Our global oceans are threatened by climate change, overfishing, pollution and a growing list of other impacts that demonstrate an urgent global need for sustainable ocean management. Yet still it lags behind other more ‘visible’ terrestrial sectors. ‘Social licence to operate’ is used broadly across the terrestrial literature, but how can we apply it to marine management?
I aim to produce novel understanding as to how social licence may be used to bridge communication gaps and barriers between diverse users of the ocean environment and how we can advance our understanding of social licence by applying it to the marine sector. This project will outline the value of social licence and its global potential towards garnering the cooperative industry-community involvement necessary to advise managers in sharing ocean resources sustainably in our changing world. By means of social research case studies (national and international), I will conduct a qualitative investigation of community understandings of the ocean and social licence of marine systems, including recreational fisheries and marine protected areas, and identify how engagement, knowledge and perceptions of marine realm management might be improved.
This research will be among the first attempts to link social licence theory with citizen science, aiming to produce actual practical outcomes that may be applied in sustainable management. The project has considerable potential to produce novel, and influence future, theoretical understandings of social licence and citizen science, and their application in the management and development of sustainable ocean use.