Existing space governance institutions and mechanisms are built on a twentieth-century reality, when states were the main actors and the main, if only, subjects of international law. While international space law and multilateral institutions are facing pressures in the twenty-first-century “spacescape,” they should not be disregarded or replaced entirely. The framework they provide is an important foundation. Rather, what is needed is an expansive lens to work toward new approaches to the wicked problems of space governance, including safety, security and sustainability. The number and type of space actors, the ever-increasing nature of human activity in space, the dual-use nature of most space services and the vulnerability of civilians in the event of a loss of space-based services: all of these factors create wicked complexities. An expansive cognitive approach is proposed: that of the individual “space citizen.” Since we are all dependent on space-based technologies, we all have a vested interest in the good governance of the space environment and our impact upon it. Existing notions of the “global citizen” and “planetary citizen” should be expanded to the “space citizen,” so that we can activate our own individual participation in new governance approaches that are multi-stakeholder, muti-domain, inclusive and intergenerational.
