Louise Shields: Blue Earth
Building legal certainty before first-mover advantage becomes permanent exclusion.
Space is becoming more accessible, commercially valuable, and central to life on Earth. Yet the international legal framework governing its use remains grounded in broad principles that provide limited guidance on how access, responsibility, and benefits should be shared in practice.
Equity in Space Governance examines urgent questions already taking shape: whether early actors can secure scarce orbital positions and spectrum access before other nations can participate meaningfully; who will bear the environmental costs of expanding launch activity and orbital debris; and whether the scientific, technological, and economic benefits of space activity will remain concentrated among a small number of States and companies.
The policy brief argues that equity must be embedded in space governance while the legal framework is still taking shape. Drawing on lessons from the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Antarctic Treaty, the Rio Declaration, and domestic mining and natural-resource licensing regimes, it identifies practical pathways to clarify existing obligations, guide national regulation, and shape emerging international norms before the practices of the earliest actors become the rules for everyone else.
The report features Majestic and Mysterious and Blue Earth by Louise Shields. An image of Majestic and Mysterious was carried to the Moon in partnership with LunARC on March 2, 2025, connecting the wonder that draws humanity toward space with the responsibility to govern it equitably.