Environmental Sustainability Post-COVID-19: Scrutinizing Popular Hypotheses from a Social Science Perspective

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I read the paper and in my opinion it is well structured and debated.
The paper is about a thoughtful discussion about the connection between the COVID-19 pandemic and the societal transition towards sustainability, analyzing several hypotheses regarding three main questions on the relationship between the pandemic and sustainability. The hypotheses are well debated and clearly presented. My only suggestion is to move table 1 from conclusions to the results as a summary of the paper.

Author Response

A1: We are grateful for this positive assessment of our manuscript. We are happy to move Table 1 to the results section. We agree with the reviewer that it may be better positioned there. To also follow the suggestion of Reviewer #3 (see A4 there), we have split Table 1 into three separate tables summarizing the main insights for sections 2, 3, and 4, respectively.

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is listed as a review paper. After carefully reading it, I found it to be a nice lecture.

The main issue that I have with the paper is that the topics considered in the paper are presented in a plain text, like a story, different from the expectations given by a "review" paper. 

I think that a more critical approach in discussing the issues would be helpful.

It will be nice to have tables in which different approaches are presented and analyzed in terms of pros and cons.

Also, the paper lacks methodology. It is not clear how the papers have been selected nor which databases have been used.

A bibliometric analysis is also needed in such a context.

Please consider improving the paper by better stating the need of the paper, the methodology used, how the papers have been selected, discuss the papers critically making comparisons and pointing different points of view, and selecting some of the most prominent papers in the field to be discussed at large.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Overall
The paper is interesting, and the authors try to explore and combine basic hypotheses of the literature regarding the relationship between tackling the Covid-19 pandemic and environmental sustainability. The research topic it is so extensive that even if the paper is well-structures and well organized on the basis of the assumptions, the content remains in many respects general and superficial. After all, every hypothesis that is mentioned (analyzed) is in itself a huge field of research, especially when a series of such hypotheses are presented. Authors could in many places be more detailed and penetrate more depth and critique, regardless of the bibliographic references and citations. Below, they are some specific comments that I believe will help they improve the manuscript further.

Comments
1. Generally in the conclusion section it is not usual to presented Tables or Figures, even if the article is a review paper. My suggestion is the Table 1, who is incorrectly located at the Conclusion section, musto be divided into 3 Tables (each query and a Table) and these 3 separate Tables to be placed in sections 2, 3 and 4 (the Table with the 1st question in section 2, the 2nd Table in section 3 and the 3rd in section 4).

2. The half of Conclusion section, in my opinion contents repetitions (from sections 2,3 and 4), a Table who do not own to this section and the second half, the limitations of the paper. I suggest to authors to rewrite the Conclusion section with more generalize character and to avoid repetitions (to contains also the limitations, contribution of paper and the proposals for future research).

3. Even if the section 2 contains and analyze the question "How does the pandemic affect the progress of transitions towards environmental sustainability?", in the most points and subsections, the authors does not present as paradigm, the influence of Covid-19 pandemic as crisis but other kind of crisis like global financial crisis of 2008/09. All the arguments (and the citations also) are based on the economic crisis and not on pandemic crisis, and they create a different reality. In an occassion like this, I suggest to the authors to be more careful intheir analysis.

4. In lines 128-129 the paradigm of China who had invested heavily in a stimulus package that focused on renewable energy after the economic crisis, it is not appropriate (if it is, please add citations). The connection of economic crisis with this kind of investments is surface (we find this argument in many points of the manuscript) because the authors have forgot the rise of green economy in last decades as replacement of the limited current growth model.

5. I would like to observe on the first paragraph of sub-section 2.2, that the wide range changes are imposed on society and individual behavior and are rarely chosen or adopted by them.

6. However, the three analysis of the three hypotheses of section 2, lead more to scepticism and confusion than to strong answers.
7. As in section 2 the authors choosen to be mention in crises generally and in the economic  crisis of 2008/09 specificly, in sub-section 3.1 they are prefer to use the climate change as crisis than others environmental degradations, maybe because it is easier the comparison, between climate change and the pandemic of Covid-19 (and on based on the three arguments). Although the environmental sustainability cover many aspects and crisis. In my mind this kind of analysis covered by a  convenient simplicity.

8. In sub-section 3.3. I would expect the authors to comment the "game" of responsibilities sharing between scientists and especially politicians who make decisions. Knowledge is certainly the basis of this engage between them, but what role they played in this relationship, the heavy responsibilities of the decisions  in the decision-makers (mainly politicians)?

9. In the first paragraph of subsection 4.2, the authors refer to the definition of resilience, based on a single citation (110). The authors use an even more complex term, referring to socio-techno-ecological resilience. I would like the authors to analyze further both the term durability and socio-techno-ecological resilience durability.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

This study deals with very important points regarding environmental sustainability. The arguments in the paper make sense, tackle valid aspects, and give comprehensive understandings on the issue. And I think this manuscript is almost ready to publish. One thing I wanted to add is to specify what is the social science perspective. Since there are various perspectives across the sub-areas of social sciences, a notion of social science can make some confusion from the readers. If the authors intend to highlight the notion of social science in the paper, they may want to clarify what is the social science perspective vis-a-vis the perspectives of natural science or engineering, etc.

I appreciate all the efforts for the study. Hope my comment helps. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I thank the authors for the revised version.

Considering the previous round of comments, I consider that the comments have not been fully addressed.

In the response to reviewer letter the authors are mentioning that they will request the change of the article type from "review" to "article", but with all these, in the uploaded form of the paper, it the upper part of the paper it is still written "review".

In my opinion, in the current form, the paper is not a review and not even an article. As mentioned in the previous round of comments, the paper lacks methodology, which is a must in both review and article papers. The lack of methodology (in this case, explaining how the papers have been selected, which criteria have been used, how the information has been analyzed), makes the information provided to the reader subjective - meaning that the authors could have deliberately chosen the "proper" papers in order to express their point of view, and would have "deliberately" missed other papers which have sustained a contrary opinion. I am not saying that this is the case, I am just saying that the lack of methodology questions the applicability of the results.

I think that the methodology is a must for paper acceptance.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

No comments

Author Response

The reviewer did not submit any comments.

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

I thank the authors for the revised version and for adding some words to the methodology. As mentioned in the previous round of comments, the selection of the papers is highly subjective and, in my opinion, does not reflect the papers in the field. The fact that the authors of the paper gathered together and decided to look for some papers on some topics chosen by each of them without a clear way of selection makes the paper biased. The authors mention the presence of some hypothesis in selecting the paper - the existence of hypothesis implies a validation and testing, which is also missing.

Also, the paper cannot be listed as article - an article assumes some methodology, validation and some results - the paper does not have any of these. I think that the paper is more an opinion paper - and the authors should make clear that it represents the subjective opinion of the authors, with no subsequent validation.