Lessons from International Space Law: The Role of International Relations in Governing Global Commons Regions

Abstract

Drawing from an analysis of experiences in outer space law, this paper provides insights into challenges involved with managing the global common spaces of the polar regions. The literature concerning governance of the international commons regions focuses on justice and equity concerning natural resources, climate change, the speed, uncertainty and consequences stemming from key actor activity in the Polar Regions. This usually boils down to successes and failures of treaty noncompliance and enforcement mechanisms, or the lack thereof. This paper highlights a current political process aimed at dismantling agreed upon terms outer space international agreements. This offers a snapshot of a political process, likely to influence evolving polar legal norms for the rapidly melting Arctic and Antarctic regions. This is a conceptual paper borrowing theoretical and methodological approaches from political science and international relations such as a Gramscian analysis, constructivism theory and critical discourse analysis, to present several interesting ideas. The purpose is to enable people to understand and explain that future colonisation patterns are unfolding today. It calls attention to issues likely to challenge and define our world in the twenty-first century.

Space Tourism: A Historical and Existential Perspective

“…The space tourism industry has been told to engage responsibly with the plurality of worlds in the observable universe [54,57,58]. The need to manage our immediate celestial environment has led scholars to explore aspects of space law, corporate accountability in space, and the application of common principles to the celestial realm, e.g., [7,[59][60][61]. Such research is essential for addressing contestation over near-Earth resources in the short to medium term.…”