Beyond imagination? Examining practitioners’ perceptions of the feasibility of transformative governance futures for sustainable land use in the Dutch peatlands

The ongoing accumulation of environmental problems worldwide has increasingly raised scholarly calls for beyond technological environmental governance. Although such alternative, more transformative approaches have been proposed in the literature, their imaginability in practice has lagged behind, especially in the presence of a technological path dependency. This research seeks to address the so-called “crisis of the imagination” by exploring transformative futures for environmental governance and examining practitioners’ perceptions of the feasibility of these futures. We conducted this research in the context of the Dutch Western peatlands, an area where the accumulation of environmental land use problems has increased the need for governance with more potential effect than the technological approaches applied to date. The findings demonstrate an “imagination gap” with regard to transformative governance futures: practitioners generally perceived governance approaches focused on economic governance reform as feasible, while overlooking those that address the underlying sociocultural, institutional, and political structures perpetuating unsustainable land use. We attribute the imagination gap to the difficulty of challenging deep core beliefs such as widespread neoliberal, individualist, and anthropocentric logics. The paper concludes by empirically challenging the perception that certain transformative governance futures are beyond imagination. It underscores the vital role of education and research in reshaping the deep core beliefs that underlie unsustainability. In the policy sphere, policy entrepreneurs can begin to address the “crisis of the imagination” by reframing (un)sustainability in terms of widely shared societal values and advocating for a more inclusive representation of deep core beliefs within policymaking. • The accumulation of environmental problems indicates a need for transformative, beyond-technical governance. • Numerous scientific perspectives exist, yet practical application of transformative environmental governance remains limited. • This article examines practitioners’ perceptions of the feasibility of transformative land use governance in Dutch peatlands. • The findings show a difference in radical imagination between science and policy: an "imagination gap". • Education, research and policy entrepreneurs play a pivotal role in bridging the imagination gap.