ABSTRACT
The stories have shed light on social licence contestations in WA, where both legal and political licence interplays were shown to have stymied community efforts to assert social licence claims. The examples are offered with a view to give guidance to communities and eco-activists who may see parallels between the cases detailed and their own lived experience. Cases are presented from Queensland, Mongolia and Indonesia, detailing the nature of political, legal and social licence interactions and how these have been navigated by local activists. These cases illustrate the impact of legal and political contexts on social, actuarial and political risk and licence dynamics. The legal and political environments of Queensland, Mongolia and Indonesia were all found, albeit to varying degrees, to have been restrictive concerning activists’ ability to assert their social licence concerns given the dominance of the political licence and relative weakness of the actuarial licence.
