Social License to Operate

Gaining Your Social License to Operate

Do not assume to know and understand the concerns of other stakeholders or interest groups.
Begin with a clear statement of your objectives and operational constraints.
Encourage a wide range of ideas on how those objectives can be achieved in an environmentally-responsible approach.
Groups long established in the project vicinity have valuable knowledge of the area's dynamics; make use of that knowledge in your planning.
Incorporate these potential alternative Plans of Operations into the environmental impact assessment for the project.
Consider the project environments from three perspectives: economic, natural, and societal.
Solicit the broadest range of input on which components of the environmental categories should be included in the environmental assessment.
Quantify the values and beliefs towards environmental components expressed by everyone participating in scoping the project assessment.
Use the relative importance weight of each component in determining the effects of project changes on the existing environments.
Keep the decision-making process open, transparent, and quantitative.