Four Alternative Scenarios of Commons in Space: Prospects and Challenges

Governance of global commons

Global commons resources refer to resources that are shared on a global scale beyond sovereign nations, such as the atmosphere, carbon cycle, high seas, deep seabeds, polar regions, and outer space (Freeman, 2016). The success conditions for governing local commons are generally well-studied (Ostrom, 1990), but such understanding does not exist yet for global commons. For local commons, communities are able to govern their shared resources when, for instance, there are clearly defined boundaries of resources and resource users; resource users participate in creating institutional arrangements; and resources and resource use are monitored while rule infractions are enforced (Ostrom, 1990; Baggio et al., 2016). Such conditions are typically not met at the global level. It is especially difficult to create international treaties with credible enforcement mechanisms. For instance, Hoffman et al. (2022) provide a meta-analysis of international treaties and found that the existence of enforcement mechanisms was one of the few conditions for successful outcomes, but most international treaties have no credible enforcement mechanisms – partly due to the lack of an overarching global authority accepted by most nations. At the local level, the ability to solve disputes and find collective arrangements can be facilitated by social networks and trust relationships. Such relationships are more difficult to develop at the global level and, due to the physical distances, individuals and nations experience different conditions and have very diverse interests that prevent mutual consensus. In recent years, more discussions on the role of polycentric governance in addressing global commons have emerged (Ostrom, 2010; Jordan et al., 2015), including in the context of outer space (Weeden and Chow, 2012). This can be perceived as a response to deadlock in conventional multilateral settings: where centralized inter-state bargaining is prone to least-common denominator outcomes, polycentric governance systems offer ways for ambitious, issue-specific cooperation within smaller club settings. In terms of advantages, polycentric governance systems are typically considered flexible in responding to new governance challenges and as a testbed for governance innovation and experimentation (Jordan et al. 2018). Conversely, polycentrism may suffer from inconsistencies between elemental institutional components, legitimacy challenges, and methodological difficulties in evaluating its aggregate effectiveness (see Keohane and Victor 2011, Kim, 2020). We will return to these issues when discussing the governance implications of our four scenarios in sections 4 and 5.

There are two similar cases of global commons that resemble the challenges in outer space. Cyberspace, a network of networks without national borders, is one example of a global commons that illustrates the difficulties of devising fair and equitable solutions at the international level. The supply of internet services by private actors internalizes many of the costs and benefits of cyberspace (Mueller, 2020). The relative success of cyberspace as a global commons is dependent on the creation and adoption of protocols and standards that enable it to connect various components functionally in cyberspace. Debates over intellectual property and digital rights management, however, consistently indicate the presence of enclosure as a fundamental threat to the cyber commons.

Deep-seabed mining in international waters, which exploits a different type of commons, can be seen as a model of mining in outer space (Feichtner, 2019; Butkevičienė and Rabitz 2022). The ocean floor and its subsoil contain many rare metals that are crucial for diverse renewable energy- and zero-carbon transportation technologies (Levin et al., 2020). Commercial exploitation is still in the planning phase although some companies are operating under exploration contracts and the supervision of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) – an intergovernmental agency created by the United Nations Convention on the Laws of the Sea. For all international waters, the seabed, its subsoil, and the mineral resources constitute the common heritage of humankind and the ISA is mandated to ensure that the benefits arising from exploration and exploitation are shared globally in a fair and equitable manner. However, the current capacity of the ISA for monitoring and enforcement is often considered inadequate (Kim, 2017; Levin et al., 2020). The influence of corporate actors in the governance of the ISA also gives rise to concerns over potential regulatory capture.

Space resources are transnational commons and therefore perceivable as global commons. Their status under international law is complex, with the 1967 Outer Space Treaty precluding “national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means” (Article 2), whereas “the exploration and use of outer space […] shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries […] and shall be the province of all [hu]mankind” (Article 1). These provisions have increasingly become a matter of contention due to growing political and commercial interest in the exploration and exploitation of various space resources (Goehring, 2021). The United States (US), Japan, Luxembourg, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have in recent years all passed domestic legislation that in principle allows property claims over space resources from natural- and legal entities under their respective jurisdictions. The US-led Artemis Accords, a new multilateral instrument with currently 24 parties, similarly broaden the scope for property claims by commercial operators. These developments highlight a distinct tendency towards an enclosure of the space commons. We therefore see a growing urgency to explore alternative scenarios for the space commons that go beyond market-based appropriation by multinational space companies and technologically advanced nation-states.

The role of futuring and existing studies on outer space

Our engagement with futures and scenarios on the commons in space draws on perspectives from different fields, such as Futures Studies and Science and Technology Studies. The academic field of Futures Studies comprises systematic and explicit contemplation of alternative futures, on the basis of particular theories, methods, and values to facilitate preparation for the unpredictable. This field aims at demystifying the future, making possibilities for the future more known, and increasing human influence over the future (Bell, 2009). In this field, the term “futures” is conceptualized and used as a plural in order to highlight that approaching the plurality of futures is a democratic process that involves the envisioning, imagination, design, and creation of many plausible futures. In other words, the plurality of futures indicates a strong contrast with other traditional predictive approaches that contribute towards attempts to control a singular future and perpetuate efforts of the dominant power structures (Gidley, 2017). The field of Futures Studies includes but is not limited to forecasting. Indeed, alongside the more quantitative and predictive field of forecasting that focuses on extrapolating the past into time horizons that are yet to come, Futures Studies also include the field of strategic foresight, which is usually qualitative and non-predictive and focuses on producing a variety of alternative futures, oftentimes by means of scenarios (Poli, 2017).

Strategic foresight is “a systematic approach to learning and understanding possible futures and building shared visions and is aimed at guiding and enabling present-day decisions” (Iden, et al., 2017, p. 94). Scenarios have been defined as “an internally consistent view of what the future might turn out to be” (Porter, 1985, p. 63). In a strategic foresight process, scenarios act as mental models that offer a structured and practical avenue for analysis, communication, and learning, as—on the one hand—they reveal alternative possibilities about the future, and—on the other hand—they introduce diverse ways of critical evaluation of the imagined future (Ringland, 2010). Fundamentally, the use of scenarios is a way of navigating times of uncertainty (Bohensky, et al., 2006), especially in proactive policy-making (van Dorsser, et al., 2020), and as a technique to rehearse the futures to enable the experimentation of alternative outcomes of the present (Mallard & Lakoff, 2011). In this sense, scenarios can be important in two ways: they can represent different visions of the future, which elicit a normative response since some of them might be more desirable than others; and they can represent different views on how things might unfold, which call for the description of the different logics and underlying forces that shape them, since these factors provide a foundation for action in the present (van der Heijden, 2005).

In particular, the scenario-building method of the Intuitive Logics school is useful compared to the other alternatives of the Probabilistic Modified Trends school, which produces descriptive quantitative scenarios around a baseline by means of extrapolation, and of the “La prospective” school, which produces descriptive quantitative and qualitative scenarios that could possibly evolve by means of structural analysis and stakeholder interviews (Amer, et al., 2013; Bradfield, et al., 2005). The Intuitive Logics school can have either a narrow or a broader scope and can be used in a range of cases, from making sense of situations and developing strategy in a one-time fashion, to facilitating learning in a continuous fashion. It aims at producing either descriptive or normative qualitative scenarios that are equally plausible, by using intuition, brainstorming techniques, research, and expert opinion to define the logics that underpin the organizing principles pertaining to the matter of interest.

In the context of outer space, scenario planning and foresight (also in the form of serious games and anticipatory simulations) are used for strategic decision-making and to support a variety of stakeholders with differing needs in preparing for alternate futures. These have been developed differently based on intended audiences and the context of the developers. For instance, the business community may rely on such support tools provided by consulting or advisory firms. These include consultancy reports that explicate alternative future scenarios of the space sector based on different levels of commercial value generation and collaborative governance (see for example, McKinsey & Company, 2022). The scenarios range from an accessible, self-sustaining space economy to a case in which a series of space disasters led governments to eventually reassert primary responsibility for space activities.

In the realm of the military, such as the US Space Command, more than 350 military and civilian experts from 27 agencies around the country and abroad participated in the Schriever War Games in one year to explore multi-domain space operations. As part of the Schriever War Games, the military identifies a scenario that they envision facing a decade in the future and builds toolkits of solutions and capabilities that they can use in those scenarios. The 2020 version of the wargames, led by the US Space Force for the first time, resulted in suggestions to inform the development of a roadmap on space domain alliances (Martin, 2020). Meanwhile, civil space agencies such as the UK Space Agency have carried out their iteration of scenario planning, such as by using the Oxford Scenario Planning Approach (Ramirez and Wilkinson, 2016) from an economic perspective. NASA has also sought foresight services such as from The Aerospace Corporation’s Center for Space Policy and Strategy to prepare the space agency for a variety of plausible outcomes in the face of uncertainty.

Additionally, inter-governmental agencies, nonprofits, and academia also use futuring tools in outer space studies, such as for educational purposes (Ramirez, 2015) or to develop response activities for disaster planning. For instance, the UN-endorsed Space Mission Planning Advisory Group (SMPAG) uses scenario building to prepare for an international response to a threat by a near-Earth object through information exchange, development of options for collaborative research and mission opportunities, and threat mitigation planning activities. Programs as such contribute to building capabilities for planetary defense. In academia, scenarios are used in, for instance, the Space Law Moot Court Competition led by the International Institute of Space Law or the space wargaming course at the American Military University. However, the development of scenarios in the abovementioned contexts has mostly been in exclusive silos targeting specific audiences or interests. Building scenarios on fair and equitable resource governance in space has to go beyond the existing approaches applied in the context of outer space in order to identify more transformative forms of futures along with clearer indicators for policy implications.

(Re)imagining the governance of space commons

The field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) offers its own set of critical resources for analyzing how futures are envisioned, articulated, and acted upon in contemporary societies, which is particularly useful for this study. From an STS perspective, the scenarios we present and reflect upon in the study are themselves articulations of broader culturally and collectively produced and sustained imaginaries of the future. In the past decade, STS scholars have paid increasing attention to the role of imaginaries to highlight how ‘whereas science and technology were formerly generally regarded as the domains of facts and artefacts, they are now also associated with storytelling, imaging, and imagining’ (McNeil et al., 2017: 457). As others have shown, through popular films, television, or other media, the possibilities of future technoscience are imagined (see Kirby 2010 for examples related to spaceflight), setting the agenda and shaping popular understandings of what is possible or desirable. Tutton (2021) extends this interest in sociotechnical imaginaries to the likes of SpaceX and how, through science fiction narratives and digital simulations, the desirability of specific human space futures is performed to enroll the public. Most of the time, the best-crafted narratives can engender the most action (Flowers, 2003).

Specifically, the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries is of relevance here, which Jasanoff (2015: 19) defines as ‘“collectively held and performed visions of desirable futures” (or of resistance against the undesirable), and they are also “animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and social order attainable through, and supportive of, advances in science and technology”. Sociotechnical imaginaries are not only questions of technological capabilities or economic models but also visions of ‘social progress’ (Jasanoff 2015: 4). Imaginaries concern not only technoscientific achievements but also ‘aspirational and normative dimensions of social order’ (Jasanoff 2015: 5), therefore considering normative questions about how life ought to be lived. As Jasanoff (2015: 4) remarks, investments in technoscience are typically characterized by ‘positive visions of social progress’. However, whose positive visions are being advanced is a critical question and sociotechnical imaginaries are open to resistance and contestation (see Bowman 2015, Felt 2015). Therefore, sociotechnical imaginaries project an image of the kind of society that sociotechnical innovation can bring into being and the kind of society needed for innovation to happen.

This is vividly illustrated through the reference of this paper to the Limits to Growth report and its alternative future to the core political commitment to perpetual economic growth. As Jasanoff (2015: 339) reflects, ‘sociotechnical orders are not natural’ and ‘the seen reality is not the only one about which we can dream’. Therefore, our position is not simply to accept current sociotechnical orders but to create openings for imagining them otherwise, by exploring alternative scenarios. Re-imagining how global commons ought to be governed from the STS perspective might yield useful conceptual implications. It allows going beyond a predictive mode in constructing future sustainability scenarios to identify alternative and potentially more transformative forms of sociotechnical orders in the future governance of commons in space. In undertaking our work in this paper to map out our alternative scenarios, we kept that wider normative focus in mind. As we elaborate below, some of these scenarios clearly map onto strongly institutionalized imaginaries, while others are less so but are nevertheless critical forms of resistance to these hegemonic ones.

Scenario I: Space Cartel

In the Space Cartel scenario, leading spacefaring nations play a passive role in space resource governance. Although decision-making power is likely to still reside with national authorities, the mandate to carry out specific activities in space will be yielded to rich and technologically advanced private actors (Rementeria, 2022). Governments would favor large private or flagship companies due to their potential for innovations and funds to carry out self-organized missions. Therefore, many of the tasks around space exploration traditionally performed by state agencies are expected to be outsourced following the rules of neoliberalism (Doboš, 2022). As a result, governments and national agencies heavily rely on private companies to take advantage of available space resources. Governments would be less likely to restrict or interfere with the ambitions of private space actors and more inclined to engage in public-private partnerships (Vernile, 2018). However, due to less state-based enforcement of international space law, an increase in collusive behavior could likely be observed among private space actors, especially in newly emerging space markets (Lucas-Rhimbassen and Rapp, 2021). International coordination among states is likely to be low and fragmented under the prevalence of private actors, causing distributional injustice (Lee, 2000). It is expected that there will be no progress made in negotiating a new treaty on an international level. Rather, we are likely to observe the emergence of issue-specific, self-coordinated arrangements among spacefaring nations tailored to the interests and needs of the Space Cartel, at the expense of policy priorities of developing countries. This scenario therefore sees a shift in governance towards domestic regimes, which over time crystalize into customs and norms in international domains as actors assert ‘best practices’. This leads to legitimacy challenges in the overall global space governance and to the exclusion of principles for global justice and sustainable development.

The business sector plays the dominant role in this scenario. Since there are high upfront investment costs involved in accessing space, billionaires will be the first to take commercial advantage of it. Rich private actors rush to occupy and monopolize space resources based on a ‘first-come-first-serve’ principle. From a business standpoint, space has already been perceived for a long time as the new frontier to be conquered, colonized, and marketed (Goodrich et al., 1987). In this privatized governance mode, the rich prefer to self-regulate the space environment. Moreover, nation-states hosting these spacefaring companies on Earth will be interested in their success as these companies contribute to national supremacy, wealth, and development (Tronchetti, 2015). These companies may receive favorable support, e.g. they are empowered to found self-governing settlements or cities as outposts in space such as on Mars to utilize extraterrestrial resources more effectively. Such colonial communities could exhibit a high degree of independence due to the long spatial distance from Earth. However, challenges arise in relation to the rights and positions of human workers in outer space (Ireland-Piper and Freeland, 2021). In the Space Cartel scenario, workers in space are likely to be suppressed due to the prevalence of artificial intelligence technology, robotics, and rich actor’s averseness to unions. Economic actors in this scenario tend to perceive space as limitless (Miraux et al., 2022), which increases the risk of mismanaging space resources leading to severe environmental degradation in space – i.e. the tragedy of the space commons. In the event that negative consequences as a result of the degradation would start to affect financial profits, private actors would prefer some sort of regulative regime.

In terms of global competition, states that pursue centralized national space policy might be part of the space cartel in this scenario through their state-led or public-private space missions, e.g. the plans for building Mars settlements led by the UAE and NASA respectively (Aima 2018; Grove 2021). Meanwhile, economic histories have demonstrated that developing countries in general aim for national catching-up or leapfrogging opportunities to reduce their reliance on more advanced countries. In the space sector, emerging nations aim to eventually match the achievements of the globally established nation players (Aganaba-Jeanty, 2016). While the established nations viewed space as an arena for competition over national security during the Cold War, security concerns continue to shape space policymaking in many emerging or developing nations (Harding, 2012). For instance, India’s space program has become increasingly ambitious over the past decade (Rajagopalan, 2022). Due to the first-come-first-serve condition in this scenario, large emerging nations such as India would place space as a top priority in the political agenda to gain national security and technology supremacy. Similar to what other Eastern countries such as Japan and China have done in the past, India – as an example – would participate in soft power engagements such as promoting cooperation with developing countries (Space in Africa, 2019). Other developing nations in the present day (and their rich companies) would also find stronger positions in this future scenario, in particular if they have strong national development plans for specific space programs such as the satellite program of Nigeria (CGWIC, 2022). The Space Cartel scenario, therefore, sees some of the developing nations investing in space programs in the present day potentially becoming part of the future ‘cartel’ through leapfrogging strategies, whether in the form of rich companies pursuing economic profits or powerful states pursuing national supremacy. As a consequence, this leads to new developmental gaps with the rest of the global (and national) society that is not part of this cartel.

Scenario II: Eart-Hcentric Gold Rush

Space resource governance in this scenario enables, in a one-sided way, appropriation of space resources by technologically advanced countries or large multinational corporations. Competition becomes fierce among national governments aiming to grab space resources to alleviate environmental pressures within their national terrestrial territory while continuing a business-as-usual approach. International organizations and space agencies continue to promote space as a frontier of new resources to sustain Earth-bound development, thereby legitimizing the activities of those appropriating space resources. For instance, NASA launched an initiative titled ‘Planetary Sustainability’ in 2014, and one of the three visions of this initiative is “A multi-planetary society, where the resources of the solar system are available to the people of Earth” (NASA 2014). This framing not only presents space resources as new opportunities for planetary sustainability, it also suggests people on Earth can coexist in harmony by utilizing nearby space resources to sustain themselves (Redwire, 2023).

To legitimize space activities in this scenario, new international institutions would be formulated such as new codes of conduct through international agreements among a subset of nations aiming for space resources. More specifically, nations and companies appropriate the benefits of space resources exclusively for themselves under minilateral agreements on potential transboundary issues such as environmental impact assessments, the generation of space debris, or liability and redress. Whereas resource appropriation leads to strong distributional injustice, advanced nation-states and large multinational companies mobilize such institutional embeddedness to legitimize their space activities. In the present day, one can relate this to the establishment of the Artemis Accords led by the US for activities on the Moon. Development of this sort also reflects the Outer Space Treaty in the present day, in which principles tend to prioritize Earth-centric benefits whereas the integrity of the outer space environment was considered mostly in the context of preventing the use of weapons of mass destruction. Although these actors face pressure to reduce their environmental footprint in space, private actors overall seek leeway to avoid responsibilities due to factors such as growth imperatives, the enforceability of regulations, and negligence in the early stages of commercial space development (Miraux et al., 2022). Therefore, this scenario is also likely to cause the tragedy of the space commons. Overall, minilateralism in this scenario grants outer space activities a higher degree of legitimacy without, however, overcoming fundamental disparities in the interests of spacefaring and non-spacefaring nations.

In this scenario, businesses also require high venture capital and investment costs. These businesses are likely to be high-tech, multinational corporations residing in wealthy nations on Earth. For them, the commercialization of space in this scenario opens up new resources and opportunities to diversify and gain profit (Weinzierl and Acocella, 2017). This resembles strong parallels to the extensive overseas exploration and ‘Gold-Rush’ mentality during the age of exploration (Pyne, 2016). The emerging commercialization trend will commodify space and its constituents into goods and services that are offered in a market. In terms of global competition, there are already national space policies that develop in a direction that supports and complements this trend. For instance, the SPACE (Spurring Private Aerospace Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship) Act of 2015 allows US citizens to utilize and commercially profit from space resources, although not claiming ownership. The Gold Rush mentality of ‘go get it as fast as you can’ in this scenario therefore leads to state and market competition in securing important resources, such as exploiting new minerals in space to fuel energy transition on Earth. While this opens up a new set of opportunities for those who have investment and technological capabilities, it also leads to new developmental gaps with those on Earth whose joining space activities itself is economically not feasible (Losch, 2019).

An illustrative example is the case of space-based communication systems, which are expected to become increasingly indispensable in the 21st century. Satellite constellations deployed in outer space continue to see a steep upward trend. In the present day, the Starlink project itself aims to build a constellation of 42,000 satellites in low-Earth-orbit (McDowell, 2020). The project is promoted as delivering high-speed, low-latency broadband internet to meet the needs of remote and rural areas worldwide (Starlink, 2023). However, internet satellite constellations like Starlink raise a number of issues including claiming a large number of orbital slots (McDowell, 2020), which leads to an increasingly congested low-Earth-orbit with the accumulation of space debris and probability of collisions (Gangestad, 2017). Furthermore, space-based infrastructures in the hands of monopolies or oligarchs also inflict questions of equity and access. By ‘selling connectivity’ in a market with low competition, private space actors are likely to have high negotiation power and influence on the socio-technical development of remote areas and the lives of more than 3 billion people who currently still lack access to the internet (Roser et al., 2020). Ultimately, Earth-centric Gold Rush would not only degrade the environmental conditions in space but also impose dependencies of the low-income on those services.

In this future scenario, nation-states and commercial actors build space-based solar power stations to provide energy supply through solar power satellites and wireless power transmissions. The cost for space-based solar power satellites would have become feasible and in some instances, they become an important alternative for non-renewable energy sources like fossil fuels on Earth. However, harnessing solar energy to its maximum potential requires constellations of solar power satellites in Earth’s orbit (Hsu, 2021). This further increases the risk of Kessler Syndrome – a phenomenon in which the collisions between space objects in Earth’s orbit lead to a cascade of more future collisions (Kessler and Cour-Palais, 1978). Geopolitical interests and the intense pursuit of national energy security on Earth lead states to compete among each other for installing the solar power constellations on a first-come, first-served basis under weak global space governance. Hence, space-based solar power stations become sources to perpetuate developments on Earth at the expense of space sustainability (Pawel, 2020) as well as international cooperation.

Scenario III: Open Space (also Space Utopia)

The Open Space scenario operates in a governance model attentive to multi-level governance in space, focusing on power dynamics and actor interactions (Salmeri, 2023). In this context, actors inform governance at all four levels: global, regional, national, and local (ASU, 2023), and the scenario most likely resembles a polycentric mode due to the multiplicity of institutional arrangements (Tepper, 2019; Morin and Richard, 2021; Kuhn et al., 2022). Governance in this scenario, therefore, might observe multiple institutional settings or even polities in space. In line with debates in environmental governance which emphasizes decentralization as well as experimentation and localization across jurisdiction (Dunoff, 2007), space actors establish different space polities in this scenario depending on the environmental conditions on those celestial bodies or in specific space regions, the patterns of resource use and economic development, varied environmental values, and specific knowledge base. However, the governance system in this scenario bears the risk of inconsistencies between elemental institutions: in the absence of an overarching governance framework, the rule systems that different coalitions of states put in place for dealing with different aspects of space governance might inadvertently lead to disruptive interactions with negative impacts on governance effectiveness. The fragmentation of space governance across diverse international forums, moreover, incurs legitimacy costs relative to integrated and centralized forms of interstate bargaining. In this rather utopian scenario, these challenges related to polycentricity or multi-level governance would have been largely overcome.

The Open Space scenario contains a mixture of larger and smaller business ventures. Examples in the present day have shown large fragmentation between levels of governance with differing and/or double regulatory requirements hindering innovation and commercialization. Polycentric governance in this scenario resolves political conflicts and the so-called ‘scale-shopping’ or forum shopping, where groups dissatisfied with politics at one scale simply approach a more favorable political venue in which to frame their interests. Here, cross-scale communication among space actors is a priority, with a collective front where every level of governance works together to foster a competitive and sustainable economic environment in space. Guided by market logic, it is a rational choice for commercial space actors to avoid the tragedy of the commons in space to ensure the longevity of their space operations.

In terms of global competition, a utopian development in space allows fair access to space resources among all countries and businesses, who have the resources to participate, therefore leaving almost no developmental gap among actors in space beyond the terrestrial bounds of Earth. International institutions in this scenario are designed to ensure low costs and technological barriers for less advanced countries to take up leading roles in space missions. However, the development of these activities and structures in space are largely disconnected from Earth-bound sustainability considerations. Developments in space in this scenario therefore come at the expense of sustainability imperatives on Earth, including the depletion of Earth-bound resources for building space settlements and conducting space missions, socio-economic disruptions as a consequence of supply shocks from space mining or space-based solar power stations, atmospheric pollution from rocket launches, and unjust distribution of space benefits to those on Earth.

Scenario IV: Eart-HSpace Sustainability

In the Earth-Space Sustainability scenario, the international space community (e.g. governments of spacefaring nations, private actors, and international organizations) is willing to practice international collective action to achieve a shared sustainability goal. In this scenario, Earth-bound and space-based sustainability challenges are considered and addressed in an integrative way to meet the environmental integrity and justice of those on Earth and other celestial bodies (Yap and Kim, 2023; see also Galli and Losch, 2019; Losch, 2020). As such, the ‘earth-space governance model’ particularly focuses on strengthening the complex alignments between space resource governance and Earth system governance in a multi-planetary context, and takes into explicit consideration that Earth is no longer a closed, isolated system (Yap and Kim, 2023). On one hand, strong governance integration may facilitate centralized, multilateral bargaining scoring high on both legitimacy and effectiveness. On the other hand, there might be a mixture of other (in)formal institutional arrangements that serve to complement the overarching governance framework.

The business sector in this scenario experienced a shift in value from a pure market logic towards a global community logic. Similar to other sectors in the present day, large private companies in space play the role of philanthropies as they channel benefits from space for global society across regions on Earth. Space resources are co-managed effectively to ensure space-based infrastructures can be fairly accessed among different actor types across countries at different developmental stages, as those infrastructures become integral to global sustainability transitions (Yap and Truffer, 2022). Additionally, sustainability discourses experience a shift from a planetary towards a multi-planetary context. Earth-bound and space-based sociotechnical or infrastructure systems become closely intertwined with effective coordination in order to ensure just and fair access to services such as energy and water in a multi-planetary context. In the present day, we see policy initiatives emerging in the direction of ensuring earth-space sustainability. For instance, the European Space Agency (ESA) actively promotes the need for environmental impact as well as life cycle assessments for space missions to take into account the pollution and degradation of Earth’s natural environment.

In terms of global competition, geopolitics in space or ‘astropolitics’ (Dobos, 2020) are less intense in this scenario, leading to less competition among states to fuel national development on Earth and more effective coordination among states. This minimizes the developmental gap between advanced and developing nations in the present day due to the provision of equal opportunities to access space resources. Countries that remain ‘followers’ in this future scenario are guaranteed access to outer space, the means for space activities, and space resources (Deplano, 2023). Importantly, achieving democracy (Dryzek and Pickering, 2019) in agenda-setting or decision-making is of topmost priority in this scenario. For instance, countries in Africa seek space engagement at all levels of governance to meaningfully feed into and impact the wider African Union regional Space Policy and Strategy. By aligning interests at both regional and international levels, these countries find better opportunities to impact space resource governance through a strong African voice. Additionally, Africa also finds a unique position to contribute to the discourse on space sustainability. In fact, the first definition of what is ‘sustainable development’ and the first Declaration of the Right to Environment can be found in African governance instruments, such as the African Convention on Nature and Natural Resources of 1968, the Algiers Declaration on the Rights of People 1976, and the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights 1981. This same argument has been made in the context of an argument for Africa to join the G20 where it is argued that African countries are often ahead of others globally on key environmental issues (Ryder, 2022).

In addition, infrastructures on Earth such as launch sites and groundstations are built rapidly in the present day to meet the demand of space activities. However, these developments are often entangled in complex relations with local communities (Maile 2021; Gorman 2007), the environment (Kopack 2019; 2021), and embedded in geopolitical power structures (Gorman 2005; Klinger 2019). Space resource management in this future scenario will consider the alignment and coordination with these infrastructures on Earth. Table 1 summarizes the key descriptors of the four scenarios in this study.

The politics of sociotechnical imaginaries

Our exploration of scenarios demarcates four conflicting sociotechnical imaginaries, potentially shaped by different actors and values, each of which consists of different governance approaches. In the capitalist-driven logic of the first three scenarios, space is portrayed as a new frontier to be colonized and exploited through asset-creation or the production of commodities and services. Global capitalism as we know it, more or less continues outwards beyond the atmosphere, overcoming planetary ‘limits to growth’. This is a strongly institutionalized sociotechnical imaginary, expressed in the present day by the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. The Earth-Space Sustainability scenario borrows from a different set of visions of societal progress that emphasize more the values of justice and equity than profit-seeking and perpetual economic growth.

From a commons governance point of view, a polycentric mode of governing is likely to be present in all scenarios in varying degrees although it most likely finds strong resonance with the Open Space scenario. Insights from the commons literature have demonstrated that polycentric governance can be riddled with the so-called ‘collective-action trap’, whereby decisions are made based on economic calculations of individual actors to maximize relative gains or to protect themselves from the actions of others (Young, 2021). Based on the study of our scenarios, the challenge for polycentric space governance therefore critically lies in whether the formulation of principles and norms can be oriented towards accounting or adjusting the behaviors of the different actor types while fostering higher-level trust among them in a sector traditionally led by only a few major states.

Otherwise, it could become rather inevitable that future developments – relied on self-coordinated arrangements – fall into the hands of the rich and powerful therefore increasing the plausibility of a Space Cartel or Earth-centric Gold Rush future. To prevent or mitigate negative consequences stemming from the Space Cartel and Earth-centric Gold Rush scenarios, e.g. environmental degradation in space and global injustice (Impey, 2021), new legally binding instruments might be critical here to delimit powerful actors from freely setting the rules of the game that work in favor of their own interest on other celestial bodies. In order to orient these two scenarios toward more just and equitable futures, there is a need to redesign the benefit-sharing regime and differentiate, for instance, access to the means for space activities, access to outer space, and access to space resources (Deplano, 2023). Furthermore, countries in Africa would have to be implementing an African-led, inward-focused development program. This is crucial to counteract the self-governance of rich companies or the emergence of minilateralisms among interest groups and shape a policy framework that drives leading actors toward sharing benefits with the global community.

Interrelations with Earth sustainability

In light of rising environmental crises and global inequalities, our scenario building dedicated an explicit consideration for the interrelations between developments in space and environmental and social imperatives on Earth. The Space Cartel and Open Space/Space Utopia scenarios demonstrate two future states in which space developments ‘escaped’ the bounds of Earth system governance, leading to future space governance that disintegrates from the considerations for sustainability challenges back on Earth. The governance challenge in those two scenarios would therefore be ensuring human space activities progressing in line with the challenges of the Earth system. If operated under a polycentric governance, for instance in the Open Space scenario, the distribution of space resources and benefits has to prevent fragmented or incongruent norms, principles, and actions with Earth system governance.

Meanwhile, the main challenge for Earth system governance in the Earth-centric Gold Rush scenario is about governing consequences related to the use of space resources for fueling terrestrial energy transitions, their associated geopolitical tensions, and societal implications. Earth system governance, therefore, only plays an adaptive role in this context. To prevent the unequal distribution depicted in this scenario, it is critical to specify in policy how relevant activities are organized, how diversified funding sources are, and how benefits from space are embedded in local communities through economic integration back on Earth (Ocasio-Christian, 2020). In addition, if mineral resources in space would be brought to Earth, it would be important to ensure the integration of those minerals into the existing economic trade in a way that protects the position of the African region (Aganaba, 2023).

Earth system governance could play a more transformative role in the Earth-Space Sustainability scenario by explicitly considering how the justice and integrity of the Earth system are increasingly impacted by activities and resources in space, and vice versa (Yap and Kim, 2023). Achieving a future that brings Earth-Space Sustainability requires major governance and societal transformation that goes beyond technological innovation, industrialization, and institutional adaptation. Current policy initiatives addressing space debris (e.g. the Net Zero Space initiative by the Paris Peace Forum and Zero Debris Charter by ESA with ambitious targets by year 2030) have to explicitly integrate considerations for sustainability on Earth. Policy-making for licensing, procurement, and sanctions (Sullivan, 2023) has to be supported with concrete measurements or monitoring such as environmental impact or life cycle assessments of space activities to track negative implications on Earth and in space.

Integrating Earth system and outer space governance also allows for preventing problem-shifting between sustainability challenges on Earth and in space, and trade-offs will be more explicitly considered to ensure environmental integrity and justice including for other celestial bodies. An integrative ‘earth-space governance’ model (Yap and Kim, 2023) therefore requires understanding the limits of the existing global political order built upon a state-based system, which often asserts that sovereignty is indispensable. Incorporating the principles for environmental integrity and justice of other celestial bodies into existing governance prompts the question of to what extent a terrestrial state-based system is sufficient in the context of governing commons in space, as new rules are made by state and non-state actors pertaining to other celestial worlds beyond the physical reach of many on Earth. Just as the digital revolution giving rise to virtual reality that poses increasing difficulties to a political order based upon territorial terms (DeNardis 2014; Young et al. 2020, Young, 2023), future governance in space will see increasing human and non-human needs entangled in spaces that are non-material or non-physical to many on Earth. Understanding global political orders as social constructs (Young, 2023), the challenge for earth-space governance here is to deal with complexities and governance needs beyond a single planetary scale, which is difficult within the confines of the prevailing global order. A sustained effort is needed in science and policy to search for reformist solutions but also to explore more fundamental alternatives to the current global order.

The challenge of temporality

The scenarios also point to the different temporal scales on which stakeholders operate. The narratives constructed for the four scenarios show that actors dominant in the different scenarios operate on various timelines; for example, key stakeholders in the Space Cartel scenario, even though planning on a longer-term future of human settlement elsewhere, are often driven by and reliant on return of investments within particular, shorter term, timeframes (Valentine 2012). There are also clear differences in the discourses put forth by national space agencies, e.g. NASA emphasizes their plans to go to Mars in the 2030s whereas the UAE detailed a timeline for their Mars settlement that runs up until 2117 (Aima 2018; Grove 2021). Just as space policies and actions operate on different time scales, there are competing understandings of the temporal scale of sustainability among different actors. The growing literature on the conception of sustainability, as well as on the general understanding of futures, has demonstrated significant cultural, social, and political differences. Anthropology studies, for instance, show that indigenous people around the world have a cyclical perception of time, which shapes their approach to the environment with less focus on exponential economic growth and with more emphasis on maintaining ecological continuity (Robyn 2002). A potential problem of these tensions of time scales is that often actors operating on the shorter time scale end up defining the policy conversations, as others have to adapt their strategies depending on the consequences of the actions of the former.

The temporal aspect adds complexity to the challenge of policy and governance, in particular when considering how space activities impact inter-generational equity. In view of emerging policy initiatives that seek to address space debris by 2030 – there is a potential but rapidly narrowing policy window to orient governance of the orbital environment towards Earth-Space Sustainability in the long term (Yap and Truffer, 2022). At the same time, the use of resources on other celestial bodies might first witness the prevalence of an Earth-centric Gold Rush scenario, before progressing to incorporate the interest of the less powerful. To move beyond ‘governing the given’ and anticipate inter-generational equity, we might need more legally binding instruments to limit the rapid development of activities currently led by a select few seeking to occupy those celestial bodies. Here, science and policy have to explore how to incorporate a more holistic perception of time – perhaps the one informed by indigenous knowledge – to steer toward more equitable futures such as the Earth-Space Sustainability scenario.