How lessons from fisheries management could help us govern Earth’s orbital space

The space industry is rapidly expanding. About 20,000 satellites already circle Earth, a number that could reach 100,000 by 2030. They bring growing environmental costs: space debris, collision risks, atmospheric pollution from launches and reentry and interference with astronomical observations.

The problem requires international action. Like the oceans, Earth’s orbital environment is a shared space that remains weakly governed by international laws, registries, guidelines and voluntary cooperation. Corporations and nations are launching and operating satellites for their own gain, while the environmental costs are borne by all of us.

How can we effectively regulate Earth’s orbital space? The way shared fish stocks are managed by regional fisheries management organizations could offer some useful lessons.

Most regional fisheries management organizations were created for fish stocks in the high seas, beyond the jurisdiction of national states. They are far from perfect, with a history that includes overfishing, disputes over quotas, weak compliance and the entrenchment of powerful fishing interests. Yet they provide an important lesson: Environmental sustainability requires collective management of access to a shared resource.

Counting activities is not enough

The analogy may be puzzling: Fish are renewable biological resources; satellites are depletable mechanical objects. Yet the governance of the high seas and that of orbital space share similarities.

Fishing vessels generate pressure on fish stocks. Satellites generate pressure on the orbital environment. Fishing effort can produce bycatch and habitat damage; satellite operations can generate debris and collision risks. Fisheries managers monitor stocks and fishing activities; space agencies follow satellites and debris.

The point is that simply counting activities is not enough.

Beyond checking how many boats are operating, fisheries managers ask about the condition of fish stocks, fishing intensity and sustainable quotas. Orbital governance needs a similar shift toward a measure of orbital environmental pressure.

This would include measuring debris density, collision probability, orbital lifetime, collision-avoidance maneuvers, impacts on astronomical observations and the atmosphere and the changing characteristics of the orbits themselves, as greenhouse gases can affect atmospheric mass density and therefore the lifetime of orbital debris.

This could lead to regular assessments of the condition of different orbital regions, building on the European Space Agency’s Space Environment Report. The objective would be to identify safe operating spaces, monitor changes and introduce precautionary measures before environmental degradation becomes irreversible.

Orbital space management organizations

We need a new institution: an orbital space management organization.

As in fisheries management, this type of organization would bring together states using the same shared environmental space. A global orbital space management organization would not replace national space agencies or existing international institutions such as the U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space or the International Telecommunication Union. Rather, it would focus on the cumulative environmental condition of a particular orbital region.

Each orbital space management organization would have four core functions:

1. Assess the state of different orbital environments via an independent scientific body.
2. Establish environmental limits for congested orbital regions.
3. Monitor compliance.
4. Coordinate mechanisms for allocating access and responding to noncompliance.

This could turn the idea of an orbital “commons” into something more practical: a collectively managed environmental system. Three such global organizations could govern Earth’s three main orbital regions through specialized management regimes.

The analogy with fisheries also suggests several policy instruments.

These orbital space management organizations could establish orbital environmental budgets, limiting the amount of additional environmental pressure that can be introduced into a particular orbital region. They could also distribute permits to operators, charge orbital-user fees and require deorbiting bonds. These could incentivize deorbiting features such as deployable drag sails.

Fisheries also offer a warning

The analogy with fisheries management, however, should not be romanticized.

Regional fisheries management organizations can become arenas where states defend their national industries rather than protect ecosystems. Historical catch allocations can favor established fishing powers. Consensus procedures can delay action and protect heavily subsidized and harmful fleets. Compliance can be weak when enforcement depends on states themselves. The same problems could be magnified in space.

Existing space powers and firms could seek to preserve privileged access to valuable orbital regions. Today’s most powerful corporations could effectively claim the environmental commons they helped congest and convert current occupation into permanent rights.

An orbital space management organization would therefore need strong compliance mechanisms. States could agree not to authorize launches or orbital operations by operators who persistently failed to comply. Environmental performance could become part of licensing, insurance and financing decisions.

Most importantly, management rules could be established before a crisis forces them upon us in unpleasant ways.

Stars, rather than debris

The sensible approach would be to slow down the new space race. But in the absence of progress on that front, we need international cooperation to deploy effective adaptive management: establish indicators, define precautionary thresholds, monitor changes, revise and enforce the rules as evidence improves.

This also means investing in science. A small levy on satellite launches or orbital licenses could finance independent research into debris dynamics, atmospheric effects, dark and quiet skies, collision risks and orbital carrying capacity.

Fisheries governance shows the possibilities and pitfalls of collective environmental management. An orbital space management organization would not solve the politics of orbital space. But it could provide an institution explicitly responsible for maintaining the environmental conditions that would allow Earth’s orbits to remain usable.

It would also help ensure that future generations live with stars above their heads, rather than mostly constellations of debris.

Who’s behind this story?

Swati Mestri

Swati Mestri holds a bachelor’s degree in Electronics Engineering and has worked as a content editor since 2019. She has experience editing research documents across technology, health care, and materials science, and has a particular interest in technology and space.

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Andrew Zinin

Master’s in physics with research experience. Long-time science news enthusiast. Plays key role in Science X’s editorial success.

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This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.