Governance aspects of space sustainability: the role of epistemic actors as enablers of progress

摘要

The early space governance mechanisms aiming at ensuring peaceful uses of outer space opened the way to a formidable growth in space activities. These policy coordination steps achieved during the height of the Cold War can be regarded as pioneering steps towards ensuring the long-term sustainability of the space domain. Yet threats to the continued safe, secure and sustainable use of outer space have been dramatically increasing over the past decade calling for an evaluation of the existing governance mechanisms. This paper presents the preliminary results of a doctoral research on the emergence and progress of space debris governance mechanisms, considered one of the major threats to space sustainability. An innovative international relations' framework is used drawing upon two studies, namely Peter Haas' [1] seminal work on epistemic communities influences over international policy coordination and Thomas Weiss and Ramesh Thakur's work [2] on the United Nation's contribution to global governance gaps. The doctoral research findings highlight the essential role of 'epistemic' knowledge experts in the emergence and evolution of cooperative steps affecting the debris issue since the 1950s until the latest more comprehensive contributions of the epistemic model to space sustainability governance. This study also identifies levels of governance progress achieved thanks to epistemic influences and provides avenues of thoughts for overcoming obstacles in international cooperation when national security interests are at stake.