Oil and gas development in Greenland: A social license to operate, trust and legitimacy in environmental governance

This paper builds on the idea that successful implementation of an activity is determined by social, political and legal licenses. Trust and legitimacy are regarded as the fundamental principles on which all three licenses are based. This paper therefore adopts an integrated approach, in which the role of the political and legal licenses is taken into account as well as the social license. This approach provides for a more thorough analysis for different sources of personal and institutionalised trust as well as input, throughput and output legitimacy across the three licenses. The case study also illustrates the potential role of the government in co-shaping a social license to operate.