Trust, mistrust and distrust as blind spots of Social Licence to Operate: illustration via three forerunner countries in nuclear waste management

Matti Kojo,Tapio Litmanen,Mika Kari,Tuija Jartti,Markku Lehtonen

doi:10.1080/13669877.2021.1957987

Abstract

The notion of social licence to operate (SLO) has become a widely applied concept for companies in mining and resource extraction industries to manage their social and community relations, in the face of local criticism and opposition. SLO literature and practice have highlighted earning the trust of the local community as a key requirement for an SLO. This article addresses three weaknesses in how the current SLO literature addresses trust. The arguments are illustrated via examples from nuclear waste management in Finland, France and Sweden – three forerunners in implementing high-level nuclear waste repository projects. Nuclear waste management constitutes a relevant case for analysis, as an industry that faces significant risk-related challenges of local acceptance, ethics, economics, and democratic debate. Focussing on the oft-used SLO framework of Boutilier and Thomson, with its emphasis on interactional and institutionalised trust between the company and the local community, we address three gaps in the SLO literature: 1) insufficient conceptualisation of trust, in particular the dynamics between different dimensions of trust, mistrust and distrust; 2) lack of attention to the potential virtues of mistrust and distrust; and 3) the downsides of taking the institutionalisation of trust as the ultimate criterion of a strong SLO, especially in contexts entailing significant asymmetries of power. The article concludes by suggesting ways of alleviating the identified weaknesses, via greater recognition of the multidimensionality of trust, mistrust and distrust, the virtues of mistrustful civic vigilance, and greater attention to trust dimensions that lie beyond the community-company relations.

Highlights

Introduction: trust and the social licence to operate Social Licence to Operate (SLO) has gained increasing popularity as a tool for companies to manage their community relations – in other words, their ‘social risks’ (e.g. Bice, Brueckner, and Pforr 2017)
Examples from high-level radioactive waste (HLW) repository projects in three forerunner countries have illustrated some of the weaknesses in the ways in which current SLO scholarship addresses the questions of trust
The repository projects are characterised by three vital aspects underestimated in SLO thinking and practice: the complex and dynamic constellations of interacting trust, mistrust and distrust; the potential virtues of mistrustful civic vigilance and distrust-based citizen action; and the problem of holding institutionalised trust as the highest criterion of SLO

Summary

Introduction

Introduction: trust and the social licence to operate Social Licence to Operate (SLO) has gained increasing popularity as a tool for companies to manage their community relations – in other words, their ‘social risks’ (e.g. Bice, Brueckner, and Pforr 2017). We draw on one of the most often used SLO frameworks – the ‘diamond’ or ‘arrowhead’ framework of Boutilier and Thomson (2011; see Boutilier 2017) and illustrate our arguments via examples from nuclear waste repository projects in three forerunner countries: Finland, France, and Sweden This framework highlights ‘interactional’ trust between the company and the local community – through communication, dialogue and partnership – as a precondition for the highest stage of SLO, that is, ‘institutionalised’ trust. Further conceptual improvement could build on recent work that has sought to combine the local and societal levels of analysis within a single SLO framework (e.g., Lesser et al 2021)

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Conclusion