Landscape planning for transformative change in social-ecological systems: key paradoxes and ways forward for biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people

In Europe, landscape planning has demonstrated its capacity to guide more sustainable landscape development and support biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people (NCP), yet its potential to enable transformative change at the scale and pace required remains insufficiently understood. This Perspective critically explores how landscape planning may need to transform in order to act as a catalyst for achieving transformative change in social-ecological systems. Building on transformative change literature and core scholarship in landscape planning, we conceptualize key tensions between transformative ambitions and planning practice as paradoxes of transformative landscape planning. We focus on three such paradoxes corresponding to major planning stages: (i) diverse versus integrated perspectives in assessing the status quo of biodiversity and NCP, (ii) radical versus acceptable futures in scenario development for landscape change, and (iii) political versus apolitical stances in evaluating impacts on ecosystem benefits, equity, and human well-being. For each paradox, we outline conceptual and methodological ways forward, illustrated through examples of planning practice with transformative potential. Synthesizing across the three paradoxes, we identify three characteristics of transformative landscape planning: systematic and contestation-aware involvement of diverse actors and knowledge systems, closer linking of planning with action to advance ecosystem restoration and sustainable use, and embedding planning within broader processes of governance change that shape the equitable distribution of nature’s contributions to people. Together, these characteristics provide a coherent framework for advancing landscape planning as a meaningful contributor to transformative change in social-ecological systems, with implications for biodiversity conservation, ecosystem governance, and human well-being.