For Establishing Space Governance: De-packageing the Arguments

摘要

Space is Global Commons. Anybody can enter, and no one can be excluded. Thus, it is important to set up rules and institutions to maintain the governance in space in order to make it sustainable and beneficial for all. One of the problems is that the global public goods are provided by private or national entities. This means that the space assets where everyone is benefitted from is controlled by particular individual or national body. This has been the source of "tragedy of commons". In order to avoid "Tragedy of Commons", there must be a rule for governing Global Commons. However, the process of such rule-making is not easy. In this study, it argues that the reasons why it is so difficult are: (a) there is no coherent understanding of "what is space governance": (b) there is a sharp division between "Space Weapon ban" vs. "Rule of the road" due to the lack of definition. Thus, this paper argues that the concept of "space governance" or "space sustainability" needs to be de-packaged into different components. There should be four categories: (1) safe and secure orbital environment (i.e. debris mitigation and the rules of the use of orbital environment); (2) rules with regard to active debris removal (ADR) and On-orbital service or robotic servicing missions; (3) rules regarding national security issues including placement of space-based weapon systems.