The social license to operate (SLO) is rooted in the beliefs, opinions and perceptions held by local societies and other stakeholders about a potential mining project until its final approval or not. On occasions, the opposition of the local population to the realisation of a mining project has resulted in its cancellation. When it comes to the exploitation of rare earth element (REE) deposits the opposition is even stronger; rare earths have improperly gained the reputation of dirty elements (Zepf, 2013) mainly due to the extended contamination effects and health impacts in China that have already made governments and people around the world prejudiced against any REE mining and processing development (Ali, 2014; Barakos, 2017). CITATION:Barakos, G and Mischo, H, 2019. Implementation of social license to operate into early evaluation stages of potential mining projects, in Proceedings 9th International Conference on Sustainable Development in the Minerals Industry, pp 7577 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).