The Outer Space Treaty Won't Save Us From Ourselves

TL;DR

The paper critiques the limitations of the Outer Space Treaty in regulating space activities amid growing interests and advocates for legal recognition of space as an environment for sustainable stewardship.

Contribution

It highlights the need for space to be legally recognized as an environment to ensure ethical and effective regulation beyond the current weak international framework.

Findings

Current treaties rely on goodwill, which is insufficient for enforcement.

Growing interests threaten the sustainability of space activities.

Proposes legal recognition of space as an environment for better regulation.

Abstract

The rapid growth of human activities in outer space sounds urgent alarms around ethical and philosophical issues, particularly concerning space militarization. The present international legal framework governing activities in space, the Outer Space Treaty (OST), views the peaceful exploration of space for scientific research as co-equal to other 'uses' entitled to "due regard" with respect to "potentially harmful interference" on the part of other space actors. The OST is deeply aspirational but has weak enforcement mechanisms, relying at its core on the goodwill of all involved parties as the fundamental basis for accountability. But that framework now faces unsustainable pressures from both public and private interests, and current agreements like the OST may be unable to exert timely, material protections. Terrestrial frameworks of "ethics of deterrence" versus the "ethics of agreements" are quickly expanding into cosmic environments. We argue for the legal recognition of space as an environment as the basis of any future approach to securing its integrity, and share examples of agreements grounded in peaceful cooperative stewardship of shared environments. These represent potential pathways forward that are ethical and also serve rational self-interest and self-preservation at this crucial juncture for humanity.