Space citizen: The gap between you, me and the governance of space

Steer, Cassandra Working Paper Space citizen: The gap between you, me and the governance of space CIGI Papers, No. 314 Provided in Cooperation with: Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), Waterloo, Ontario Suggested Citation: Steer, Cassandra (2025) : Space citizen: The gap between you, me and the governance of space, CIGI Papers, No. 314, Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), Waterloo (Ontario) This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/311808 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ CIGI Paper No. 314 — January 2025 Space Citizen: The Gap Between You, Me and the Governance of Space Cassandra Steer CIGI Paper No. 314 — January 2025 Space Citizen The Gap Between You, Me and the Governance of Space Cassandra Steer About CIGI The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) is an independent, non-partisan think tank whose peer-reviewed research and trusted analysis influence policy makers to innovate. Our global network of multidisciplinary researchers and strategic partnerships provide policy solutions for the digital era with one goal: to improve people’s lives everywhere. Headquartered in Waterloo, Canada, CIGI has received support from the Government of Canada, the Government of Ontario and founder Jim Balsillie. À propos du CIGI Le Centre pour l’innovation dans la gouvernance internationale (CIGI) est un groupe de réflexion indépendant et non partisan dont les recherches évaluées par des pairs et les analyses fiables incitent les décideurs à innover. Grâce à son réseau mondial de chercheurs pluridisciplinaires et de partenariats stratégiques, le CIGI offre des solutions politiques adaptées à l’ère numérique dans le seul but d’améliorer la vie des gens du monde entier. Le CIGI, dont le siège se trouve à Waterloo, au Canada, bénéficie du soutien du gouvernement du Canada, du gouvernement de l’Ontario et de son fondateur, Jim Balsillie. Copyright © 2025 by the Centre for International Governance Innovation The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Centre for International Governance Innovation or its Board of Directors. For publications enquiries, please contact [email protected]. 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Centre for International Governance Innovation and CIGI are registered trademarks. 67 Erb Street West Waterloo, ON, Canada N2L 6C2 www.cigionline.org Credits Managing Director and General Counsel Aaron Shull Director, Program Management Dianna English Program Manager Jenny Thiel Publications Editor Christine Robertson Publications Editor Susan Bubak Graphic Designer Sepideh Shomali Table of Contents vi About the Author vi Acronyms and Abbreviations 1 Executive Summary 1 Introduction 2 Actors in the Space Scape 9 Building the Space Citizen Model 13 Closing the Gap Between You, Me and the Governance of Space 17 Works Cited vi CIGI Paper No. 314 — January 2025 • Cassandra Steer About the Author Cassandra Steer is chair and founder of the Australian Centre for Space Governance, and concurrently deputy director of the Australian National University (ANU) Institute for Space. Globally recognized for her expertise in space governance, space law and space security, she has published widely on these topics, including the application of the law of armed conflict and use of force in outer space. She has served as a consultant on these issues for the Australian, Canadian and US departments of defence; the Australian Space Agency; and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. She has taught space law and space security at McGill University, the ANU College of Law, the National Security College and the Australian War College. Cassandra is multilingual and has lived and worked in five countries across four continents. She has degrees in philosophy, civil law, international law and international criminal law, and training in common law, comparative law and space law. She is a member of the Australian Space Agency’s Technical Advisory Group for Space Situational Awareness, an associate expert on the Woomera Manual on the International Law of Military Space Operations, a member of the Space Traffic Management Committee of the International Academy of Astronautics and a member of the International Institute of Space Law. Acronyms and Abbreviations ASAT anti-satellite COPUOS Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space EO Earth observation ESA European Space Agency ISS International Space Station IT internet technology NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization OEWG open-ended working group OST Outer Space Treaty PNT position, timing and navigation SSA space situational awareness UNGA UN General Assembly UNOOSA UN Office for Outer Space Affairs 1Space Citizen: The Gap Between You, Me and the Governance of Space Executive Summary Existing space governance institutions and mechanisms are built on a twentieth-century reality, when states were the main actors and the main, if only, subjects of international law. While international space law and multilateral institutions are facing pressures in the twentyfirst-century “spacescape,” they should not be disregarded or replaced entirely. The framework they provide is an important foundation. Rather, what is needed is an expansive lens to work toward new approaches to the wicked problems of space governance, including safety, security and sustainability. The number and type of space actors, the ever-increasing nature of human activity in space, the dual-use nature of most space services and the vulnerability of civilians in the event of a loss of space-based services: all of these factors create wicked complexities. An expansive cognitive approach is proposed: that of the individual “space citizen.” Since we are all dependent on spacebased technologies, we all have a vested interest in the good governance of the space environment and our impact upon it. Existing notions of the “global citizen” and “planetary citizen” should be expanded to the “space citizen,” so that we can activate our own individual participation in new governance approaches that are multi-stakeholder, muti-domain, inclusive and intergenerational. Introduction In 1987, author Frank White (2014) coined the term “the overview effect” to describe the paradigmatic shift in perspective and values that many astronauts reported following their spaceflight experiences. A number of astronauts became committed environmentalists, having seen from above the impact of the Anthropocene on our planet, and reported emotional and spiritual shifts regarding their sense of identity as global or planetary citizens. White asserted that this is a cognitive shift, possibly a next step in collective human development. He has also argued that as more humans have access to this experience through future space tourism, more of us will shift our sense of identity away from national limitations toward being global citizens, with a sense of responsibility for our planet. Similarly, the photo known as “Earthrise,” a view of Earth rising over the lunar horizon that was taken in 1968 by one of the Apollo 8 crew members from within their capsule, is often described as one of the most valuable artifacts from this inaugural crewed lunar mission, and is arguably “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken.”1 Crew member Bill Anders (2018) has since stated that the Apollo 8 mission — the first-ever crewed spaceflight to leave Earth orbit — was defined by this moment: “We set out to explore the Moon and instead discovered the Earth.” This paper argues that the next stage of human cognitive development must expand on the notion of “global citizen,” or even “planetary citizen,” to a wider notion of “space citizen.” Just as our international interactions and economies, digital technologies and environmental impacts upon our planet are driving the notion of global citizenship, our technological dependencies in, interactions with and impacts on space similarly require us to shift our cognitive identities to encompass not only our planet, but also our nearEarth space environment. We must expand our sphere of awareness to include the natural space environment within which our Earth system and critical technologies operate: an environment upon which we depend for our individual, national and global needs, and yet one on which we are already making a concerning environmental impact. The “space citizen” concept of identity can lead to closer individual, community and social engagement with these issues, and an understanding that good space governance is intertwined with the issues we face on Earth in the twenty-first century, especially climate change, the digital divide, food security and geopolitical tensions. This expanded cognitive framework attempts to correct the current general lack of understanding in the wider public and among decision makers globally as to how much we already depend on the space domain. Failing to adopt this expanded framework would contribute to a current downward spiral in terms of the safety, security and sustainability of the space domain — including cis-lunar space. Continuing to ignore our role as space citizens would deny intergenerational access to and benefits from space-based technologies. 1 See www.abc.net.au/science/moon/earthrise.htm. 2CIGI Paper No. 314 — January 2025 • Cassandra Steer Current global space governance mechanisms are buckling under the pressures of rapid technological, political, commercial and military developments. Whereas space activities in the twentieth century were predominantly government operated, and involved a small number of states, today space is a multi-stakeholder domain that includes commercial service providers, as well as individuals, communities and societies who depend on space-based services. In addition, the world is in a multi-polar political era, which means that different political, legal and governance solutions are needed from those that were successful in the late twentieth century. Institutions and instruments that focus only on state interactions create an untenable gap between space governance on the one hand, and the world’s population on the other hand: both current and future generations, who are dependent on the existence of a stable, safe and sustainable space environment. The political and governance landscape — or “spacescape” — of the twenty-first century is vastly different from that of the twentieth century, which gave birth to our current global space governance mechanisms. We need to understand what existing international space law and multilateralism can and cannot do, and to decide what to do about new and different actors in the political spacescape. Adopting the expanded cognitive lens of the “space citizen” can contribute to reframing traditional approaches to space law and space governance. This paper does not propose specific institutional solutions to the problems of global space governance. Rather, it asserts that in order to find such solutions, and tackle the multiple intertwined challenges of governing space, an expanded framework is needed as to who should be making decisions and how they should be made. A “space citizen” framework begins with individual and societal shifts in awareness to include space in our environmental identity — it is a call for each of us to identify as having an individual relationship with space because of our collective dependency on it and, as a result, to care about what happens in our near-Earth environment. This framework leads to an expanded inclusion of actors in decision-making processes, as well as clear normative principles to underpin that decision making. In some ways, it is a call for participatory decision making on a planetary scale. Actors in the Space Scape Space technologies are ubiquitous in our daily lives, and critical for national security, economies and well-being. They are also thoroughly implicated in transnational economics, geopolitical interactions and warfare. The increase in global dependencies on services from space systems has led to an untenable increase in space traffic, and with it an increase in space debris, risking irreversible impacts on our near-Earth environment, as well as loss of service at any given moment, due to collisions. There are also increased risks to civilians of loss of critical services due to deliberate targeting during military grey zone operations and armed conflict on Earth. The mechanisms for governing these increased complexities in space remain very much focused on the role of states, but there are serious limitations to this approach. Multilateral discussions on space arms control and measures for governing the sustainability of space are stymied by geopolitical jostling, and there have been calls for the UN system to undergo major reform for some time. Meanwhile, some states insist that civil society groups and non-government experts should not be part of these important discussions (Hitchens 2022), and yet the private sector, civil society and academia seem to be moving toward solutions to fill the gaps where states cannot seem to agree. Add to all of this the overwhelming commercialization of space, which has disrupted the economic and national security models for interacting with commercial providers, and we have a coalescence of factors making governance of space technologies and of the space environment an overwhelming challenge: Who is governing whom, and are we really tackling the big issues in space rapidly enough? One of the biggest challenges is the change in the nature and number of actors engaged in space activities over recent decades, disrupting traditional approaches to global space governance. From Space 1.0 to Space 4.0 In the latter half of the twentieth century, this political landscape — or spacescape — was also competitive, but simpler. There were fewer players in the original “Space Age,” and they were all geopolitically dominant states. Only wealthy states had the economic and technological 9Space Citizen: The Gap Between You, Me and the Governance of Space of the OST, but rather new approaches to ensuring these values and promises are enacted and fulfilled for current and future generations. A citizenbased approach, built from the individual up. Building the Space Citizen Model The gap between existing institutions and mechanisms that were established for a twentiethcentury spacescape and what is needed both now and going forward represents a democratic gap. The implications of who has access to space-based technologies and services — and who has the power to govern those technologies — are felt in the stability of the global economy, the digital gap for minoritized or disadvantaged groups, and the lives of communities and individuals dependent on these technologies. New and comprehensive governance responses are needed that include multidisciplinary and multi-stakeholder engagement, while also building on the foundations of twentieth-century solutions. This is precisely the reasoning behind the case for the “space citizen,” which is not only a normative and institutional approach, but rather a cognitive one that starts with the individual. Arguably, there have been generational shifts over the last several decades from having primarily local or national identities toward holding regional or global identities. While this may not be true in all cultures, there is no doubt that the advent of the internet and the “information age” impacted the way that individuals relate to events happening around the world. Access to information when we want it, in near-real time, has meant that regional shifts in the early twenty-first century have all occured in our own digital backyards instead of in far-flung corners of the globe; these include the breakup of Eastern Europe, the destabilization of the Middle East in the wake of the US response to the September 11 attacks in 2001, the creation and then fragmentation of the European Union, the rise of India and re-emergence of China leading to the beginning of the Asian century and the decline of the American century, the power shifts in Africa, the Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s defiance, and the expansion of the North American Treaty Organization (NATO). Similarly, technopolitics has informed us for decades that access to data can change the way that citizens interact with and impact their political and physical environments (Kurban, Peña-López and Haberer 2017; Milan and Gutierrez 2018). And the realities of climate change can be felt locally and also witnessed on our screens as natural disasters unfold across the planet. As a result, the environmental mantra of the late 1990s and early 2000s to “think globally, act locally” later morphed into “think globally, act globally,” as citizens have mobilized in the face of global governance failures. “Global citizenship” has become a term that we all recognize, and there are even calls for “planetary citizenship” as an ethical framework for environmental and climate activism (Henderson and Ikeda 2004; Thompson 2001). More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic created a moment in time when the population of the entire planet was impacted in myriad ways by a single disease. While inequalities became even more apparent in the wake of COVID-19, we will only begin to understand its long-term generational and societal effects over time. But it has been a defining moment of the century, which has further impacted how individuals identify within their communities and beyond national boundaries. Now we need to take a further leap in our cognitive awareness and identities to include our near-Earth environment. The shift from “global citizen” to “space citizen” is not so abstract as it may seem at first glance. Because of our dependency on space-based technologies in daily life; our economic and political interactions; and our national, regional and international security interests, we are already interacting with the environment just beyond our planetary boundaries. And we are doing so precisely in the course of dealing with our other local, regional and global crises. We are already dependent on the good governance of this environment, as well as on its technologies and activities. We are therefore already vested in the mechanisms, decisions and decision makers being fit for purpose: we are already space citizens. The question is how to move toward truly identifying as space citizens, and how this concept of identity can create a new framework for space governance. An Individual Awareness A greater degree of awareness is needed about how vulnerable the stability and sustainability of the near-Earth environment is, as well as the impact this vulnerability has on our terrestrial existence, 10 CIGI Paper No. 314 — January 2025 • Cassandra Steer given how much space-based technologies and services permeate our lives. This is a big ask when there is already so much information and so many global issues competing for our attention, but these issues are all intertwined. EO data, telecommunications and access to the internet and precision PNT are all critical inputs to our earthly governance challenges. If we wish to respond to climate change, solve housing needs, ensure food security, contribute to flourishing democracies, protect cultural heritage, increase gender equity, monitor borders and fisheries, and stabilize regional and international security, a significant piece of the puzzle for all of these issues comes from satellites. As UNOOSA points out, space technologies contribute to all 17 of the Sustainable Development Goals.17 It is also a big ask to turn our individual attention to space issues when understanding the political, economic and technological context is more complex than it was just a few decades ago. However, this is also true of all global issues and is exactly the reason why the notion of “space citizen” needs to be activated. Even the notion of Space 4.0 may be limiting, since it leaves out the individual — it is a description of interactions between entities (companies, civil society groups, states) and technologies. It could also be seen as a Eurocentric project, as it is a term that was coined by the ESA and assumes a non-existent equality between participants in the discourse on future space governance. Space 4.0 underpins the ESA notion of “Moon Village,” which is intended to be “a process rather than a project and…is meant to initiate a global conversation on humanity’s future on the Moon” (Köpping Athanasopoulos 2019). This idea gave birth to the Moon Village Association, a nongovernment organization that aims to “[foster] cooperation between government space agencies, commercial space entities, and academia to advance humanity’s presence on the Moon.”18 While laudable in their aspirations and striving to be open and participatory, these projects still assume equal access to the technologies, institutions and discussions taking place, which is not the status quo. There is a risk that these projects will experience a similar unintended Eurocentrism, 17 See www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/space4sdgs/index.html. 18 See https://moonvillageassociation.org/about. which was a major part of the downfall of the code of conduct in 2015 (Steer 2019, 757). Some scholars have advocated for applying governance theories that have emerged from environmental and socio-ecological studies, such as polycentric governance. Polycentric governance explains the multiple layers of governance instruments and mechanisms that have arisen over recent decades and the range of actors involved in their inception and application. Some see a hope in this approach for arriving at useful measures for safety, security and sustainability (Shackelford 2014; Morin and Richard 2021). But the inherent challenge is fragmentation and possible competition between competing governance regimes. As Eytan Tepper (2021) puts it, “the initial monocentric, quasi-hierarchic structure of space governance is experiencing a slow-motion big bang, by which the basic building blocks are still the early ones presented above, but subsequent expansion and evolution of space governance is decentralized. The inevitable future of space governance is by various fora or decision-making centers (‘governance centers’), with various participants introducing various outputs in distinct sub-issue-areas.” Similarly, adaptive governance is a model that purports to be sufficiently flexible and agile to adapt to changing environmental systems and high levels of uncertainty. Michael R. Migaud, Robert A. Greer and Justin B. Bullock (2021, 6) argue that space governance would benefit from an adaptive governance model that entails: “(1) an inclusive dialog between resource users; (2) complex, redundant, and layered institutions; (3) mixed institutional styles (including market based and state based); and (4) institutional designs that facilitate experimentation, learning, and change.” But while these models can be useful tools in rethinking approaches to space governance, the risk of fragmentation is high and it appears there is insufficient coordination and participation of communities for them to provide successful models. One important factor is absent from them both, namely, the individual and their place in communities and societies. While we continue to assume that the only stakeholders in space are the dominant actors in its physical domain (states, international and regional organizations and commercial entities), we will continue to have inadequate responses to the challenges of space governance. Rather, we need a broader, more inclusive and interactive 11Space Citizen: The Gap Between You, Me and the Governance of Space model that invites real participation by a wide net of stakeholders (Wright Nelson 2024, 415). This is why the “space citizen” model starts with an individual cognitive shift. It is relational in the first place, which requires beginning with our individual identities. Moving from “global” or “planetary” citizen to space citizen may be easier for younger generations, who have grown up with an unprecedented access to information about the world and the planet, and for whom the climate crisis is their biggest concern. But this cognitive shift also requires those with decades of experience in space governance challenges to look up and out. This is an opportunity for an individual relationship with the space environment, which requires listening to and providing guidance on what has and has not worked in the past. Because we are all consumers of the benefits of space technologies, there is a responsibility to be an engaged citizen in this high-tech age. The space citizen understands that our terrestrial well-being in the twentyfirst century cannot be divested from certain technology needs related to communications, closing the digital divide, and accessing education and data to inform climate-response decisions and manage our water, air and other natural resources. The space citizen is therefore concerned with the responsible management of this natural environmental resource. From this individual cognitive shift, a wider space citizen governance framework must then be: → multi-stakeholder and multi-domain; → global and inclusive; and → intergenerational. A Multi-stakeholder and Multi-domain Approach First, this lens is necessarily a multi-stakeholder approach. Creating new governance mechanisms, organizations and instruments that are sufficiently agile and at the same time provide sufficient certainty requires a reframing of who the actors are that have vested interests and responsibilities. The space citizen approach is inherently “bottom up,” which makes it possible for us each to participate more actively in the decision making that impacts our space environment and the technologies that operate there. Traditional space governance institutions are still very much top down, depending on the state to implement rules and legal frameworks to restrain government and non-government activities in space. And overall, they are insufficiently inclusive of the private sector, despite commercial entities dominating the space economy and driving technological innovation. Buy-in from commercial space actors requires their input, and often they can better guide what kinds of rules, principles, best practices and standards are feasible and can assist in how to update them over time. Twenty-first-century space governance also requires creative solutions beyond traditional state-based multilateral or bilateral interactions and agreements. As the United Nations struggles under its own geopolitical weight and as geostrategic relations shift, a multi-stakeholder approach to space governance is the only way to create sufficient escape velocity from current political deadlocks. This includes giving credible weight to civil society and academic expertise, including from non-space-related fields such as nuclear arms control, peace studies, cybersecurity, environmental studies, Earthsystem politics, circular economies, participative democracy and a range of other fields dedicated to tackling the wicked problems of our century. There is already some recognition of the fact that norms and standards entering into space governance have a multi-stakeholder provenance. This is what the scholarship on polycentric governance demonstrates: that we can observe multiple decision-making fora with different groups of actors interacting. Legal pluralism is a similar descriptive framing; as one scholar puts it: “the space regime is pluralistic not just because the term encompasses local, national, and international laws, and both binding rules and non-binding rules. It is pluralistic because it contains a series of overlapping, functional normative orders and a wide range of state and non-state actors that shape it” (Wright Nelson 2024, 362). The resulting pluralism may be problematic if there are no shared values underpinning each of these governance initiatives, or if there are insufficient avenues for interaction between all stakeholders. In this sense, the space citizen approach is also, by definition, multi-domain. Space technologies require multiple physical domains for their operations, from land-based (and soon maritimebased) launch, to impacting air traffic, to remote 12 CIGI Paper No. 314 — January 2025 • Cassandra Steer and cyber operations. Space-based services are also multi-domain, assisting us in managing lands, waters and skies. And military threats to space systems are multi-domain, with the data links, cyber interferences and potential attacks on ground stations being the greatest vulnerabilities. Expertise from all those domains is therefore required. And conceiving of solutions to space governance as part of a system of systems, rather than as something only for specialists, is the only way forward. A Global and Inclusive Lens Second, since the space citizen approach is multistakeholder and multi-domain, it must also apply a global lens and not one dominated by Western political values or interests. This approach has implications for our precious “international rulesbased order,” which is an inherently Western-driven agenda. We need to look beyond the “great powers” and see what traditional middle powers and rising powers are doing, as well as their combined impact with smaller nations and non-aligned regional interests, and multilateral diplomacy’s desire to find shared interests between Western and non-Western nations. This process builds on decades of advocacy including the UNOOSA Benefits Declaration, which called on states to take into particular account the needs of developing countries as space activities expand,19 as well as a body of scholarship that identifies the need to reduce the inequality in terms of access to spacebased services, which would contribute to greater stability in democratic, economic and eventually well-being metrics (Aganaba-Jeanty 2016a, 2016b; van Eijk 2022; Steer 2019; Trevino 2020). In doing so, there is the potential to impact domestic and global space law and governance. The role of middle powers and smaller nations has increased in this multipolar era. There is therefore an opportunity for informed citizens to impact wise space investment decisions on the part of their individual governments, and for smaller nations and middle powers to use space technology cooperation as a policy lever to protect regional interests. 19 Declaration on International Cooperation in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space for the Benefit and in the Interest of All States, Taking into Particular Account the Needs of Developing Countries. GA Res 51/122, UNGAOR, 1997, online: <www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/ spacelaw/principles/space-benefits-declaration.html>. The space citizen lens is also inclusive. Decentralized or polycentric approaches can be challenging and can lead to fragmentation. Mechanisms for space governance are already becoming fragmented and diverse in nature, form, source and audience. The task is to ensure that the underlying imperatives and values are similar enough that competition can be reduced. This can only be achieved through sufficient opportunities for co-design, including commercial providers, civil society, academic experts and a range of community stakeholders. Because the space citizen has a cognitively enlarged identity that expands outwards to include the space environment as our own environment, it must also, by definition, be inclusive of the range of existing identities that interact with and depend upon space at the individual, community, societal, national, regional and global levels. This concept means further expanding who is included in this multi-stakeholder approach and which perspectives and lenses can be applied using it. For example, Indigenous communities must have co-governance over ground infrastructure development on their lands and data sovereignty when it comes to EO data that observes their cultural heritage and can augment their management and use of lands and waters. Indigenous perspectives must also be taken into account with the impact of the expansion of space activities on Earth and in space, including mega-constellations in the night sky, as well as impending impacts on the lunar environment (Mitchell et al. 2020). In addition, there is a strong body of scholarship emerging that demonstrates that feminist lenses can benefit technology design and accessibility to the benefit of space technologies, as well as improve domestic and international space policy solutions (Gorman et al. 2024; Litfin 1997; OmanReagan 2016; Steer 2021; Whitman Cobb 2023; West and Panchanadam 2024). Ensuring more equal access to space-based services can assist in closing the digital divide and improving accessibility to education for girls, which has been shown to contribute to stable societies. To ensure a more inclusive lens on the design, development and deployment of space technologies, the gender gap in the space workforce needs to be closed, which will also assist in filling the skills shortage in the space sector (Stephenson and Steer 2023; Stephenson 2023; UN Affairs 2021). Similarly, 13Space Citizen: The Gap Between You, Me and the Governance of Space the UN Women, Peace and Security agenda requires more women in military space careers; this agenda can help guide the deployment of space services to support the rights of girls and women in conflict scenarios, and requires that the potential impacts on girls and women be taken into account if a dual-use space system is targeted (Dharmapuri and Johnson-Freese 2018; Steer and Stephenson 2022; True 2019). The space citizen lens directs space security debates to learn lessons from feminist foreign policy and integrate expertise from civil society and academia. Intergenerational Responsibility Finally, the space citizen must have an intergenerational lens in order to build on inclusivity and multi-stakeholder governance, as a responsibility to future generations is simply the next step of inclusivity. There is an argument to be made that the OST itself contains an intergenerational obligation, since article I requires that space “shall be free for exploration and use by all States without discrimination of any kind, on a basis of equality and in accordance with international law, and there shall be free access to all areas of celestial bodies.”20 There is no end point at which this is fulfilled — it is an ongoing obligation. Similarly, the notion that space is the province of all (hu)mankind is ongoing and unending, otherwise it is meaningless. There is a rise of climate litigation around the world that is holding governments responsible for protecting the rights of future generations and finding them in breach of this obligation if their current climate policies are shortsighted (Gonzalez-Ricoy and Rey 2019; Slobodian 2019; Sulyok 2024; UN Development Programme 2023).21 Wales has even introduced a minister for future generations (Balch 2019), and the United Nations is attempting to open its state-based bureaucracy to a more inclusive, intergenerational approach with the Summit of the Future.22 Given that the space 20 Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, 27 January 1967, Res 2222 (XXI) (entered into force 10 October 1967), online: <www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/ outerspacetreaty.html>. 21 Declaration on the Responsibilities of the Present Generations Towards Future Generations, UNESCOR, 29th Sess, UN Doc 29 C/Resolutions + CORR (1997), online: <https://en.unesco.org/about-us/legal-affairs/ declaration-responsibilities-present-generations-towards-futuregenerations>. 22 See www.un.org/en/summit-of-the-future. citizen is aware of our impact on our natural space environment, there is an imperative to protect this environment, and the benefits from technologies that are space-based, for future generations. Our dependencies are only going to grow in the decades to come, and our ability to solve our terrestrial problems will depend more and more upon these space-based technologies and data. The expansiveness of this framework may seem overwhelming or excessively aspirational. The point, however, is not that adopting this lens will lead to instant or simple solutions. Rather, without such a lens, we are just chipping away at the edges of the wicked problems of space governance, at a pace far too slow for the changes in technology and global politics and in ways that are dwarfed by the problems themselves. Widening our lens and becoming relationally engaged with our space environment, our uses of space technologies and our vested interest in the good governance of space is the only way to move toward collective solutions. In overcoming the challenges of land warfare — including any future war with Russia, China, or even Iran or North Korea — stand-off warfare, precision strikes and long-range fires would only play small supporting roles. The majority of combat would occur on the ground between land forces, which means that the victor would have to be capable of surmounting the seven challenges of land warfare outlined within this paper. In achieving a clear victory using the methods outlined above, the winning forces would simplify diplomacy for NATO policy makers. Closing the Gap Between You, Me and the Governance of Space That there is a gap between existing governance approaches and what is needed, between who is impacted and who (or what) appears to be empowered to act, is undeniable. As debates about how to govern artificial intelligence, social media and other iterations of big tech surround us, it is apparent that this gap is similar for much of tech governance. Technology is moving faster than regulation, governance or policy can, which 14 CIGI Paper No. 314 — January 2025 • Cassandra Steer can leave us feeling powerless or overwhelmed. While it may not be easy, this is precisely one of the reasons for the focus on an individual cognitive shift toward identifying as a space citizen. Just as commercial entities have a vested interest in space remaining stable and accessible, since their business models depend on it, so too do we all have individual, community and societal vested interests. As heavy users of space data and services, we have a societal as well as an individual responsibility to ensure good governance of our near-Earth environment, and to recognize that we are all, already, actors in the economic, political and governance spacescape. Activating an Integrated Approach from the Bottom Up The question is how we can activate this status as space citizens to impact global space governance into the twenty-first century. This remains a challenge as long as the focus is on traditional state-based institutions, but we cannot simply blame these institutions or decry the political will of states. Instead, we can take lessons from the shift that has taken place over the last 10 years with regard to cybersecurity. A decade ago, internet technology (IT) was the bailiwick of a highly specialized workforce and something most people only thought about when there was a technical breakdown of some sort. Governance of new IT developments was assumed to be the sole responsibility of policy and law makers. Today, with the threat of cyberattacks and cyber fraud influencing everything from national security to one’s personal banking information, we are all aware of the importance of cyber hygiene and of how integrated our digital, virtual lives are with the economy, health care, politics and even the electoral system. There is therefore an awareness that while top-down measures are necessary — such as regulations and standards for cybersecurity, cyber hardening of critical infrastructure and law enforcement against cyber fraud — we all have an individual responsibility to act responsibly and with caution in our online interactions at the same time. We have to protect our own information and teach the next generation how to be good digital actors and prevent unwanted incursions. And when the topdown measures prove to be insufficient, we must push back and demand better, because our wellbeing depends on good cyber governance. We do not have to be IT specialists, or to understand the bits and bytes, to activate what some have asserted is a right to cybersecurity (Papakonstantinou 2022; Shackelford 2021). In a similar way, we need to integrate an awareness about our dependencies on space-based services and our impacts on the space environment into everything we do: into our individual daily lives, our activism regarding climate change, our local urban planning and our national critical infrastructure planning. Because space-based services are already intertwined in our twenty-first-century interactions, this amalgamated approach brings with it better integration of space governance with other governance decisions. We cannot effectively plan for food security without space data, nor can we provide education and connectivity to remote communities or across cities without satellitebased internet and telecommunications. We cannot predict wildfires or floods, nor undertake better urban planning in the face of climate-induced natural disasters without satellite data. Our militaries cannot operate with necessary precision without satellite services, nor can we respond to humanitarian disasters in a timely manner without them. With an integrated awareness comes integrated governance solutions from the bottom up, as well as demands upon senior decision makers for integrated top-down policies. Understanding Wicked Problems A space citizen framework also assists in building an integrated understanding of the key issues of space governance. Currently, these issues are described as separate problems, coming under the responsibility of separate international and domestic entities and requiring separate solutions. For example, a common way to conceive of space governance priorities is through the separate lenses of “safety, security and sustainability.” However, it is impossible to solve one of these challenges without impacting on one or both of the others, and as each of these challenges worsens, so do the others. A key factor is their interrelated nature: they are problems that exist as symptoms of each other, or quintessential “wicked problems.” The notion of wicked problems was first introduced by political scientists Horst W. J. Rittel and Melvin M. Webber in 1973, when they argued that complex social problems could not be “tamed” by traditional policy approaches, which are often partial, ideologically partisan and temporary rather than 15Space Citizen: The Gap Between You, Me and the Governance of Space enduring (Rittel and Webber 1973). While there is no consensus on the definition of wicked problems, the term is widely used to describe issues that have no simple end point (in other words, there is no point in time when the process of addressing the problem is complete) and to which there is no limit to possible solutions, with each problem acting as a symptom of another problem (Rittel and Webber 1973; Lönngren and van Poeck 2021). This is exactly the case for space governance issues. A space citizen framework accepts the wicked, intertwined nature of these issues of space safety, security and sustainability. The safety of space operations can no longer be conceived of as separate from the sustainability of the space environment, nor from sustainability requirements in the design of space systems. The current impact of the Anthropocene upon the space environment — and soon on the lunar environment — has implications for the safety of current space operations and for the sustainability of space activities over time for future generations. The sustainability of space operations also has to take into account the impact on our terrestrial and atmospheric environment. With more launches globally, the development of more space ports internationally and the establishment of more ground stations to service space technologies, there is a footprint impact on Earth and a poorly understood impact on the upper atmosphere from rocket fuels as well as burn-up of space objects upon re-entry. At the same time, sustainability efforts on Earth depend, in large part, on space data, including responding to climate change and understanding the impacts of different kinds of energy infrastructure. Therefore, as pressures on the safe and sustainable operations of satellites increase, we need to focus on space sustainability in order to protect the very sources of data for terrestrial sustainability. There is also an integrated feedback loop between commercialization, sustainability and security. As discussed above, the commercialization of space has led to unmanageable levels of space traffic, which is continuing to grow exponentially. The risk of collisions with debris or other space objects is both a safety issue for military space dependencies and a major security issue. What makes this an even more wicked problem is the overwhelmingly dual-use nature of space services offered by commercial providers, which means that these services are increasingly under threat as space systems are targeted in the course of grey zone operations during conflict, leaving the critical infrastructure needs of civilians vulnerable. A key example is the cyberattack by Russia on the commercially owned Viasat communications system in early 2022, which had the desired effect of limiting communications among Ukrainian forces, but at the same time meant that citizens in a conflict zone lost their communications as well—as did many citizens in neighbouring neutral countries (Page 2022; Tepper 2022; Steer 2023a). Existing state-based governance solutions continue to treat these as separate issues to be dealt with as different institutional responsibilities. At the United Nations, safety and sustainability are considered the purview of COPUOS, while the UNGA has had the “prevention of an arms race in outer space” on its agenda since 1981. As discussed above, the Conference on Disarmament has faced decadeslong political stasis due to the division between those states that are committed to a treaty banning weapons in space, and those refusing to enter into any treaty. Meanwhile, the concentration of space traffic management has largely been in the hands of US Air Force Space Command for many years due to their SSA capability. While recently this task has been passed to the US Department of Commerce, the transition has been slow and interoperability with other sources of spacetracking data, such as from the ESA, Russia and commercial entities, has been difficult.. Until these issues are seen as interrelated, the solutions will be piecemeal and insufficient. Bringing a Space Citizen Framework to the Forefront The space citizen framework brings an integrated lens to these wicked problems — which is not to say that the solutions will immediately become evident. Indeed, wicked problems may not be solvable as such, but they can be managed in a sustainable, enduring way through inclusive, collaborative processes that involve a wide range of stakeholders (Alford and Head 2017; DeFries and Nagendra 2017; Head 2019). One example may be in the OEWG on Reducing Space Threats, which was truly open ended. Of the 115 entities taking part, just under 68 percent were states; the remaining 32 percent were international organizations, commercial entities, members of civil society and academics (Ortega and Erickson 2024, 12). The UN Institute for Disarmament 16 CIGI Paper No. 314 — January 2025 • Cassandra Steer Research held a consultation with commercial and civil society actors, in between official OEWG meetings, to understand the views of these entities and increase the role that they can play in space security (Blancafort, Erickson and Ortega 2023). The chair of the OEWG also invited a range of individual subject matter experts from around the world, and from a range of academic institutions and private entities, to give presentations to the delegates about technical, legal and policy challenges as well as existing possible solutions. The geographical, gender and discipline diversity of these experts was deliberately cultivated, which ensured the absence of political bias in the information presented and provided an opportunity for space citizens to be directly involved in the diplomatic process. As a result, the time available for states to enter into politicized debates was cut in half, and discussions became much more substantive, as there was a shared level of understanding. Some states acknowledged the importance of including a range of stakeholders and began to recognize the interconnected nature of questions of safety, sustainability and security in their written and verbal submissions (West 2024, 15). Another example is the inclusion of the private sector in developing new norms and governance mechanisms. This is imperative, not only to guarantee buy-in and compliance, but also to ensure that those norms are reflective of current and foreseeable capabilities. The private sector has a vested business interest in the safety, security and sustainability of their operations in space. The International Telecommunications Union, whose traditional regulatory task has to do with spectrum allocation and the management of geostationary orbital slots, has included the private sector among its members for many years, and has recently turned its attention to “sustainability” (Foust 2023). Similarly, domestic law makers in some countries consult the private space sector as they develop space sustainability requirements in their licensing laws, a process that must always seek to strike a balance between ensuring commercial viability and true sustainability measures (Steer and Strong 2022). And a final example, although perhaps an outlier, is the impressive work of a single individual in contributing to the manageability of these wicked problems. While states may be reticent to share SSA data due to security concerns, making space traffic management even more difficult, Jonathan McDowell’s “Space Report” often serves as an open-source cross-reference for SSA data.23 His online database and tweets on social media have contributed more than once to space safety responses and to clarifying the nature of a space object when there have been aspersions cast as to whether a given object is a potential weapon. It is true that some individuals will have more opportunities than others to activate their status as space citizens. This has to do with existing privilege, including access to education and institutions of power. We cannot all build open-source tools for tracking space activities or present views to a global delegation of state representatives. The point is to build on an individual relational approach, integrate space into whatever expressions of citizenship may already be active and hand this awareness on to the next generation. Only by approaching these challenges from a space citizen lens can we hope to manage them, and thereby manage humanity’s impact on the near-Earth environment we all depend upon. As we expand our environmental impact into our near-Earth orbits and the lunar environment, global space governance mechanisms must become inclusive and multi-stakeholder by design and take into account a broader multi-generational “space citizen” framework. We have an intergenerational responsibility to ensure that our impacts are minimal and that space remains accessible. The space citizen has an enlarged cognitive identity and an awareness that we are located in space and both impacting and dependent upon it. But we all do not need to travel to space to access this awareness. The overview effect may be accessible to us already through livestreams from the ISS, the increasing availability of EO images of our planet or even popular culture, such as the recording that astronaut Chris Hadfield made of himself singing David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” during his mission on the ISS (Rare Earth 2013). In many ways, the notion that we will some day become an off-world species is a distraction from the fact that we are already space citizens. We are already in space and dependent on it; both factors impact the space environment, making us vulnerable to the risks we have created for ourselves. Space-based services are intertwined 23 See https://planet4589.org. 17Space Citizen: The Gap Between You, Me and the Governance of Space with terrestrial wicked problems such as climate change, food and water security and arms control. 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