Marine industries and the ‘blue economy’ are growing quickly as the ocean is increasingly seen as a boundless, untapped resource. Aquaculture offers the promise of growing food production to improve food security, while offshore renewable energies will be vital in our renewable energy transition. Governments are working hard to navigate this space, with the Australian Government currently considering its long term Sustainable Ocean Plan.
The ‘social license to operate’ (sometimes abbreviated to ‘SLO’) is often invoked in the context of marine economy industries like aquaculture and offshore wind. But does the concept help or hinder ethical outcomes? Exploring these and related questions, our research team has just completed its three-year Blue Economy Cooperative Research Centre research project on ‘Ethics, Values and Social Licence in the Blue Economy’.
What is the ‘social licence to operate’?
Social licence broadly refers to the acceptance of industry operations by the community — especially the local community. The term arose in the late 1990s in the context of operational risk management for extraction industries. Multinational mining and forestry corporations operating in developing countries could unleash devastating impacts on local communities. They found that even if they had a legal licence, their operations might still be stymied by local resistance. The term ‘social licence to operate’ was coined to describe this area of operational risk.
But over time, the term’s usage began to shift. Rather than referring to whether an industry is accepted (a descriptive question), the term began to refer to whether the industry should be accepted (an ethical question). Increasingly, ‘social licence’ discussions implied that industries needed to possess community acceptance.
In either usage of the term, social licence is ambiguous. While many people find the term intuitive, it can sometimes seem to open as many questions as it answers. For example: Which stakeholders count? How many of these stakeholders need to accept/reject the operations for social licence to be held/lost? What level of endorsement is required — wholesale support, tacit acceptance, or grudging toleration? And what are the actual positions held by people on the ground?
Why is social licence relevant to marine industries?
There are several reasons why it makes sense that social licence would be invoked when considering marine industries.
First, marine industry operations inevitably take place on public resources rather than private property. They often overlap areas prized by local communities and used for existing practices.
Second, marine environments are intrinsically fluid and permeable. Wildlife — fish, birds, sea mammals — can seamlessly move and migrate through marine industry operations. At the same time, impacts — like noise, pollutants or altered water conditions — can flow out.
Third, new and expanding industries, and their potential effects, are less well-understood by communities — and often by scientists and regulators too. As well, offshore spaces are also intrinsically less visible and harder to govern, presenting further ethical risks.
Finally, people have deep emotional and existential attachments to the ocean. Whether working on it, living near it, playing in it, or taking solace from it, the ocean profoundly shapes coastal people’s identities and ‘place attachments’.
These features mean that local communities have an enormous stake in marine industries. Invoking social licence can help their voices be heard and considered when new developments appear on the horizon (literally and figuratively).
Social licence: The promises
Social licence can be beneficial to communities and industries alike. It can prompt industries to seriously reflect on why and how they benefit their communities, how they can do better, and what it would take to demonstrate their trustworthiness to the community. This can help drive initiatives like community engagement practices and new types of certification regimes.
Achieving an authentic social licence requires:
1. Genuine community engagement: listening and responding to stakeholders.
2. Institutional integrity: reflecting on the organisation’s values and mission, stating these publicly, and putting in place measures to be transparent and accountable in achieving them.
3. Ethical practice: Conforming with commonsense ethical requirements like fairness, harm prevention and trustworthiness.
However, social licence isn’t entirely up to the private sector. Whether a corporation or industry will be trusted depends critically on the larger integrity system it operates in. Whether a community accepts an industry will often depend on whether they trust the regulators or certifiers that police it, the media that report on it, and the scientists that monitor its impacts. Even when — especially when — they are critical of an industry or its operations, the independence and reliability of these governance institutions function as vital preconditions for social licence.
Social licence: The perils
Like most things, social licence presents ethical concerns as well as potential benefits. Perhaps most obviously, because of its ambiguities, social licence is a concept that is easy to invoke rhetorically, either as an industry shield or activist weapon.
Industry operators, perhaps as part of a slick ethics-washing campaign, can confidently assert they take their social licence responsibilities seriously and that their operations enjoy widespread social support. At the same time, those resisting the operations might insist the industry has lost its social licence, when actual public opinion is more mixed and nuanced.
In addition, when compared to the operation of democratic legal institutions, social licence can seem capricious and unfair. Developers and industries (and the people who rely on them) need to develop long-term plans and make enormous investments. Great caution must be taken before exposing them to the vagaries of shifting public opinion.
Finally, community engagement is a vital part of social licence, but it can prove an enormous challenge to get it right. Local communities need to be genuinely included in decision-making about their region, ideally as early in the process as possible. But at the same time, expectations must be managed. Local communities rarely possess — or should possess — absolute veto rights.
While the government’s Sustainable Ocean Plan will rightly foreground environmental and ecological sustainability, in the long run, social sustainability is equally vital for the proper development and management of Australia’s vast ocean space and its magnificent coastlines. To be successful, Australian marine industries need to harness the strengths of authentic social licence while avoiding the perils it presents.
The authors acknowledge the financial support of the Blue Economy Cooperative Research Centre (CRC), established and supported under the Australian Government’s CRC Program, grant number CRC-20180101. The CRC Program supports industry-led collaborations between industry, researchers and the community. This research was funded through the project ‘Ethics, values, and social licence in the Blue Economy’ (Project 5.20.005).
Dr Hugh Breakey is a moral philosopher at Griffith University’s Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law, and President of the Australian Association for Professional & Applied Ethics.
Rebecca Marshallsay is a Research Assistant at Griffith University’s Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law. She holds a Master of Arts and Juris Doctor.
Dr Larelle Bossi is a philosopher working in oceans and blue economies with a focus on blue ethics, ocean values and place making. She researches at Griffith University’s Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law.
Professor Charles Sampford (DPhil, Oxon), Griffith’s Foundation Dean of Law, who led an ARC Research Centre and now directs the Institute for Ethics, Governance and Law. Publications include 200 books/essays/articles.