Collaborative Frameworks for Long-Term Lunar Sustainability
AUTHOR: CHRISTINE TIBALLI, OPEN LUNAR FELLOW AND LUNAR LEDGER LEAD
We’ve explored frameworks for lunar adaptive environmental protocols, harmonization areas, and a management scheme supported by digital twins and risk modelling in Parts I & II. In the pursuit of a sustainable lunar future, it is increasingly clear that collaboration and adaptive governance are as essential as the management frameworks and digital tools we employ. A particularly promising approach involves leveraging Public Purpose Trusts (PPT) as a foundational element of a proposed Lunar Consortium, providing both legal accountability and commitment to collective vision.
While the Moon's resources are currently untapped, their extraction and use are found across multiple stakeholders’ mission plans. Further, the true abundance of these resources is not fully known nor articulated, so it is imperative to establish structured governance now to protect against future scarcity and access by aspiring stakeholders.
Multi-Sector Input and Adaptive Governance
To effectively navigate the complexities of lunar exploration and development, the continual integration of insights across sectors including science, commerce, government, and environmental advocacy, is essential. Designing policy to effectively consolidate and organise the multifaceted nature of lunar missions requires a mechanism capable of addressing continuously evolving challenges and opportunities.
Prioritising collaboration within a flexible governance framework facilitates the balance between operational objectives and environmental responsibilities. Taking this approach ensures that decision-makers remain responsive to discovery and scientific advancements, technological innovations and shifting geopolitical landscapes, supporting shared growth and stewardship.
Case for a Lunar Consortium with Public Purpose Trusts
As with the writing of a collective narrative, each voice and perspective is critical to developing a cohesive story. Suggesting the establishment of a Lunar Consortium supported by Public Purpose Trusts builds on multi-stakeholder input, equitable and fair governance, and cooperative execution to achieve a balanced lunar development protocol. This visionary alliance isn't about carving up the Moon into fragmented pieces; it's about rallying around stewardship, unity, and purpose.
PPTs and PPT-like frameworks have been used in a variety of ways to protect environments through use designation, guardianship, and permitting. One such example is the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. While not a trust in the traditional sense, it operates with similar principles and objectives: comprehensive management, legislative framework, multi-stakeholder engagement, adaptive management, and public awareness. Similarly, Te Urewera in New Zealand was granted legal personhood with rights and responsibilities, co-governance, and guardianship by the Tūhoe, reflecting cultural significance and interdependence on stewardship.
Shared Stewardship
The Consortium is tasked with stewarding development through multiple phases, ensuring collaboration reigns over division, and a unified purpose results in cohesive frameworks accepted by all stakeholders. Core to this model is the preservation of both interest and availability of resources for future actors and those aspiring to bring marginalised voices to the table. Using the instrument of a lunar equilibrium policy would ensure equal access and non-discrimination to established lunar areas.
Independent governance with purpose: The Consortium acts as the Moon's custodian, ensuring resource management and exploration efforts align while bringing conflict resolution and unity for stakeholders.
A path anchored in ethical commitment: The Consortium's mission is clear and sustainable. Its self-reinforcing nature, centred on mutual benefit and equitable access, ensures all endeavours are built on the foundations of trust and non-exploitation.
Voices from every domain: Joining a colourful spectrum of stakeholders, from national programs and businesses to scientific and cultural pillars, this coalition isn't merely about influence but about diversity and inclusion. The mixed symphony of opinions drives fair decision-making envisioned through transparent, inclusive deliberations.
Rooted in Accountability: Trusted, legally sound practices, defined by Public Purpose Trusts, guide the Consortium, ironing out smooth pathways to resolve conflicts and maintain collective trust, investment, and strategy.
These broad strokes align with several of the public policy recommendations outlined by the Action Team on Lunar Activities Consultation (ATLAC). Further investigation will look for ways the Consortium can act in tandem or in partnership with ATLAC to bring about a cohesive and inclusive governance policy and mandate for shared lunar stewardship.
Unanswered Questions, Shared Exploration
As these initial frameworks, guidelines, and strategies appear to hold early promise, advancing a sustainable lunar future depends on the challenging and iterative process of shaping them. There remain several unanswered questions that the next phase of research will seek to uncover, including:
How can adaptive environmental protocols dynamically account for unexpected mission overlaps or conflicting objectives in real time?
Under what conditions should international governance frameworks like public purpose trusts exert arbitration, especially in high-stakes regions like PSRs or SSSIs?
Can emerging digital tools like predictive risk models and digital twins scale to reliably track multiple simultaneous lunar operations?
What are the next key milestones to field-test ideas like harmonisation areas, or to test cooperative licensing agreements, whether within Artemis partnerships or beyond?
As missions continue to ramp up, these questions will help shape the first operational era of lunar/cislunar space. Building the technologies, the frameworks, and the governance systems to answer them is both an urgent and complex opportunity; flexibility and iteration are key to evolving the frameworks in a comprehensive manner. Continued dialogue, experimentation, and multiple perspectives beyond existing actors are needed to develop robust systems.
As the research progresses, a focus on 1-2 specific lunar use cases will be captured in order to deliver a relevant and actionable framework for upcoming missions. Plausible options with near-term viability are surface fission power and End-of-Life considerations. As we continue to solve for surviving the lunar night and enable broader mission parameters (base operations, extraction, science), nuclear power systems are top of mind for many stakeholders. End-of-Life considerations signal the importance of managing and mitigating debris generated from increased operational activity.
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