Applying Te Urewera to planets in space
Space resources and places in our solar system could be granted legal personality, much the way the former Te Urewera National Park is now considered a legal person, two academics have suggested.
The Te Urewera Act of 2014 was the first law in the European legal tradition to grant personality to land and natural resources.
Adapted and applied to space objects such as asteroids, it ‘‘holds promise for a widely agreed, efficient, and equitable regime for managing space resources and could also be extended to the governance of space habitats’’, wrote Eytan Tepper and Christopher Whitehead in the December edition of the journal, New Space.
The two Canadian legal academics note there is a ‘‘gold rush’’ under way for space resources such as asteroids and a ‘‘land rush’’ for space habitats on the Moon and Mars.
Private American companies such as Planetary Resources, Deep Space Industries, and Moon Express are developing plans to mine space resources, especially asteroids.
In 2015, the United States passed the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, which grants US citizens title over all asteroid resources they obtain, something Tepper and Whitehead wrote was ‘‘controversial’’.
Meanwhile, the US, Russia, China, Japan, India, and European Union have all announced plans for human missions and often settlements on the Moon or Mars. Aerospace giant Lockheed Martin plans a Mars base camp.
Much new science and especially engineering will be necessary to complete these mining and colonising missions.
If those enormous technical hurdles can be overcome, governance of space and its resources will likely emerge as important issues, in part because conflicts may arise.
The two academics found the Te Urewera model has ‘‘potential for success’’.
It combines two legal traditions – Western common law and the Ma¯ ori world view, especially mana, according to the authors.
Te Urewera is now ‘‘a legal entity, and [has] all the rights, powers, duties, and liabilities of a legal person’’.
Of course, the land and its natural resources are not a person. Instead, Te Urewera is governed by a board of humans, some appointed by the Crown, some by iwi.
They are obliged to plan and care for Te Urewera while giving expression to Tu¯ hoe concepts.
Applied to space objects – say, platinum with an asteroid – the Te Urewera model would mean it would be given legal personhood and a board would be appointed to be responsible for it.
The board could allow, for example, platinum mining while also allowing space tourism and scientific research.
The rules would ‘‘ideally provide’’ that these activities would not interfere with the ability of others to exercise their freedom of exploration and use of outer space, the authors wrote.
They were careful to note Te Urewera is not a panacea but rather ‘‘inspiration and ideas for alternative models for spacebased governance’’.
In an email, Tepper and Whitehead addressed the ‘‘billion-dollar question’’ – why would a space power voluntarily restrict its rights and operations in space?
One answer was individual space states would benefit if all space states signed up to the same regime. Co-operation in space is important.
‘‘The major question will be this: when technology advances and there are therefore several actors ready and willing to mine space resources, what model of governance will they deem best serves their interests? The aim of the paper is to have them consider the model under the Te Urewera Act, along with any others.’’
Another answer could be that space and everything in it has mana.