Who Is in and Who Is out in Ocean Economies Development?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

Overall, a very well-written review. However, some minor issues require your attention.

It would be best to decide whether this manuscript is an article or a review. You interchangeably use these two terms in the manuscript. Please refer to this manuscript as a review.

Regarding the Title, I believe that the questions are redundant. “ Breaking down old and new forms of exclusion in the blue economy development” is concise and on point. If you insist on keeping the questions in the title, I will not object. But consider removing the questions for clarity purposes.

The Abstract is adequately structured and informative.

The Introduction, although brief, covers all the crucial issues. Just address the following:

·        What is [3] in line 41?

·        Redo the sentence in lines 70-71 to clarify the exclusion questions further.

The EIPS Exclusion in marine development part is good. The quality of Figure 1 is poor – please upgrade the quality and recheck why you have three green pictures while all other colors have one picture corresponding to one exclusion.

Typo in 2.4-2.8 titles.

All the remaining text is well-structured and informative. Please just improve the quality of Figure 2 as well.

The literature is adequate and up to date.

The whole manuscript needs to be reread by a native speaker. Even though the English language is really good, some errors in plural forms and typos still exist.

 

All the best,

Author Response

Please find attached. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The first paragraph in the introduction is confusing. The ideas are unclear, and there are some errors (?) – [line 41]: “…last 40–800 years…”. The context presentation is hard to follow. Please use the same format for references [line 41]: “…years, [3] Caswell et al., (2020) …”.

It is unclear if the authors are debating social economy or informality issues or the relation of it with sustainability. Please state more clearly the objectives of the study.

[line 61] – [line 76]: some statements need to be supported by references.

The manuscript continues in the same confusing manner for the second part enouncing briefly some examples of human activities related to the ocean but failing to connect the ideas.

In the third part, the authors try to present examples of inclusiveness, but without having an objective way of doing it or by presenting in-depth specific examples. [line 316] – [line 319]: it is not enough to state that “Many examples are found…” without describing it even briefly or trying to generalize a best case.

The major failure of the third part of this manuscript is that it cannot explain why some activities are inclusive while others are not or the methodological approach of setting a generalized model of inclusive activity is in opposition to a non-inclusive one.

[line 476] – [line 481]: After “establishing” that economic activities “…driven by economic profitability” are non-inclusive, the authors agree that “some big projects may be considered inclusive.” Please detail the conditions that need to be fulfilled. The simple statement that “if they demonstrate that benefits are shared and that the degradation of the environmental…” is not enough and it is rather superficial.

The conclusions are primarily a collection of political statements with shallow or no relation to the study results.

The main merit of the manuscript may be related to its informative quality (examples of inclusive and non-inclusive economic activities), but it still, needs to detail the selected examples. The scientific contribution is missing or poorly presented by the authors. Some things need to be more clearly described or the relationship between some concepts need to be addressed by the authors (e.g., inclusiveness, environment, economy).    

Author Response

Please find attached. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Following the reviewers' comments and suggestions, the authors did a good job revising the manuscript. I am satisfied with the revisions and added details, and after carefully reading the improved version, I recommend the manuscript for publication.