Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a well written, thoughtful and interesting paper. The topic is relevant and is gaining momentum in transition literature. I would make only two minor suggestions to the authors before suggesting publication:

1. Add a reference to the following papers:
   1. “Socioeconomic Indicators to Monitor Norway’s Bioeconomy in Transition”, Capasso and Klitkou (Sustainability 2020, 12, 3173).
   2. “A new socio-economic indicator to measure the performance of bioeconomy sectors in Europe”, Ecological Economics, forthcoming.

 

2. Provide, in a table, an overview of how your proposed indicator compares with other existing indicators.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1,

we highly appreciate your very constructive comments on our manuscript. 

Please find attached the revised manuscript with a new table on page 3, which also includes the study by Capasso and Klitkou. 

Unfortunately we were not able to find the study “A new socio-economic indicator to measure the performance of bioeconomy sectors in Europe”, Ecological Economics, forthcoming. Would you be able to send an OA link?

Kind regards,

the Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper focuses greatly in the market uptake of bio-based products, and less on measuring the sustainability of bio-based product. This is a potential weakness of the proposed approach. Clearer complementarity  with sustainability indicators should be explained and reinforced. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,

we highly appreciate your comment on the lack of further sustainability indicators. Indeed we do not provide an exhaustive list of indicators but rather a starting point for a near-term monitoring. We suggest to include more indicators in a comprehensive monitoring. 

Thus, on page 14 we clarify (see also attachment):

"Nevertheless, it should be noted that, in an extensive study, the authors of this article have empirically derived a total of seventeen economic indicators for surfactants and soaps, including indicators such as gross production value and domestic sales (Wackerbauer et al. 2019). That study also includes a list of further environmental sustainability indicators that could be linked to the bioeconomy. Two approaches were suggested: using “top-down” national sustainable development indicators as measured by the German Statistical Office, such as air emissions and phosphorus in water, and using “bottom-up” product data from life cycle inventories, such as use of pesticides and nitrogen fertilizer."

Kind regards,

the Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx