U.N. opens “window of opportunity” to enhance space governance

NEW YORK — A United Nations official says there’s a possibility over the following 15 months to enhance how nations manage space activities to deal with emerging issues starting from orbital debris to space resources.

Speaking on the Secure World Foundation’s Summit for Space Sustainability here June 13, Guy Ryder, U.N. undersecretary-general for policy, said the organization was making efforts to deal with space diplomacy ahead of a September 2024 U.N. conference called Summit of the Future that may address broad challenges the world is facing.

“We have now a window of opportunity over the following 15 months,” he said, “where we are able to speed up space diplomacy and advance the governance issue.”

The U.N. released a policy paper in May on outer space governance, outlining several issues it wants to deal with. Amongst them are coordination issues for a rapidly growing population of space objects normally in Earth orbit, and more specifically increasing amounts of debris.

“Probably the most obvious and maybe essentially the most extraordinary change lately has been the sheer variety of objects being launched into space,” Ryder said. “The proven fact that more objects have been launched within the last 10 years than within the previous 50 years combined offers, I feel, boundless development opportunities and governance needs.”

Those governance needs revolve around space traffic coordination, with limited progress to deal with that on a worldwide scale. That puts the security and sustainability of space in danger, he argued, which is exacerbated by the expansion of debris, particularly from anti-satellite tests. Efforts to remove debris show promise, but he said that without international norms regarding such activities, “using these technologies could be a source each of tension and of conflict.”

Other problems with concern revolve across the human exploration of the moon and utilization of space resources. He noted that while the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) has been examining space resource utilization, there is no such thing as a agreement yet on how countries and corporations can use those resources.

Ryder offered no specific proposals to deal with those issues, but said meetings by COPUOS and other organizations over the following 15 months offered opportunities to develop proposals to deal with them ahead of the Summit of the Future, where space might be certainly one of many agenda items.

The goal, he said, is to develop a single unified governance framework that covers space traffic coordination, debris and resource management, in addition to norms and rules to avoid armed conflict in outer space. Nevertheless, he said the U.N. can be open to separate frameworks for every issue “if that path looks likelier to attain results.”

Ryder said efforts to develop governance mechanisms on the high seas, equivalent to the U.N. Convention on the Law of Sea, offered a model for space. “All of this provides us with the boldness that the sorts of agreements concluded up to now are possible in the long run, even in today’s admittedly difficult geopolitical climate.”

A part of the coordination efforts leading as much as the Summit of the Future might be a conference hosted by Portugal within the spring of 2024. That is meant to assist develop proposals to be presented on the summit, said Hugo André Costa, member of the manager board of the Portuguese Space Agency, during one other conference panel.

There might be two virtual workshops ahead of the Portuguese conference, one in October on technology issues and a second in March 2024 on policy issues, to solicit ideas from governments, industry and academia. “That is the one way that we are able to prepare for the long run,” he argued.

There have been discussions about whether COPUOS, with greater than 100 member nations operating on a consensus model where all nations must agree, is fitted to the present space environment. “It’s slow, it’s frustrating but ultimately it’s a slow, regular process,” said Valda Vikmanis Keller, director of the U.S. State Department’s Office of Space Affairs, saying the open discussions there remain essential. “It’s the one way forward.”

“We want to proceed work that’s being done in COPUOS,” said Costa, including “difficult discussions” on these issues. “It’s through the difficult conversations and the difficult discussions that we’re going to have that we are able to support the work of COPUOS and move forward.”