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INTRO:

This study takes an interest in evaluating the effectiveness of conservation planning by examining two case studies in the context of Australia; the Great Barrier Reef Representative Areas Program and the North East New South Wales Regional Forest Agreements. Unlike  existing studies that have focused solely on the perspectives of scientists and planning personnel, this study it explores the perception of a wider range of high-level stakeholders on the effectiveness of conservation planning. To analyse the outcomes the stakeholders have observed during and after the planning process, and the perceptions they have on these outcomes, the study applies a framework that divides the outcomes into five types of capital. The results from stakeholder interviews and surveys indicate that in the short term, natural capital is less present than social, financial, institutional and human capital. In the long term, natural capital as an outcome is more frequently reported. Generally, findings show that all stakeholders place value for the planning principles, yet they reported different relative importance for the role of science. Moreover, the interviewees highlighted the challenge of conducting impact evaluations on conservation planning by reporting barriers such as loss of personel, expertise and lack of political will.

MERITS:

The novelty of the study is its approach that takes into account the perception of a wider range of stakeholders in natural resource planning than previous studies have done. This potentially allows for critical discussions and reflections between the results and previous findigs.

Another merit of the paper is its research design with a two-case comparative approach, altough it is difficult to estimate their actual comparability without further information on the cases. The data is of a good size, 32-interviews, and this is valid especially if they are evenly distributed between the two cases.

CRITIQUE:

The study could have argued there case better: What is the problematisation related to evaluating the effectiveness of conservation planning? Why is the information based on studies that analyse scientist and planning personnel deemed insufficient? What new does this approach yield?

Moreover, the results seem very promising, but it is not clear what the results are a case of. Is this an example of national level planning principles and their effectiveness from which one can draw generalisations, or are these very context specific cases? It is not evident, from this abstract at least, whether your data allows you to answer the question "how transferrable are the lessons learned".

DISCUSSION:

The importance of this study seems to be in its empirical contribution, drawing from more stakeholders than previous studies have. For this, it may be useful to discuss the planning negotiations in terms of "participatory approach theories", to highlight the importance of including other stakeholders, such as ngos and industry, both in the negotitation and in the evaluation phase. It may help discuss the questions related to how the talking points for the plans were made, and why it is of importance that different stakeholders have differing views on the reported outcomes. Overall, this seems like a very promising and interesting paper that merits to be published.