Marine Policy 99 (2019) 275–282

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Marine Policy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/marpol

Social licence and aquaculture: Towards a research agenda T

a,⁎ b
Charles Mather , Lucia Fanning
a
Department of Geography, Memorial University, St John's, NL, Canada
b
Marine Affairs Program, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Social licence is a concept and practice that emerged in the mining sector to improve community industry
Social licence relations, but is now spreading to other sectors including aquaculture. This paper examines the gap between
Aquaculture recent research on aquaculture and social licence, and a large and complex body of scholarship on social licence
Research agenda in mining and other resource intensive industries. This gap provides the basis for a research agenda for social
licence in aquaculture that engages with critical debates in mining, while being sensitive to the sectoral dif-
ferences between mining and aquaculture.

1. Introduction
The term ‘social licence to operate’ (SLO) arose in the mining in-
dustry in the 1990s as companies recognized the importance of ad-
dressing growing social risk to their operations and of incorporating
issues of social acceptability into their activities [1,2]. As a concept and
practice, social licence, is now well established in the mining sector,
and there is a growing body of academic and policy work on mining and
social licence [3–5]. In other resource intensive sectors, most notably
aquaculture, the idea of social licence has only very recently emerged as
an issue in policy debates and academic research. Global, national and
local policy frameworks for aquaculture, for example, have only re-
cently begun to draw on the term social licence to signal the importance
of establishing open communication and effective relations between
industry and communities in a context where aquaculture development
is facing strong public opposition [e.g., 6–9]. Social licence in aqua-
culture is also emerging as a focus of academic and policy work, with
research providing new evidence on its role in aquaculture, particularly
in Australasia where there are several large research initiatives aimed at
exploring this concept for existing and new aquaculture developments
[10–13]. For many environmental non-governmental organisations and
some Indigenous groups, social licence is now being mobilised as a way
to press for more sustainable and socially acceptable aquaculture
[14–16]. Social licence – a term long restricted to mining and other
resource intensive industries – is now becoming integrated into aqua-
culture policies, academic research and activist discourse and action
Given that aquaculture's engagement with social licence is sig-
nificantly more recent than is the case with mining, an obvious question
is: what can scholars and policy makers interested in aquaculture learn from
the research and practical experience of social licence in mining? In other
words, can the lessons, experience and practice of social licence in
mining be useful in understanding aquaculture's recent and likely on-
going engagement with SLO? Surprisingly, perhaps, the emerging lit-
erature on aquaculture and social licence has not engaged fully with the
rich and complex debates in academic journals and policy forums on
social licence in mining. This emerging literature has also tended to
ignore the sectoral differences between mining and aquaculture, and
the important point that social licence emerged out of, and was shaped
by, a specific industry context. Our paper aims to address the gap that
exists between the extensive research, scholarship and policy reflection
on social licence in mining, and recent research on social licence in
aquaculture, a sector that is only now beginning to see the incorpora-
tion of this concept as a key driver for revealing and reshaping industry-
community relations [11,12]. In addressing this gap, this paper asks the
question: how are the debates on social licence in the mining sector relevant
to emerging research and policy on SLO in the aquaculture sector? This
approach allows an engagement with the critical debates on social li-
cence in mining [e.g., 17,18], while being sensitive to the sectoral
differences between mining and aquaculture.
2. Method and approach
The method for this paper involved undertaking a detailed review of
the primary and secondary literature that exists on social licence in
mining and other resource intensive industries using academic search
engines and by following citations. A review of this material generated
cross-cutting issues and themes that were then situated in the context of
the aquaculture sector. This comparative approach provided the basis

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: cmather@mun.ca (C. Mather), lfanning@dal.ca (L. Fanning).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2018.10.049
Received 13 June 2018; Received in revised form 4 September 2018; Accepted 30 October 2018
Available online 13 November 2018
0308-597X/ © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY-NC-ND/4.0/).
C. Mather, L. Fanning
for a proposed research agenda for SLO in aquaculture that is sensitive
to the specific character of this industry and the particular dynamics
that have shaped industry-community relations especially in North
America, but also Europe.
3. Exploring social licence themes and their relevance from the
mining sector to aquaculture
Research on social licence and mining emerged in the late 1990s
and has developed rapidly since then with much of this work appearing
in the mining journal Resource Policy. Writing on social licence has since
spread to other resource intensive sectors, especially forestry and en-
ergy [5], but debates and conceptual thinking on social licence remain
focused on mining. Based on an exhaustive review of this literature, five
themes that are of potential significance to aquaculture as it engages
with the concept and practice of social licence are identified. These
themes are: (i) the relationship between scale and social licence; (ii)
measuring and modelling social licence; (iii) the place of social licence
within company structures; (iv) the relationship between social licence
and other regulatory systems for social and economic sustainability;
and, (v) critiques of social licence. In this section each theme is in-
troduced in the context of the mining sector before considering its re-
levance to aquaculture, drawing on published literature and other re-
levant data. This approach revealed gaps, themes and critical areas, that
in turn provided the basis for a proposed research agenda for SLO in
aquaculture. The elements and components of this research agenda are
discussed in the final section of the paper.
3.1. The scale of social licence
A common assumption in the mining sector is that local commu-
nities are responsible for granting (or withholding) social licence. This
assumption is based on the claim that the impacts of resource devel-
opment – both positive and negative – will be felt locally, and so it
should be the local community who grant or withdraw the SLO [19,20].
Yet in practice, as is illustrated by numerous case studies of SLO in
mining and other resource intensive sectors [4,19–21], the dynamics of
social licence frequently extend beyond the local region and can include
stakeholders that are based far from the site of resource extraction [22].
As Moffat et al. [5] argue, restricting social licence to local communities
“neglects the organizational reality in a modern globalized world”;
social licence cannot therefore be restricted to “the exclusive domain of
fence-line community members and operational managers”.
There have been several interesting responses to the problem of
scale and social licence. Dare et al. [23], for instance, suggest that in a
more globalized context, companies will have to secure multiple social
licences across a range of spatial scales or continuums. Their framework
includes stakeholders at local, regional and global scales, and it is
nuanced through concepts such as ‘communities of interest’ and ‘com-
munities of place’ to distinguish between those groups that are geo-
graphically closer to the site of resource development. The advantage of
this approach is that it reveals the diverse interests and interactions
within and between communities at a range of different scales and
geographical sites. Boutilier's [4] stakeholder network framework pro-
vides a parallel approach to mapping stakeholders in a way that does
not assume that local and distal communities have specific views of
industry development.
The issue of scale resonates strongly with recent policy debate on
social licence and aquaculture in the Canadian context and elsewhere.
A recent report commissioned by the Canadian Aquaculture Industry
Alliance argued that while the industry has secured social licence at the
local scale from coastal communities, it has faced a challenge with a
“small but vocal group of anti-aquaculture activists” who have see-
mingly been able to convince government officials that the industry
lacks social licence [24]. This is an argument that is often articulated by
representatives of the aquaculture sector: many argue that a small and
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Marine Policy 99 (2019) 275–282
organized group of anti-aquaculture activists have successfully used
social media and other information technologies to sway the public and
some governments against aquaculture. Local communities that benefit
from aquaculture production, industry representatives argue, are
strongly in support of aquaculture development, as is the public as a
whole. Young and Liston's [25] analysis of the situation in Canada
provides qualified support for this argument: their analysis suggests
that the aquaculture industry has made tentative progress in addressing
opposition at the local level [also see 26]. Yet Young and Liston [25]
also argue that the aquaculture sector has failed dismally in addressing
organized opposition at national and international scales.
The idea that the aquaculture sector enjoys local support but faces
opposition from distant communities of interest resonates with how the
media portrays conflicts over new aquaculture developments. The
proposed Grieg aquaculture development in Placentia Bay,
Newfoundland, for example, which has received a great deal of media
attention, is portrayed as a struggle between local residents who will
benefit from new employment opportunities, and anglers and en-
vironmentalists who are concerned about the ecological impact of the
proposed project [27]. While there is evidence to suggest a fairly
straightforward relationship between support by communities of place,
and opposition by communities of interest, not all of the evidence from
the aquaculture sector suggests such a neat arrangement. Much of the
protest against aquaculture in other parts of Atlantic Canada and from
British Columbia has come from coastal communities including some
Indigenous groups, who oppose aquaculture on the basis of the effect of
aquaculture production on local ecologies and land rights [28–31].
Local commercial harvesters in parts of North America and Europe have
also opposed aquaculture development on the grounds that it com-
promises their ability to secure a livelihood from wild capture fisheries
[32–34]. Finally, research in Norway has suggested that aquaculture
companies that are increasingly globalized are focusing their social
responsibility efforts at the global scale, but are neglecting the im-
portance of maintaining strong relations between industry and com-
munity at local scales [35]. There is sufficient evidence to suggest that
researchers should be wary of assuming that aquaculture production
has support at the local scale and that all opposition is from distant
communities of interest.
One of the features of aquaculture that makes it potentially more
complicated than mining and other resource intensive sectors is the
extraordinarily wide extent of the stakeholder network associated with
aquaculture production. At the local scale, aquaculture production
frequently competes with other marine uses including commercial
fishing, recreational activity and tourism. For these local groups,
aquaculture production may compromise their ability to use and earn
an income from the marine environment. In addition to the competition
over space, environmental activists that may be represented by national
or international non-governmental organisations are concerned about
the impact of aquaculture on marine habitats and wild fish species.
Indeed, the impact of farmed salmon on wild salmon, which is widely
reported, brings together environmental activists, Indigenous groups
and the powerful angling lobby across local, national and global scales
[36]. New developments in salmon farming technology, particularly in
the form of genetically modified salmon, has raised further concerns for
environmentalists, but it also brings consumer groups, health advocates
and seafood advisory organisations into the network of concerned sta-
keholders. A primary concern of these groups is the human health
implications of genetically modified food. As Ertor and Ortega-Cerda
[36] argue in the context of European aquaculture development, op-
position to aquaculture often leads to the establishment of diverse
coalitions of groups and actors who may have differing concerns around
aquaculture production, but are nonetheless united in their opposition
to this use of the marine environment [37].
One of the important effects of these wide networks of stakeholders
is that problems with aquaculture production in one site are quickly
made relevant to other production sites. The collapse of a salmon
C. Mather, L. Fanning
aquaculture facility in Washington State in 2017 and the subsequent
escape of an estimated 160,000 Atlantic salmon provides a vivid illus-
tration of this issue. Washington state regulators produced a formal
analysis on the event focusing on the causes and impacts of the net pen
collapse and the escape of non-native Atlantic salmon [38]. The report
blamed the company for negligence, and this has led to a Washington
State decision to phase out non-native salmon production. The events in
Washington State were widely reported in British Columbia, where
there is longstanding opposition to aquaculture and especially salmon
farming. The media and opposition groups used the event to single out
British Columbia as the only jurisdiction on the west coast of North
America that continued to support the production of non-native salmon
aquaculture. The collapse of the facility in Washington was also re-
ported on Canada's East coast where it was used to question a very large
salmon facility being proposed for Placentia Bay, Newfoundland [39].
This is an excellent example demonstrating how networks of stake-
holders opposing aquaculture production have effectively used a pro-
blem in a distant site and made it relevant to local aquaculture protests
[40].
3.2. Measuring and modelling SLO
Scholars interested in social licence in mining and other resource
intensive sectors have spent considerable effort developing models and
framework for SLO, and more recently, providing quantitative in-
dicators of social acceptability [41]. These models and frameworks
were developed primarily as a way of going beyond the view that social
licence could only be granted or withdrawn. They have also allowed
researchers and policy analysts to propose a number of different out-
comes ranging from withdrawal to progressively higher levels of ac-
ceptability based on legitimacy, credibility and trust [42]. Researchers
have proposed a further level of acceptability, which they call ‘psy-
chological identification’ or ‘co-ownership’, which describes the highest
level of trust between a resource intensive development and affected
communities [2]. In a separate analysis based on a single operation in
Bolivia, Thomson and Boutilier [43] have added further complexity to
the factors that determine social licence by suggesting the importance
of economic legitimacy, socio-political legitimacy, interactional trust
and institutionalized trust. These different attachments to the resource
development shape the level of social acceptability and so provide a
more complex way of representing social licence.
The models and frameworks have also allowed researchers to
quantify the level of social licence or social acceptability, partly in re-
sponse to the criticism that SLO is tacit and difficult to assess over time
[41]. Zhang et al.'s [44] model of trust in mining is an attempt to re-
spond to this challenge. Their model is based on three criteria: dis-
tributional fairness, procedural fairness and confidence in governance.
Variations in these three measures are combined to reflect different
level of trust in the mining industry and by implication the level of
acceptance of resource development. Zhang et al. [44] have used this
framework as the basis for several large scale surveys of mining de-
velopment, which has allowed for cross country comparisons on SLO
and mining. Their most recent analysis has compared Chile, Australia
and China, and they found significant differences across the countries in
the three measured criteria and contrasting levels of trust and accept-
ability for mining [44].
The new frameworks and models for SLO, some of which are
opening the way to quantifying SLO at national scales, must be seen as a
response to the criticism that SLO is intangible and cannot be easily
modelled or measured. For Moffat et al. [5] the hope is that “Consistent
and well-defined measures will help assist industry, communities and
governments to understand what constitutes a social licence and what
supports relationships between these stakeholders leading to better
outcomes for all parties”.
For the aquaculture sector, the discussions of social licence are re-
latively recent and there has been no effort to model or quantify social
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Marine Policy 99 (2019) 275–282
licence. However, there is a considerable body of work that has col-
lected data on public perceptions of aquaculture and farmed fish.
Indeed, of the five themes identified in the SLO mining literature, this is
the theme where research on the two sectors is most closely aligned.
The starting point for much of the public perception research on
aquaculture and farmed fish is that understanding the views of the
public is an important step in overcoming obstacles to the future de-
velopment of aquaculture [45]. If industry and regulators have a better
sense of public perception, the argument goes, then this will allow the
aquaculture sector to develop in a way that addresses community and
stakeholder concerns [46,47]. To this end, researchers have drawn on a
wide range of sources in an attempt to gauge public views of aqua-
culture and farmed fish including newspapers and media [45,48], large
scale quantitative surveys [49], focus groups [50,51], and face-to-face
interviews [52]. Researchers have also drawn on submissions to gov-
ernment inquiries and secondary documentation to gain insights on
public concerns on aquaculture [25]. The groups participating in these
surveys include the general public, aquaculture stakeholders
[46,53,54], local affected communities [55,56], and consumers
[51,57,58]. The scale of the research has included global assessments
[45], cross country comparisons [58–60], national assessments [46,61],
and local analyses of perceptions on aquaculture [53]. Interestingly,
these surveys have been conducted by a range of groups including
university based researchers as well as local and national states [61]
organisations representing the aquaculture industry [24,62], and those
opposed to aquaculture development [see 36].
Methodologically, the research on public perception has used de-
scriptive statistics as well as more formal analytical tools including
content analysis software (e.g., Nvivo) and factor analysis [53,56].
Formal analytical tools such as Q-method have allowed researchers to
identify different categories of perceptions associated with the social,
economic and environmental impact of aquaculture [30,53]. These
methods have also allowed researchers to explore concepts such as risk,
trust, values and well-being, which are closely related to the work on
mining and social licence [55,63].
While most studies on the public perception of aquaculture or
farmed fish focus on perceptions in general, there are several notable
studies that have examined how consumers and stakeholders might
respond to more sustainable aquaculture production models, including
integrate multi trophic aquaculture [14]. This has been the focus of
Alexander et al.'s [64] work that has involved stakeholder analysis and
large scale web based surveys to assess existing knowledge of IMTA and
public response to what is often promoted as a more environmentally
sustainable method of producing farmed fish. The assumption of this
research is that if more sustainable aquaculture models are to be pro-
moted, they will need to satisfy key stakeholder concerns and be so-
cially acceptable to consumers and affected coastal communities
[65,66].
There are significant parallels between the relatively large body of
work on quantifying social acceptability of aquaculture and similar
studies in mining and social licence. Both provide perceptions and
views of resource development drawing on a range of sources and at
various scales. Research on the two sectors also shares similar com-
mitment to quantification and analytical tools. At the same time, there
are important differences. The first, and most obvious difference is that
research in aquaculture tends not to use the term ‘social licence’. A
recent exception has been the study by Murray et al. [52] who write
that their analysis of social acceptability “is important to consider in
terms of the ‘social licence’ for aquaculture (or any other) resource
activity”. In other words, studies on social acceptability may provide
the foundation for an analysis of social licence. It seems likely that as
social licence gains traction within the aquaculture sector, future
quantitative and qualitative surveys of social acceptability will engage
more directly with the concept and practice of social licence. A second
difference between the mining and aquaculture literatures is that the
former develops its methods and approaches around widely agreed
C. Mather, L. Fanning
upon models and associated terms including legitimacy, credibility and
trust. Research on the social acceptability of aquaculture, in contrast,
tends to deploy a more diverse set of terms and concepts including well-
being, values and risk.
3.3. The site of SLO work in company structures
A third theme in writings on social licence in the mining sector is
concerned with the placing of SLO within the organizational structures
of companies. The context for this research is the claim by mining
companies that social and development issues have become ‘core’ to
their business practices and processes, and an apparent shift away from
the separation of the “harder goals of profit and production, from the
softer goals of inclusion and community development” [67]. In this
context, researchers have asked several key questions including: Where
are the activities associated with supporting social licence located
within company structures, and how have these changed over time?
And are these activities valued and integrated within normal company
processes and systems? A key first principle of this research is the re-
cognition that companies are not monolithic entities but are instead
“sites of politics and power within which a variety of stakeholders with
competing interests engage in and shape a range of discourses” [67].
Research on internal company dynamics provides key insights into
how companies involved in resource development are changing in re-
sponse to social licence demands, and the depth of these changes within
organizational structures. Owen and Kemp [67] have recently proposed
a novel way of assessing and visualizing how organizational cultures
and practices may be changing. Their method involves ‘practice map-
ping’, which is a way of capturing and presenting in visual form how a
company's work on SLO is arranged and changes over time. The prac-
tice mapping approach can be used at a range of different scales in-
cluding company, division or even individual practitioner. The sig-
nificance of these visualizations is that they provide a “strong proxy for
the level of alignment between a company's espoused position on CSR
and SD and their actual position” [67].1
The Owen and Kemp [67] approach is a valuable one in that it
provides tangible evidence and an attractive method to assess how
company practices and organizational structures relate to social licence.
It also provides a rigorous way of assessing change over time, and a
method of comparing different company approaches. An obvious
challenge with this method is that it requires open access to company
systems and processes. For many reasons, resource development com-
panies may not be willing to share this information with researchers or
consultants. It is nonetheless a promising approach for understanding
the relationship between internal organizational change and commit-
ments to social licence issues.
For the aquaculture sector, there is no parallel tradition of research
on ‘practice mapping’ within industry structures. Nonetheless, industry
publications and several isolated analyses of company policy provide
insights into the emerging place of social licence in specific companies.
Industry publications on social and environmental responsibility tend to
be produced by large global aquaculture companies that are often listed
on global stock exchanges. These reports may also be part of corporate
social responsibility (CSR) reporting. Marine Harvest, the largest
salmon aquaculture company in the world, has been the subject of a
recent study by Vormedal [68]. Her research draws on several key in-
terviews with Marine Harvest senior employees, NGO partners, and
company reports and documents. Vormedal traces the way in which
Marine Harvest responded to key environmental challenges in its Chi-
lean operations that resulted in large scale disease outbreaks and
massive financial losses. On the back of this experience, the company
decided to chart a new strategy of sustainability. The company part-
nered with the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF), it engaged with
1
CSR = corporate social responsibility; SD = sustainable development.
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Marine Policy 99 (2019) 275–282
Salmon Aquaculture Dialogues, and played an important role in sup-
porting a voluntary certification standard for aquaculture, the Aqua-
culture Stewardship Council (ASC). Marine Harvest has also played an
important role in pushing governments to establish stricter and more
environmentally sustainable regulations in both Chile and Norway and
has articulated a strong business case for sustainable production prac-
tices. Vormedal [68] suggests that Marine Harvest represents an ex-
ample of what she calls ‘corporations with a proactive strategy’ [cf. 69].
The Marine Harvest case represents a unique study that draws on
interviews with high level company employees and a range of industry
produced documents on commitments to sustainability and social re-
sponsibility. Other global aquaculture companies are also producing
large volumes of publically available material that provides insights
into their stated commitments to sustainable aquaculture production.
For example, Cermaq, the very large Norwegian aquaculture company,
provides detailed evidence of its commitment to sustainable develop-
ment (SD), arguing that its strategies align with United Nations
Sustainable Development Goals and several ocean sustainability in-
itiatives [70]. Yet these reports may not be enough to do the practice
mapping described by Owen and Kemp [67] in their work in the mining
sector. The public reports by large aquaculture companies provide
important insights into their stated commitment to sustainable aqua-
culture, but they provide very little insight into where social licence
features in company structures and how this might have changed over
time.
3.4. SLO and other regulatory systems and frameworks
The relationship between social licence and other regulatory sys-
tems and frameworks including corporate social responsibility, corpo-
rate citizenship, impact assessments, and impact benefit agreements is
an ongoing focus of debate and research in mining and other resource
development sectors [3,71]. Parsons et al. [19] have compared SLO,
which is often seen as tacit and hard to define, with the more familiar
system of corporate social responsibility. They argue that while CSR
aims to “legitimise a social function for the firm, social licence focuses
more on stakeholder perceptions of the firm” [19]. In this way, social
licence is not something offered by the community to industry, it is
instead a way for communities to play a role in shaping resource de-
velopment patterns, and indeed whether they will take place at all.
Based on this analysis, Parsons [19] argue that SLO, unlike other reg-
ulatory systems, provides a way of balancing the power between
company and community.
A second area of inquiry has been the ways in which social licence
has led to a reshaping of existing regulatory systems and frameworks. In
the Australian context, Moffat et al. [5] write that demonstrating
‘community confidence’ has become a formal requirement for new re-
source development projects in the forestry and other sectors. There is
also evidence to suggest that state legislated Impact Assessments (IA) in
Australia are being rewritten to include questions linked to social li-
cence [72]. Murphy-Gregory's [73] recent analysis in the marine sector
provides additional evidence on how social licence may be changing
conventional regulatory systems for resource development. Drawing on
two Environmental NGO campaigns in Tasmania, she shows how these
organisations are able to use the concept of social licence to pressure
state structures to improve formal regulatory oversight over resource
development. Murphy-Gregory [73] describes this process of shaping
government policy through social licence as ‘governance via persua-
sion’.
In other contexts, SLO is seen as potentially weakening existing
regulatory relations between resource development companies and
communities. This is the case in New Zealand where, through the
Treaty of Waitangi, Maori groups have a strong claim on how mineral
resource extraction happens. The emergence of SLO in the mining in-
dustry is seen as a threat as “if applied mechanistically, it has the po-
tential to take Indigenous groups back to the task of seeking
C. Mather, L. Fanning
recognition, rather than enabling them to reassert and redeploy their
culture and traditions as partners in authority” [74]. Social licence in
New Zealand may be a weaker form of contract between industry and
community and has the potential of compromising existing frameworks
to the detriment of Indigenous communities.
In the aquaculture sector, there is little evidence of research on the
relationship between social licence and other regulatory systems such
as corporate social responsibility, marine spatial planning and formal
state policy for aquaculture. There are, nonetheless, several cases re-
ported in the literature and in the media that reveal how social licence
issues are reshaping or challenging the existing regulatory regime for
aquaculture. Grieg Aquaculture's proposal to develop a very large
salmon operation in Newfoundland, Canada provides an illustrative
case. In 2016, Newfoundland and Labrador's Department of
Environment released Grieg from having to do an Environmental
Impact Statement (EIS), thereby allowing the company to proceed to
develop a very large salmon aquaculture production facility without a
formal environmental assessment [75]. A coalition of concerned en-
vironmentalists and anglers successfully contested the Minister's deci-
sion in court. The province has subsequently appealed this decision,
which is currently being considered by the court. The legal case against
the NL provincial government is an example of how aquaculture sta-
keholders are demanding stronger regulatory oversight over aqua-
culture development. Similar dynamics are currently underway in
British Columbia [76] and in Scotland [77,78] where proposals to
renew existing aquaculture leases or to expand existing production are
being contested by coalitions demanding stronger and stricter reg-
ulatory oversight of aquaculture.
Although there has been limited research on the relationship be-
tween social licence and other regulatory systems and frameworks in
aquaculture, there is a substantial body of work in aquaculture on
private sector initiatives for the certification of environmental sus-
tainability, seafood safety, and industry wide sustainability initiatives
[79,80]. Several of these certification systems go beyond sustainability
to include occupational health and safety [81]. Private sector initiatives
typically involve third party certification and partnerships with en-
vironmental NGO, and the aim is to provide stakeholders and con-
sumers with additional ways of assessing aquaculture companies and
farmed fish. Social licence does not yet feature strongly in these private
sector initiatives [but see 10,82]. As is discussed in more detail below,
there is considerable potential for using social licence as a way of ad-
dressing some of the perceived deficiencies with existing aquaculture
certification systems and seafood advisories [79,83].
3.5. Critiques of social licence
While the concept of social licence continues to attract the attention
of academics and industry consultants, and appears to be spreading
rapidly across resource intensive industry sectors, it has also had its
share of criticism. Indeed, some of the early academic interventions on
social licence provided a trenchant critique of the concept and its
practice in mining [84,85]. In a recent paper, Owen [17] suggests that
social licence is far removed from the “core drivers of contemporary
mining practice” and as such does not fundamentally alter approaches
to resource development or company-community relations. He criti-
cised the existing literature for not examining closely enough how the
term was being discussed and deployed by mining companies and
pointed out that social performance activities were “often not seen as
compelling by the business unless a shutdown is observably imminent”
[17]. In other words, companies were really only interested in social
licence if it threatened their access to natural resources [84,85].
The basis of Owen and Kemp's [84] critique is the argument that
social licence plays a marginal role in company-community relations.
Other critiques of social licence point to a different dynamic. For some
researchers, the problem with social licence is that it has become a tool
used by companies to overcome obstacles to resource development.
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Marine Policy 99 (2019) 275–282
Social licence, according to this line of argument, is a way of securing
access to resources in the face of community opposition, rather than as
a way of building strong relations with stakeholders. As Parsons et al.,
[19] write, “the social licence construct may encourage managers to
focus on practices that might secure a level of community acceptance,
without necessarily being aspirational”. Securing community accep-
tance often involves overcoming what are considered to be ‘community
perceptions’ that can be changed in the face of ‘objective’ and ‘rational’
facts. Local communities are framed as receivers of information rather
than as agents who are capable of engaging in a dialogue about the
benefits and negative impacts of resource development. This approach
often leads to the unfortunate situation where “the proposed solution to
public distrust is to change community perception rather than to listen
to how the community understands a given issue” [86].
Research has also focused on the utility of the concept given existing
community – industry relations. Moffat et al. [5] have warned about the
difficulty of having an open and fair dialogue – which is presumably the
foundation for social licence – in a context where power relations be-
tween companies and communities are so asymmetrical. Indeed, many
remote communities facing high levels of unemployment and little local
investment may not be in a position to negotiate on a level playing field
with resource development companies. In other contexts, policy ana-
lysts have raised the possibility of ever securing social licence given
strong and entrenched opposition to resource development. Writing as
an industry insider in the Australian forestry sector, Poynter [87] has
been critical of social licence because of the assumption it makes that
local and distant communities who opposed resource development can
be convinced to change their views on resource development. In other
words, he is critical of social licence for the promise it gives industry
that it can be deployed as a way to change people's minds. Based on his
experience in the forestry sector, he is concerned “about the value of
this nebulous concept (social licence) in the face of entrenched and
intractable opposition” [87].
Finally, there is research suggesting the need to rework the ‘the
vaguely defined social licence concept’ in a way that ensures a more
productive and equal relationship between companies and commu-
nities. Slack [88] has proposed the idea of consent, which requires that
companies treat communities as ‘partners’ rather than as an ‘obstacle to
development’. Using the broader idea of consent, he writes, will compel
companies to “engage more holistically with a community, providing
them access to critical information and allowing them adequate time to
assess their needs and interests before making a decision about whether
to accept a company's presence” [88 also see 18].
The critical debates on social licence point to the tensions involved
in how SLO is conceived and practiced, and on its perceived potential
for establishing the basis for productive relations between resource
development companies and a broader network of stakeholders [18]. In
spite of these critical interventions, SLO as a concept and practice ap-
pears to be gaining momentum as it reshapes existing regulatory fra-
meworks and community-industry relations in mining and other re-
source intensive sectors [1]. Zhang et al. [44] have recently defended
the term's use in the mining sector, arguing that “the term has filled a
gap in the governance of extractive industries”.
How might these critical debates on social licence be relevant to the
aquaculture sector? A first observation relates not to company practice,
but to how social licence is viewed in policy documents. The examples
are drawn from Canadian cases, but it is reasonable to assume that our
findings have relevance in other contexts. In several Canadian pro-
vincial and national aquaculture policy and strategy documents, social
licence and community relations are associated with the need to im-
prove communication with stakeholders [6,7] or they are linked to the
need to improve marketing [89]. Framing social licence as a problem of
‘communication for a misinformed public’, has the potential to alienate
stakeholders before meaningful dialogue has started [cf. 71,1,44,13]. A
second observation is that it is important to recognize that social licence
as concept and practice is by no means settled within resource intensive
C. Mather, L. Fanning
sectors outside of aquaculture. There are critical debates about social
licence's role in mining and other resource intensive sectors amongst
researchers and within industry [18], and there are those who continue
to explore other terms and practices through which industry commu-
nity relations may be fostered for mutual benefit. Finally, an important
question will be to assess, over the long term, the role of social licence
in a sector like aquaculture that is facing considerable opposition from a
range of different groups that seem to rely increasingly on court actions
in their struggles with industry and government.
4. Priorities for a research agenda for social licence in aquaculture
Based on the analysis in the previous section, five areas for research
are proposed that map roughly onto to the five themes in the mining
literature explored earlier in the context of aquaculture.
4.1. Stakeholder networks and social licence in aquaculture
The comparison between mining and aquaculture suggests that the
stakeholder networks that exist around aquaculture development are
both different and substantially more extensive than they are in mining
and many other resource intensive sectors. This raises questions about
what these networks look like, and how they are composed and held
together, and to what extent they lend themselves to social network
analysis [cf. 4]. How have the stakeholder networks changed over time,
and to what extent are stakeholder networks gravitating around the
concept and practice of social licence? In the context of recent critiques
of social licence, is the term being mobilised in a way that resonates
with commonly held democratic ideals [cf. 90]? While the stakeholder
networks in aquaculture are different, can the concepts and ideas
emerging out of the mining literature be used productively in the
aquaculture sector? For example, is it useful to think about commu-
nities of place and communities of interest in aquaculture [23]?
4.2. Industry sustainability initiatives and social licence in aquaculture
Our review of the literature on social licence in mining suggests that
practice mapping is a potentially useful and fruitful way of analysing
how (and whether) aquaculture companies are responding to the de-
mands for social acceptability. Are there new internal company dy-
namics emerging in the aquaculture sector around social licence, or is
this issue relegated to communications and public relations? The
practice mapping approach also provides a way of critically assessing
the wealth of material that is being distributed by the industry on the
commitment to economic, social and environmental sustainability
against internal company dynamics and processes. A focus on practice
mapping has the potential to build on and extend the limited number of
studies that have analysed aquaculture company practice [e.g., 68], and
could provide a way of tracing and analysing new industry wide sus-
tainability initiatives that also claim to cover social licence issues (e.g.,
Global Salmon Initiative).
4.3. Modelling social licence in aquaculture
The use of quantitative and qualitative surveys is one area where
research on social acceptability in mining and aquaculture are closely
aligned. There is a long tradition of assessing and analysing stakeholder
and community perceptions of aquaculture, which parallels recent ef-
forts in the mining sector to provide qualitative and quantitative as-
sessments of social licence. One of the differences in the mining lit-
erature on social licence is that researchers rely on a limited number of
widely agreed upon models and allied concepts. Would the develop-
ment of similar models and concepts in aquaculture be useful, and
would it build on and extend existing studies of stakeholder and com-
munity perception of aquaculture and farmed fish? This is a worthwhile
task: building a model or framework of social licence in aquaculture
280
Marine Policy 99 (2019) 275–282
could build on existing studies of public and stakeholder perception of
aquaculture and farmed fish, while at the same time providing a co-
ordinating framework for future studies.
4.4. Social licence and aquaculture certification
A key theme in the literature on mining and other resource intensive
sectors is the relationship between social licence and other mechanisms
including corporate social responsibility (CSR) and national or local
state legislation. Within the aquaculture sector there is the potential for
examining how social licence may be influencing certification stan-
dards, which are rapidly expanding but tend to be weak on issues ad-
dressed by social licence issues. They key research question is: can so-
cial licence shape certification for aquaculture production and farmed
fish?
4.5. Is social licence right for aquaculture?
This paper has argued that while social licence is well established in
the mining sector, it is by no means a settled concept. There are strong
critiques of the way it is deployed, and there are alternative proposals
for concepts and terms that should guide and shape the relations be-
tween companies and communities affected by resource development.
At the same time, there are notable examples where social licence is
being reimagined as a way of establishing democratic and progressive
relations between industry and community (e.g., [90,91]). In Curran's
research on the gas sector in Australia, for example, she argues that
social licence has been transformed from an industry strategy of risk
management to a “political concept by (re)interpreting it through a
potent democracy ‘frame’ that resonates deeply with affected commu-
nities” [90]. While researchers should be wary of simply adopting a
concept from another resource intensive sector into aquaculture, there
is also the potential in adapting and reshaping social licence to suit the
specific context of aquaculture, particularly if it can be the basis for a
societally endorsed, sustainable aquaculture sector.
5. Conclusion
This paper offers a research agenda for social licence and aqua-
culture. It has done so through a close and careful engagement with the
extensive literature on social licence in mining and other resource in-
tensive sectors, which tends to be overlooked in the emerging research
and policy debates on social licence and aquaculture. The paper is not,
however, suggesting that the themes and issues in the mining literature
be pursued in aquaculture without considering the specific dynamics of
aquaculture development especially in North America and Europe.
Three key issues relating to the specific dynamics of aquaculture are
notable. First, the stakeholder networks associated with aquaculture
production, for reasons suggested above, may be more extensive and
more complex than they are in many mining contexts. Clearly this has
relevance for how communities and industries negotiate social licence.
A second issue has to do with timing. Social licence has arrived in the
aquaculture sector at a time of dynamic change and political com-
plexity. On the one hand, the industry is facing legal challenges and
protests, especially around salmon aquaculture, and these actions ap-
pear to have succeeded in slowing or halting salmon farming altogether
in select sites across North America and Europe. At the same time, the
largest salmon farming companies are committing themselves to sus-
tainability, food safety, global development goals, and are establishing
industry wide initiatives such as the Global Salmon Initiative. How
social licence comes to play a role in this sector, at this time, is an
important and urgent question that may be answered through the re-
search agenda proposed in this paper. Finally, drawing on critical de-
bates in mining, there is the possibility that social licence may not re-
present an easy solution to community industry relations in
aquaculture. Indeed, the critical debates on social licence identified in
C. Mather, L. Fanning
the literature point to the tensions involved in how SLO is conceived
and practiced, and on its real potential for establishing the basis for
productive relations between resource development companies and a
broader network of stakeholders. One of the ways of addressing these
tensions, and potentially answering this question, may be revealed
through an engagement with the suggested research agenda.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to reviewers and the editor for very helpful comments and
suggestions on an earlier draft of this paper.
Competing interest statement
There are no competing interests associated with this work.
Funding
This work was supported by an Ocean Frontier Institute large re-
search project on Social Licence and Planning in Coastal Communities.
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