Honorable Chair, Distinguished Delegates:
Space Renaissance International’s Pre-COPUOS global, day-long virtual summit on the 12^th of June was well attended by many from our Space 18^th SDG Coalition 81 partners, representing developed and emerging countries alike. As CEO and Co-Founder of SRI, I am honored to share our significant recommendations to the COPUOS 67^th General Assembly. We converged our top critical space concerns into five key focus areas.

* Panel Number 1 covered the Use of Space Resources

Space resources should be primarily used to build infrastructure in space while avoiding new colonialist attitudes. Instead, space resources belong to space communities. Accessing previously untapped space resources will produce an economy of abundance for all on Earth. The U.N. should immediately promote the idea that the military industry should pivot from manufacturing means of destruction to instead manufacturing space infrastructure, such as rotating settlements in orbit and at Lagrange points.

Lacking a general agreement on space resources and bootstrapping of the cislunar economy, the U.N. should consider the Artemis Accords and the International Lunar Research Station as best practices for fair competition and collaboration.

* Panel Number 2 covered Orbital Debris

Orbital debris represents an extremely serious threat to space navigation and deserves an extremely high priority focus. COPUOUS should support the industry in finding solutions. Debris removal is not just a moral duty, but simultaneously a major business opportunity. The many thousands of tons in orbit hold great value for space industrialization. Therefore, space law should urgently allow the capture, salvage, reuse, or parking of decommissioned satellites, rocket stages, and other large space wreckage. These may profitably produce propellant or reused infrastructure components. Maritime law provides a useful analog.

Member states should encourage their manufacturers to equip satellites for end-of-life de-orbiting, encourage their space entrepreneurs to develop innovative debris removal technologies, via private-public funding partnerships, encourage relevant academic research, and support best practices in debris management and reuse.

Finally, and most importantly, all anti-satellite weapons tests should be banned by the U.N.

* Panel Number 3 covered Space Law

The Outer Space Treaty should be modernized with provisions for private-sector participation. Successful elements from other treaties, like the Law of the Sea, should guide space resource utilization. We should establish clear, robust legal frameworks to protect intellectual and industrial property rights in space. Access to space should be democratized, lowering barriers to entry, and fostering international collaboration.

All stakeholders, and not only states, should participate in space law development. Access to resources should be free, without exclusion zones. Finally, the OST should be extended to disarmament, global monitoring, and the prevention of space militarization. In principle, space should be declared a weapons-free zone.

* Panel Number 4 covered Sustainable Benefits 4 All Peoples of Earth

Expanding civilization into outer space represents humanity’s natural evolution. Historically, we have never been confined to a single geographical location. As Earth now reaches her carrying capacity, living and working in the solar system is essential for continued growth.

Lessons learned off-Earth, such as total recycling, efficient food production, and eco-sustainable habitats, will immeasurably benefit life on planet Earth, particularly for those suffering from poverty. Tangible space benefits should be more publicly promoted, including satellite communication, which has accelerated, for example, education and health care for those remote and underserved. We must develop a holistic space sustainability framework to unite social, environmental, and economic factors.

Civilian Space Development (CSD) includes the cislunar economy, asteroid mining, establishing space communities, and space industrialization, providing a new industrial value chain and jobs to “post-industrial” countries. CSD also helps the development and social growth of all Earth’s peoples, including those in space-emerging and space-aspiring countries.

As the world witnesses a permanent space revolution, space-emerging countries no longer need to endure the long, slow road traveled by pioneers. Non-space-faring countries deserve the same opportunities as pioneer countries. They should not be limited to space technologies supporting agriculture and disaster recovery.  They instead deserve advanced space development, as all have rights to development and social growth (as outlined in the U.N. resolution on the human right to development, 1986). Brilliant minds have birth everywhere. They will not be peasants on Earth forever, and maybe they might be peasants in space!

CDS is a powerful factor for peace, putting resource wars out-of-business.

The Overview Effect remains a powerful icon of a new human community, where no barriers, borders, or boundaries can be seen from orbit or the Moon. Sustainable space operations enhance global connectivity, bridging the digital divide and improving everyone’s quality of life. Satellites track climate change and natural disasters and help resource management to heighten our resiliency.

* Finally, Panel Number 5 covered Sustainable Space Development and Space for Sustainability

At their core, the 17 SDGs rest on three core SDG pillars: (7) energy, (8) jobs, and (9) industry innovation.  However, these are simply not sustainable if confined on Earth, as they conflict with the environmental SDGs: they are UDG, Unsustainable Development Goals!

For example, energy demand increases with production increases, Web use, and AI. Energy and resource demand increases, but green policies require general decrease. What does this conundrum mean? The high lifestyle promised by electronic society will be available only to a few people (if civilization does not crash before).  Space, instead, makes a positive lifestyle available for all.

A massive misunderstanding depicts leaving Earth as unethical. The truth is exactly the opposite. We are not abandoning Earth, we are simply expanding our presence beyond Earth, as an act of love.  Our mother planet is stressed by our technological development.  Large-scale space migration shows her our respect and love, as well as respect and love for humanity.

Space development will generate an immeasurable number of new jobs. “Space for all” means space for the next generations. We therefore must disseminate knowledge of space benefits.

Summarizing the robust consensus of all five panels: we must architecture the future of space. The consequences of extinction events are irreconcilable. Securing new resources secures options for a positive future.  Building and maintaining viable space communities is a microcosm of providing for all life on Earth.

Space should be a weapons-free zone. In a Copernican view, we live in an open world, without limits to growth. No other species can develop technologies to live beyond the biosphere. We, therefore, have great responsibility and should act before 2030, focusing on settlements beyond Earth, instead of wasting energy to wage wars on a single planet. We need a vertical growth strategy, instead of a “horizontal” geopolitical one.

Space development will ignite industrial, technical, social, and cultural development. This will also critically ensure sufficient resources and energy for all of our emerging countries. Orbital debris might be the first factor for space industrialization, and space-based circular economy, but not the last. Let us think outside of geocentric constraints and create a better, bigger, and bolder analytical definition of space resources and products, sustainable extraction, and the upcycling of lunar and asteroid resources. We should also support continued cooperation among all countries, notwithstanding the ongoing wars and subsequent opposition.

In conclusion, the U.N. should include space development as a key sustainability factor for the 2030 Agenda and explicitly mention the work of UNOOSA and COPUOS in all related public communications and outreach.

Renewed global collaboration is imperative between international regulatory bodies, governments, and the private sector for the adoption of shared space assets, ensuring full SDG alignment.

With the potential of sustainable space for increased international peace, security, human rights, and sustainability, Space as the 18th SDG is a must for the benefit of everyone.

Watch the video of the speech on the U.N. TV website: https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1w/k1wp8nfhx5?kalturaStartTime=6140

Writing from Vienna, at the COPUOS Legal Subcommittee 63^rd session, 15-26 April 2024.

Three speeches, so far, were released by members of our Space 18^th SDG Coalition: a technical presentation, by Alfred Anzaldua, on behalf of NSS, and two oral speeches, by Adriano V. Autino (SRI), and Frederick Jenet (NSS).

• Alfred Anzaldua, 19 April “Organizing internationally to defeat an enemy of Long Term Sustainability: waste accumulation from careless industrial practices”,  10 minutes technical presentation
• Adriano V. Autino, on behalf of SRI, 22 April, 5 minutes oral speech
• Frederick Jenet, on behalf of NSS, 22 April, 5 minutes oral speech

Autino and Jenet gave their 5 minutes speeches the 22 of April, in a session in which several observer NGOs gave their speeches as well. Namely For All MoonKind (Marlène Losier), the MoonVillage Association (Giuseppe Reibaldi), and others. All the videos are available here.

A very interesting meeting was held this morning by the Romanian delegation, for the creation of an Action Team on Lunar Activities Consultation (ATLAC). Though very promising, the meeting was just the kick-off of a brainstorming period, going to define some guidelines, an agenda, and criteria for joining and submitting papers and proposals.

We’ll be here until the end of the session, Friday 26. We’ll probably share a report on the whole thing after the end.

If you like to comment or discuss this post, please do it on the SRI Open Forum:
https://groups.google.com/g/sri-open-forum (ask to be added if you’re not a member yet).

Ad Astra!

Adriano V. Autino (SRI),
Werner Grandl (SRI),
Alfred Anzaldua (NSS and SRI)

This time I don’t feel like sharing wishes for the end-of-the-year fests. This is not an SRI Newsletter, just a personal thought I want to share.

The reason is the dreadful situation of the world these last days, or should I say in these months or years.

We are witnessing the evident proof of the profound immaturity of our civilization. We are besieged by many global crises, such as pandemics, climate changes, and economic crises, just to name the main ones. Instead of uniting our efforts to go over, the craziness is gaining momentum. The primitive practice of war –the state’s legal murdering – is expanding to the neighbors of Europe. Humanity is not driven by the best practices but by the worst ones. Political leaders complain about the lack of financial resources, but they spend 2 trillion/year on military expenditure, and that will get worse, considering the continuous rise of new wars.

But really? Will we really still allow violence as the unique means of solution for any dispute? Should we allow old imperialist strategies – already and many times condemned by history – to raise their stupid and backward head once again over the sacrosanct right of all peoples to self-determine their future and how they want to govern themselves? Now it is enough. We are sick to death of these immature leaders, we shall get rid of them everywhere.

We have other things to do, and many worthwhile projects to deal with. We cannot keep on spending our time and resources going after these primitive leaders anymore. Just think about what we could do with 2 trillion/year! In space, we could develop a cislunar economy in 10 years, just like we have gone to the Moon in 10 years almost 60 years ago. We could start building O’Neill Lagrange Cities, with simulated gravity and duly protection from space-hard radiation. To start mining the Moon and the asteroids to produce propellant in space, and further downsizing the cost of any space transport. In a few words, to accelerate civilian space development, and civil expansion into outer space. On Earth, we could eliminate plastic pollution in a few years. About climate, I am not that confident that we can really reverse any ongoing process, yet we could for sure adopt active strategies to adapt, protecting coastal regions from the possible rising of the sea level, and placing in orbit shields for chilling or mirrors to warming some regions, to contrast in turn warming or icing ages.

But no, all of the above shall remain “too much expensive”, while we are burning 2 trillion/year and thousands of precious human lives! How can you claim that I will be reasonable, smiling, and sharing my Best Wishes for the New Year??! Also, my personal thought is that I don’t make any difference between “innocent civilians” and soldiers. The soldiers are humans too. The soldiers are 20-year-old boys and girls, our children!!! They are murdered like civilians, and if and when they are back home, they will forever remember – and be mentally disturbed by — the horrors they have lived. The leaders ordering wars and terrorist actions are murderers, guilty of homicide and genocide. Such immature leaders should stay in prison, not being publicly honored and acknowledged as persons having the right to order, rule, and decide for our destiny.

I am really pissed off. I am serious, not joking.

Nothing, I say nothing, can justify killing thousands of lives, whoever they are, for any possible reason.

The only thing I can wish, for next year, is that the United Nations will make a step upward, in interpreting the general wish of the Earth’s good willing people to turn toward progress and ethical evolution. To do so, the U.N. should take more power, and start acting as a real authority, bringing undisciplined states to stop killing people and ruining economies. U.N. should also finally bring the COPUOS, its space branch, to the light, giving public speeches, outreaching about the urgent need to start expanding civilization into the geo-lunar space region, and soliciting states and privates to invest in such a very worthy epochal enterprise. At the same time, the U.N. should strongly educate world powers on general disarmament, converting all military expenditure into peace and life projects, with civilian space development in the first place.

I am sure that, should a world referendum be organized, such a position would get a large majority.

SRI, together with the NSS and almost 70 space advocacy organizations, is promoting a Space 18^th SDG to be added to the U.N. 2030 Agency. Everybody is invited to support this campaign, and our delegation at COPUOS, that will restlessly work for this purpose, in 2024.

These are my thoughts, my bitterness, my mourning for the thousands of lives brutally assassinated, and my hopes for humanity for the next year. Since I remain a sincere humanist, and I am sure that the large majority of the people of Earth do not want such butchery to continue.

Please also try to spend some joyful hours with those you love, during these reflective and worrisome days. And if you really don’t feel like celebrating, think that I am with you and I hope that we can combine our efforts to give peace and love a chance.

Ad Astra!

Adriano V. Autino, SRI CEO and Founder

There have been rumors in recent weeks, that the United Nations Secretariat was now looking beyond 2030, and that the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was somewhat outdated. We don’t know if that is true, or just a speculation. If true, what does it mean? Have the United Nations realized that the 17 SDGs were an unattainable utopia, and are they preparing to move on? What we knew, before hearing such voices, was that some kind of review of the 2030 Agenda was scheduled in 2024 / 2025, to measure the achievement of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and possibly to update it, according to some relevant developments, which occurred after 2015. The need for an overhaul of the 2030 Agenda was easy to be seen, even for the most blind bureaucrat. Several historical milestones have been achieved, in 2015 and subsequent years. First of all, the new space economy revolution, boosted by the rockets’ reusability, developed by SpaceX. The space economy is nowadays the most progressive industrial segment, trying to balance, alone, the profound global crisis, which grips the world economy. Notwithstanding that, space is still stubbornly out of the 2030 Agenda. That’s the main reason motivating the Space 18^th SDG initiative, supported now by 47 space advocacy organizations^[1]. Such a proposal was already presented at COPUOS 66^th session in Vienna, last 5 of June, in a historical discourse^[2] pronounced by Karlton Johnson, on behalf of NSS, SRI, and the whole coalition of the co-promoters. The Space 18^th SDG will be presented at United Nations General Assembly 78, the 15 of September, in a hybrid panel at United Nations in New York^[[3]. There will be other announcements and news about this significant event.What we want to reflect on, today, is the actual social relevance of the 17 SDGs, and if it makes sense to maintain 2030 as a deadline for the achievement of such key socially relevant goals.Looking back some decades, the National Security Agency (US) had foreseen a very critical period from 2025 to 2030, possibly an irreversible civilization-implosive crash (I am sorry that I cannot provide any link to proper articles, yet I had commented on such a forecast in some of my newsletters). While we are approaching 2025, have those concerns lowered or increased? Considering the many symptoms that we are witnessing – pandemics, extreme climate events, enduring economic crises, and wars in the “advanced” world countries – it is easy to reply to the question. That devastating crisis is already here, some years in advance, with respect to the NSA’s prediction. Should we use Hari Seldon’s psychohistory^[4] terms, even if we don’t own his “Radiant” tools, we could say that we are very close to a “cusp”. No doubt that several crazy events are occurring, in reaction to the multiple crises. No doubt that it makes sense to interpret the current age with the tools of psychohistory, at least from a conceptual point of view. Thus, is 2030 still an important date, or should we forget the 17 SDGs and start looking beyond? My first answer is yes, definitely: 2030 is even more important than it was in 2015 when the UN 2030 Agenda was approved. Since most of the 17 SDGs are social goals, it is of paramount importance to fight for their sustainability and to underline that the only way to achieve them is to kick off a new, strong, development strategy, i.e. to accelerate civilian space development.

The European Parliament has passed (by a very narrow majority) a law to divest 20 percent of farmland in favor of restoring a “natural” environment. On the wave of panic caused by the climate crisis and suffocating plastic pollution, the European Union Parliament decided to penalize farmers – the same farmers who are currently beleaguered, finding entire crops destroyed by rampant wild boars and animals reintroduced into areas where they had long since become unsustainable by local economies.

Thinking of “restoring nature” in a super-urbanized and super-industrialized territory is like wanting to put the toothpaste back into the tube once it comes out. This would unavoidably penalize various sectors.
Particularly unfair is hitting first the very sector that provides us with food! With prices already on an upward ramp (due to post-pandemic circumstances and the current war in Ukraine), it is easy to foresee further surges in vegetable prices. Who will subsidize the “restoration of nature”? The less affluent classes will clearly find even traditional chip food unaffordable. After all, Serge Latouche had already warned us about this in his delirious little booklet on so-called “happy de-growth” (2008): “De-growth will certainly cause some social problems, but this is a problem of governments, it does not concern us.”