Conference Agenda

Increasingly complex developments in space impact earth system governance in various ways. Recent geopolitical turbulences have prompted states to channel massive resources into building and strengthening their national space-based infrastructures and assets. Meanwhile, the space sector has also experienced a major structural change due to rapid privatization – known as the New Space movement. While Earth’s orbit is increasingly competed among a diverse set of actors, rich private enterprises are actively pushing the frontier of possibilities including building new human settlements on the Moon and Mars. These salient developments cause new environmental challenges such as the accumulation of space debris and environmental degradation on other celestial bodies, exacerbate global injustice, and impose barriers to effective international coordination for sustainability transformation. In particular, the expansion of human activities transcending the earth system is shaping and altering the future of planetary sustainability. Some scholars have called for an integrative approach to address Earth-bound and space-based sustainability challenges. Yet, existing studies lack comprehensive conceptual, analytical, and methodological tools to deal with this rising challenge. The aim of this session is, therefore, to push the frontier of these debates.

The panel is set out to explore the following topics:

1) The changing roles of the state and private actors in view of New Space;

2) The interrelations of (extra)terrestrial politics, i.e. how geopolitics on Earth shape political tension in space and vice versa;

3) Potential global institutional architectures for governing rising space activities;

4) The role of space in the future-making of sustainability;

5) Challenges for integrative earth-space governance; and

6) Innovative methodological approaches addressing these issues.

Outer space has become an object of intense political, economic and scholarly interest, including due to the novel opportunities and challenges that space resources, space tourism, orbital debris or Earth observation instruments raise for environmental sustainability. The contemporary politics of outer space are defined by two disparate and partially inconsistent trends. On one hand, outer space is undergoing transnationalization as private actors are increasingly pushing into a domain that had been organized among strictly intergovernmental lines since the 1950s. On the other hand, we are witnessing a new space race, where primarily China and the US are competing for access, influence and supremacy in outer space. Starting from classic and more recent theoretical debates in international political economy, we probe the relationship between transnational and state power. Specifically, we ask whether power relations constrain transnationalization dynamics; or whether the latter unfold above and beyond the global structures of political power constituted by nation states. We apply Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) to a dataset of global partnerships in the satellite industry. This dataset consists of partnerships by public and private organizations, in both domestic and transboundary contexts, on the construction and operation of military as well as civilian satellites. We estimate an ERGM to predict tie formation in the corresponding partnership network, using two edge attributes as predictors: a) whether or not edges represent transnational partnerships, in the sense of private organizations collaborating with public organizations in a transboundary context; and b) whether or not edges connect organizations from states that do not participate in shared military alliance structures. We find that ties are significantly less likely to form in transnational contexts and significantly more likely either domestically or between states with military alliances in place. We conclude that contemporary debates on the rise of private space actors overestimate commercial factors and private-sector innovation as drivers of the emerging space economy. Instead, geopolitical factors appear to predominate, suggesting that the politics of outer space have changed considerably less than commonly assumed. Against the background of an intense scholarly debate on how and what transnational cooperation can deliver for environmental sustainability and beyond, our findings imply that geopolitical conflicts and contingencies remain major limiting factors for achieving cooperative outcomes that leverage space-based activities as global public goods in the context of multiple contemporary social and environmental crisis dynamics.

This paper explores the prospects that space debris can be governed more sustainably under a polycentric governance system. A number of recent studies suggest that the lessons that Elinor Ostrom has drawn from polycentric local resources management can be applied to space debris. These studies, however, are mainly theoretical and provide only anecdotal evidence to support their claims. This is the first empirical assessment of the polycentric governance system for space debris. Using a combination of network analysis, content analysis and interview data, this study finds that the governance system for outer space has the structural characteristics but not the emerging properties of a well-functioning polycentric system. This is a useful reminder that a polycentric structure is not sufficient to favor learning and adaptation. The paper also provide policy insights by identifying some of the missing ingredients for a sustainable governance system.

Space-based developments are reshaping socio-economic development and sustainability transitions on Earth. Over the past decade, various framings and expectations on how space developments will be the next frontier of opportunities or solutions for sustainability emerged across the globe, such as through the deployment of advanced space-based infrastructures or the availability of minerals in space. At the same time, space activities are already causing new anthropogenic footprints on Earth and in space, such as the soot emission from private rocket launches and the accumulation of space debris. Scholars have recently called for an integrative approach to address or govern earth-space sustainability issues. However, such an approach will require navigating the various interests of a growing set of actors relying on, governing, or occupying space. This paper aims to shed light on the emerging politics of earth-space sustainability by analyzing how the international space community (e.g. policymakers, businesses, and scientists) frames the relations between Earth sustainability and space-based developments. More specifically, their discourse strategies can be identified and categorized into four classical types, i.e. problem solving, limits and survival, sustainability, and green radicalism, based on two dimensions (reformist versus radical and prosaic versus imaginative). The paper uses a qualitative discourse analysis approach, drawing on a 15-year dataset of international news articles in English – a major sense-making platform where a diverse set of international space actors legitimize or rationalize their preferences in terms of technologies, policies, and practices through discourses. Actor statements were coded in the software Nvivo using qualitative content analysis based on a coding scheme derived abductively. The paper builds a preliminary typology on the politics of earth-space sustainability to facilitate future research on the topic, drawing on different examples of space-based developments including advanced satellite infrastructures, space debris management, space military, and space mining. The paper specifies which particular strategies have been performed or shifted among different groups of space actors over the past 1.5 decades and to what extent the classical categorization of environmental discourse strategies is applicable for analyzing the politics of earth-space sustainability. It demonstrates how the politics of earth-space sustainability is inherently unjust and fragmented on a global level and points to the lack of transformative orientations in existing discourses. The paper concludes by anticipating how these discourses might develop as space activities expand, outlining the challenges for effective earth-space governance, and stressing the importance of broadening data selection strategies for such analyses.

The expansion of human activities in space and their impact on sustainability has recently gained much attention due to the various ambitions led by private entities along with rapid technological advancements. Elon Musk, an influential space entrepreneur, proposes a future where space plays a crucial part in the survival of humanity, with Mars portrayed as a potential new home. This study aims to examine the imaginary of a multiplanetary society he is creating, and to uncover its impact on sustainability discourses by mapping how others engage with it. We conducted a discourse analysis using 147 selected tweets of Elon Musk and over 50,000 quote tweets from other users over the time period of 2011 until 2022. To identify storylines and discourse coalitions, we employed both qualitative and quantitative approaches, using NVivo and natural language processing in R. The findings suggest that Musk actively shapes an emerging socio-technical imaginary that points to a multiplanetary future, made plausible through a reusable interplanetary transport system. Such a future is presented as necessary, rationalized by an existential threat to human life on Earth and the need to preserve the species. The study also reveals the emergence of two diverging discourse coalitions, with supporters and detractors of Musk's vision, and their underlying discourses. Supporters of Musk’s imaginary are dominating the discourse on Twitter and are framing his multiplanetary vision as an exciting adventure that could also benefit sustainable development on Earth. The detractor coalition, however, raises critical concerns about the necessity and feasibility of such plans while providing a more meaningful argumentative structure, questioning the role of power and the allocation of resources and rights in space. Although members of civil society form the majority of actors in both coalitions, our research finds that technology-affine libertarians are generally more inclined to support Musk, whereas environmentally conscious and community-driven individuals often occur as opponents. The discourse analysis approach of this study sheds light on the growing role of space in shaping alternative sustainability futures and raises important questions about the governance of space activities.