Following the Paris Agreement, investing in renewable energy production at sea is perceived as a promising development. In addition, food security challenges place increased focus on utilizing seas and oceans while biodiversity and ecosystem integrity must be safeguarded. In the North Sea, these three challenges are combined by the Dutch government in a deliberative governance agreement, involving key stakeholders, aimed at establishing a marine spatial allocation strategy. This paper outlines the development and first outcomes of this agreement. Using concepts of sustainability transitions and deliberative governance, we examined the role of the Dutch government in creating sustainability solutions through cross-sectoral participation processes. Based on our results, we argue that only the government can bring together parties that do not actively seek cooperation, like fisheries organizations and wind farm developers. This is in line with the government’s role to ensure compliance with international and national agreements, while also representing local (national) stakes. By opening up a discussion between parties that in the past were competing for marine space, the Dutch government has managed to make progress in obtaining transition goals. One of these transitions is the transition of the governance system itself, moving towards a more egalitarian style of policy making.

Rural landscapes are facing a loss of biodiversity. To deal with this challenge, landscape governance is seen as an alternative and addition to sectoral policies and a potential way of realizing transformative change for biodiversity. To study transformative change in the Bulb Region, the Netherlands, this study uses a discursive-institutional perspective. A mixed methods approach was used including 50 interviews, participant observation and document analysis. The structuration and institutionalization of three competing landscape discourses were analyzed: a hegemonic discourse rejecting any changes in bulb farming; an emerging discourse aiming to enhance sustainability through innovation; and an unstructured discourse questioning the sustainability of bulb farming. The paper shows that the emerging sustainability discourse strengthens the hegemonic discourse by providing an action repertoire for farmers to deal with changing societal demands, while not questioning the hegemonic view on the landscape. Moreover, an institutionalized landscape discourse can be very stable if discursive (relation between naturalized landscape perspectives, identity and the articulated economic interests) and non-discursive factors (natural-spatial conditions, structure of agricultural sector, embeddedness in international trade) are strongly intertwined, leaving little room for alternative discourses. The sustainability discourse was induced by changes outside the Bulb Region (e.g., legislation), thus raising the question whether landscapes are the appropriate level to expect the initiation of transformative change. For rural transformations to come about, solely relying on policies on the landscape level is not sensible. A mix of policies at both the landscape and higher levels offers more perspective for transformative change.