First fruits of the Long-Term Sustainability discussions in UN COPUOS

摘要

In 2010, the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UN COPUOS) established the Working Group on the Long-Term Sustainability (LTS) of Outer Space Activities. The Working Group was tasked with producing a set of voluntary, non-binding guidelines for all space actors to help ensure the long-term sustainable use of outer space. The Working Group's mandate ended in June 2018. During its mandate, the UN COPUOS member States agreed on twenty-one guidelines and a context-setting preambular text. The States also agreed to continue their discussions of space sustainability under a dedicated agenda item of the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee of COPUOS. This paper provides a general overview of the COPUOS LTS process, the resulting consensus guidelines, the challenges that delegations confronted as the negotiations on the guidelines began to draw to a close, the remaining unagreed draft guidelines, and some suggestions for the way forward.