Science and Social License: Defining Environmental Sustainability of Atlantic Salmon Aquaculture in South-Eastern Tasmania, Australia

Abstract

Social license reflects environmental and social change, and sees community as animportant stakeholder and partner. Science, scientists, and science policy have a keyrole in the processes that generate social license. In this paper, we focus on the interactionbetween science and social license in salmon aquaculture in south-eastern Tasmania.This research suggests that social license will be supported by distributed andcredible knowledge co-production. Drawing on qualitative, interpretive social researchwe argue that targeted science, instilled by appropriate science policy, can underpinsocial license by supporting emerging, distributed, and pluralistic knowledge production.Where social license is important and environmental contexts are complex, suchknowledge production might support environmental governance, and so improve outcomesin coastal zone management and beyond.