The social license to operate concept originated in the mining industry as a metaphor, which compares the power of communities with the power of governments.
During the 1990s, the mining industry found itself under close public scrutiny following a series of well-publicized chemical spills, tailings dam failures, and increasing conflict with local communities around exploration and development projects (see Thomson and Joyce 2006, for a review of this time period). In 1996, a Roper opinion poll showed mining to rate last among 24 US industries in terms of public popularity, behind the tobacco industry (Prager 1997). Internationally, mining became a pejorative term in many circles and widely regarded as a problem industry that was the cause of unwanted pollution and undesirable social impacts. This reputation was deeply rooted in the general public and widely shared by opinion formers and constituted a liability to the industry (Schloss 2002). At the same.
