J.; Borgwardt, F.; Trauner, D.; Bagstad, K.J.; Balbi, S.; Magrach, A.; Villa, F.; Hein, T. Identification of conservation and restoration priority areas in the Danube River based on the multi-functionality of river-floodplain systems. Science of The Total Environment 2019, 654, 763-777, doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.10.322. Gren, M.; Groth, K.-H.; Sylvén, M. Economic values of Danube floodplains. Journal of Environmental Management 1995, 45, 333-345. Dorondel, Ș.; Armaș, I.; Florian, V.; Rusu, M.; Posner, C.; Șerban, S. Ghid de bune practici privind transformările socio-economice și de mediu din Lunca Dunării; 2016. Ivan, O. Trăind cu apele. Cum se adaptează o comunitate la încă o reconfigurare a peisajului din Lunca Dunării. National Geographic December, 2015, pp 104-113.
Some additional minor English language improvements have been made.
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments for Sustainability-627055 - v2, titled as “Danube Floodplain’s restoration: economic productivity vs ecological protection. Case study: Danube’s sector between Olt and Vedea”
I very appreciate the effort made by the authors to revise the paper, which has clarified the confusing statements, providing detailed description in methods, and improving the quality of the paper writing. In particular, the authors have addressed my comments in a clear way with strong evidence. For instance, it is much convincing to readers about the importance of building the two models in the Danube Floodplain to understand the local perception on the ecological restoration, as well as how these efforts have made it possible to achieve the goal. It is also understandable for the challenges the authors encountered in information lack by the local residents in terms of the ecological restoration due to education and knowledge barriers.
A minor suggestion is to use blank background in Fig. 6, in order to make the paper appear more like a scientific research article than a report. Another suggestion is to combine some paragraphs with close logical flow instead of using only one or two sentences as a single independent paragraph. This has been commonly found throughout the whole paper. Such scattered narratives would weaken the readability of the paper. For instance, in the conclusions section, the first paragraph is made up of only on sentence about the innovation on the construction of the two ecological restoration models. To me, it does not sound to stand alone as a major conclusion at all. The whole section, if combined together as one paragraph, would not influence the readability.
Finally, the title needs to be revised in order to minimizing the use of punctuation marks. Otherwise, it would be less likely a title.
Overall minor revision is recommended. I would look forward to reading the formatted paper if it is published online.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
Point 1: A minor suggestion is to use blank background in Fig. 6, in order to make the paper appear more like a scientific research article than a report. Another suggestion is to combine some paragraphs with close logical flow instead of using only one or two sentences as a single independent paragraph. This has been commonly found throughout the whole paper. Such scattered narratives would weaken the readability of the paper. For instance, in the conclusions section, the first paragraph is made up of only on sentence about the innovation on the construction of the two ecological restoration models. To me, it does not sound to stand alone as a major conclusion at all. The whole section, if combined together as one paragraph, would not influence the readability.
Answer 1:
We once again thank you for volunteering your time and expertise in our endeavour of improving our work. As per your constructive suggestion we have modified figure 6 by removing its background.
In order to improve the fluidity of the work we have, as you pointed out, readdressed the construction of multiple paragraphs, most importantly the first two in the “Conclusion” section. This section now has two major paragraphs each containing two important and distinctive ideas.
Finally, the title needs to be revised in order to minimizing the use of punctuation marks. Otherwise, it would be less likely a title.
Answer 2:
The new title is Economic productivity vs ecological protection in Danube Floodplain. Case study: Danube’s sector between Olt and Vedea, we hope that this new title better reflects the scope of the research.
Some additional minor English language improvements have been made.
Reviewer 3 Report
Improved significantly
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
The authors would like to thank you for your efforts in improving our manuscript. Please accept our gratitude for your promptitude and attention to details during this process.
