AUTHOR: SAMUEL JARDINE
Since 2020, 76 countries have signed the Artemis Accords, and 13 states have joined the International Lunar Research Station, yet only five countries have ever landed on the Moon. In Lunar Takes #2, Samuel Jardine asked international experts Hasan Abbas (UN ATLAC Co-Chair), Julia Selman Ayetey (Vice President of the African Association of Air & Space Law), Dr. Christopher Newman (Professor of Space Law and Policy at Northumbria University) and Dr. Alessandra Marino (Senior Lecturer in Geography and Environmental Studies at The Open University) to share, in their personal capacity, their perspectives on inclusion, representation and shared benefits in lunar governance, and on the risks if non-spacefaring and emerging spacefaring states are not meaningfully included.
International interest in the Moon now extends far beyond the countries currently able to operate there. So far, only five countries have successfully soft-landed a spacecraft on the Moon, but since their launch in October 2020, the Artemis Accords have grown from eight signatories to 76, while 11 additional states have joined China and Russia’s International Lunar Research Station as partners. This has raised the question, multilaterally, about how countries with different capabilities should collectively shape and influence emerging rules governing lunar activity and share in its benefits. Article I of the Outer Space Treaty provides a starting point, noting that the exploration and use of the Moon shall be carried out “for the benefit and in the interests of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development”. As lunar activity expands, putting that principle into practice means considering whose perspectives inform and influence decisions and how opportunities, knowledge and other benefits are shared between all stakeholders. For this Lunar Takes #2, we invited international experts to explore inclusion, representation and benefit sharing in lunar governance, and the risks to any governance framework's legitimacy and effectiveness if non-spacefaring and emerging spacefaring states are not meaningfully included.
Note: We’ve asked the international experts to contribute their perspectives freely in their personal capacities. These views do not formally belong to their organisations or any affiliations but instead draw from their overall experience.
We have faithfully replicated their written responses.
Our experts are:
Hasan Abbas: Writing in his personal capacity, Hasan is the Co-Chair of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) Action Team on Lunar Activities Consultations (ATLAC) and Deputy Director (Arms Control, Disarmament and International Security) for Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Hasan previously served as Second Vice Chair and Rapporteur of COPUOS and as the Coordinator for the Group of 77 & China’s Task Force on Outer Space Affairs.
Julia Selman Ayetey: Vice President of the African Association of Air & Space Law and former Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Cape Coast. Julia has also served as a facilitator for the African Space Leadership Institute’s (ASLI) Space Diplomacy Course and the joint ASLI-McGill Institute of Air and Space Law Course on Space Law and Governance. She has held academic positions at several universities, including King’s College London and the University of Oxford, and is an Associate Member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators.
Dr. Christopher Newman: Professor of Space Law and Policy at Northumbria University, where he leads the ASTRA Governance Group (Air and Space Technology Regulation and Governance). He is an Associate Fellow of the Leverhulme Centre for Humanities in Space and academic adviser to 3S Northumbria, a space situational awareness company. He came to space law after earlier careers in law enforcement and legal practice. His monograph, Crime, Law and Investigation in Outer Space, is forthcoming with Edward Elgar.
Dr. Alessandra Marino: Senior Lecturer in Geography and Environmental Studies at The Open University. Alessandra works at the intersection of environmentalism, ethics, and justice in relation to extreme environments on Earth and beyond. She particularly explores how postcolonial and decolonial studies contribute to debate on knowledge production within space science and exploration. For lunar exploration, Alessandra is researching the theoretical and practical issues related to the designation of sites of scientific, environmental and cultural interest and is the PI for MoonRISE: Re-Imagining Space Environments, a £1.2m UKRI-funded project looking at sustainable and equitable lunar governance.
They were asked:
As lunar activity expands, how should the international community approach inclusion, representation, and shared benefits in lunar governance? Are there risks to legitimacy and effectiveness if non-spacefaring and emerging spacefaring states are not meaningfully included?
Response 1: Hasan Abbas
Hasan Abbas emphasised the need for capacity-building and meaningful consultation, warning that exclusion could undermine the legitimacy and effectiveness of lunar governance.
The expansion of lunar activities is outpacing the governance frameworks meant to order it, and the resulting deficit is not merely procedural, it is one of legitimacy. Article I of the Outer Space Treaty declares that the exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out “for the benefit and in the interests of all countries,” yet the operative question has always been how that province of all humankind is translated into practice when capability is so unevenly distributed.
Inclusion cannot be reduced to open-door participation in meetings that emerging and non-spacefaring states lack the technical resources to shape. Meaningful representation demands something more deliberate: sustained capacity-building, accessible information-sharing, and consultative mechanisms in which the concerns of the many are not perpetually subordinate to the operational timelines of the few. This is precisely the tension now surfacing within COPUOS, where a shared commitment to inclusive participation coexists with unresolved differences over the weight that different actors’ views should carry.
A lunar order negotiated primarily among stakeholders with developed capabilities, with others invited merely to endorse outcomes they did not author, risks reproducing the very asymmetries that have long strained multilateral space governance, and inviting the same contestation that once fragmented earlier resource regimes.
The risk is, therefore, twofold. It is a risk to legitimacy, for rules perceived as the preserve of a spacefaring minority will command neither universal acceptance nor durable authority. And it is a risk to effectiveness. Coordination, safety, and sustainability on the Moon depend upon broad buy-in, while exclusion will catalyze parallel standard-setting that will further erode common frameworks.
Response 2: Julia Selman Ayetey
Julia Selman Ayetey distinguished representation from inclusion and outlined principles for equitable benefit-sharing, including access to sites and information, environmental protection and accountability.
Representation differs from inclusion. In the context of lunar governance, representation may be achieved at international forums by ensuring diversity across gender, geographic background, expertise, and spacefaring experience. Though representation is essential, the international community must go beyond advocating for mere representation to ensuring inclusion – which encompasses removing structural barriers to active participation, the timely sharing of information, ensuring that all stakeholder voices are heard, are afforded the respect to have concerns genuinely considered, and have the ability to influence decisions at space governance institutions.
An international shared-benefits mechanism could take many forms. Whatever form the international community eventually adopts, it must consult stakeholders, including developing countries and non-state actors, and conduct regular reviews (with necessary amendments) to keep pace with technological advances. Critically, any benefits-sharing model must address the controversy over “safety zones” and the tension between the non-appropriation principle and the extraction of resources from the Moon. It should also provide a transparent and equitable (not simply equal) means of sharing the use of valuable sites and the information gained from lunar exploration, while protecting heritage sites and the broader lunar environment. Monitoring, accountability for non-compliance, and enforcement and sanction mechanisms for serious breaches will be essential. Challenges must be acknowledged, and peaceful, collaborative and sustainable solutions sought.
I believe this approach would give effect to Article 1 of the Outer Space Treaty 1967, which requires that the Moon be used “on a basis of equality”, “for the benefit and in the interests of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development”, with “free access to all areas”.
The international community is on standby to see whether the final report of the Action Team on Lunar Activities Consultation (ATLAC), due in 2027/2028, will include any of the above recommendations.
On the risks of exclusion, Julia highlighted how a lack of legitimacy could erode trust and compliance, reducing the effectiveness of lunar governance.
Absolutely. Any lunar governance framework that does not meaningfully include emerging and non-spacefaring states in its structure, management and monitoring is likely to be devoid of legitimacy. A lack of legitimacy will create uncertainty, distrust and jeopardise security and safety of lunar operations.
Without legitimacy, which requires the support of developing countries, a lunar governance framework will eventually be ineffective to some degree, whether due to reduced compliance with Moon-governing laws and norms or disputes that could escalate into full-scale conflict. Avoiding such a scenario is in the global public interest.
To minimise the repetition of historical exclusion in space-norm-setting and law-making arenas, lunar governance decision-making forums should meaningfully include non-spacefaring and emerging spacefaring states. I really want to underscore the word “meaningfully”. It goes beyond participation, to questioning which actors are determining the mode and parameters of participation. Which is why, for example, the Africa Group has recommended increased recruitment of Africans to the UNOOSA Secretariat.
Response 3: Dr. Christopher Newman
Chris Newman examined how operational practices become norms and how shared lunar domain awareness data could help emerging states scrutinise and influence those norms before they become established.
Inclusion and the late starter
When discussing ‘inclusion’ in the context of lunar governance, there is a tendency to focus on the mechanics of international institutions. Whilst understandable, this overlooks the fundamental reality that mission-specific decisions are being taken long before agenda items arrive at international fora. Lunar governance emerges from the operational practice of where landers are set down, how close they are to one another and what a safety zone turns out to mean when one is declared. States act through their operators, other states and their operators respond and over time, the pattern of action and response hardens into norms and expectations.
This cycle of norm creation leads to an asymmetry that should concern emerging spacefaring nations. Shaping operational practices as it forms is much easier than trying to shift it once established. Late entrants will not arrive with a blank slate. They will be working at occupied sites, with established operational rules that those who are already there will (with some justification) describe as the norm.
Geostationary orbit provides a clear lesson for late entrants. Developing states found many of the best positions already taken on a first-come, first-served basis. The responses to dealing with this came later. The ITU planned allotments offered only partial redress and the Bogotá declaration was actively repudiated by the major space powers.
Trust but verify
One of the obvious ways in which these emerging norms of behaviour can be identified is by observing them and the behaviours of the major actors. Observing a pattern of behaviour will allow states to object when they disapprove. This is where established fora still matter. They are where objection is registered and, in international law silence, in the face of known practice, may amount to acceptance. The corollary is that a state cannot object to a practice it does not know about. Presently, the capability to observe cislunar space and the lunar surface independently sits with a very small number of states. Much of this information is inside military programmes and the data can be restricted or redacted by those states. Everyone else relies on what operators choose to share. Registries and notification schemes are vital, but they record what actors say what they are doing, rather than what may be actually happening.
Lunar domain awareness
Any discussion of inclusion and benefit-sharing must begin with data on what is currently happening on the Moon. Lunar domain awareness is a benefit that can be shared with all states long before contested discussions on resource revenue arise. Open data, and the independent capacity to process and analyse it, would allow all states, both established and emerging, to follow, question and where necessary contest practice while it is still forming.
The risk is that emerging states gain a voice in lunar governance only after the practice they wish to contest has started to gain traction. Free and open provision of lunar domain awareness data would let states engage with lunar activity on the basis of evidence rather than relying on announcements. It would also give practical effect to every state’s stake in the Moon, at a time when the drive toward economic exploitation is crowding out other considerations. Without it, emerging states will gain a voice in lunar governance only after the practice they wish to contest has already become established.
Response 4: Dr. Alessandra Marino
Alessandra Marino set out that inclusion is fundamental to the legitimacy and sustainability of lunar governance, and that benefit-sharing must address who defines benefits and decides which lunar futures are desirable.
As lunar activities expand, inclusion should not be treated as an additional ethical consideration. It is fundamental to the legitimacy and the sustainability of lunar governance beyond the current moment. The Outer Space Treaty already establishes that exploration and use should benefit all countries, irrespective of their level of economic or scientific development, and take place without discrimination and on a basis of equality. But formal equality is not necessarily meaningful participation.
Technological capacity and ownership of space objects can themselves become sources of authority. The over-crowdedness of terrestrial orbits has already demonstrated how first-mover advantage can translate into disproportionate access and can enact a form of occupation of shared space, which requires scrutiny. If similar dynamics develop on the Moon, today’s technological inequalities prefigure tomorrow’s geopolitical inequalities, particularly as actors compete for access to valuable or strategically important lunar sites.
Not only does representation need to precede activity rather than follow it. But also, benefit-sharing is not only about making satellite data or technological outputs available. It can include different modes of knowledge-sharing, participation in infrastructure and policymaking, and opportunities for states that are not traditional space powers to help determine what activities should take place and under what conditions. These create opportunities for stronger international cooperation at a time of fragmentation. Inclusion should also extend beyond states to communities and knowledge systems that have historically been marginalised, including Indigenous perspectives.
Importantly, one should not assume that there is a single definition of “benefit”. Different communities may understand the value of the Moon and outer space differently. Effective governance must therefore create space for different values, interests and relationships with extraterrestrial environments rather than allowing narrow versions of technological, commercial, or even scientific expertise alone to determine their future.
Ultimately, I would argue that the question of benefit-sharing is not simply how the benefits of lunar activity should be distributed, but who gets to define those benefits, identify potential harms and decide what kinds of lunar futures are desirable. The hard job of diplomacy is to keep these futures open to a plurality of views. Without meaningful engagement beyond traditional space powers and hegemonic knowledge, lunar governance risks reproducing existing inequalities rather than creating a genuinely shared future.
