Transformative landscape governance: Unraveling the transformative potential of partnerships for biodiversity

Biodiversity loss persists despite conservation efforts, prompting calls for transformative change—system-wide reorganizations across technological, economic, and social factors. This dissertation explores the role of landscape-oriented partnerships in enabling such change for biodiversity. These partnerships, which bring together governmental, private, and civil society actors, are examined through the lenses of transformative governance and discursive institutionalism. The first part of the dissertation assesses their governance strategies using a global scoping review and a case study of Nationaal Park Hollandse Duinen in the Netherlands. Findings reveal that while partnerships often employ integrative and inclusive governance, they rarely address indirect drivers of biodiversity loss or adopt more adaptive, transdisciplinary, and anticipatory approaches. The second part analyzes discursive and institutional conditions in the Dutch Dune and Flower Bulb Region, showing how dominant landscape discourses and amplification can limit the transformative potential of partnerships. Although partnerships can locally implement transformative goals, their potential remains limited without external policy support and complementary instruments. This research introduces a new framework for transformative landscape governance, which consists of holistic, emancipatory, and reflective governance approaches, that can help partnerships to enhance their transformative potential. It concludes that while landscape-oriented partnerships alone cannot drive systemic change, they can contribute as part of multi-level transformative governance mixes for biodiversity.