Scenario Workshop Part I

The conference theme for Commons in Space 2022 surrounds the idea of outerspace futurism, which discusses future dilemmas or struggles humanity might face in the next 50 to 100 years and beyond when dealing with earth-space social justice, resource trade-offs, and broader sustainability issues. In this workshop, participants can collectively anticipate alternative scenarios for the future of the commons in space.

The scenarios we discuss during the conference workshop are based on different variations with regard to who has access to shared resources and how those shared resources are distributed. The four alternative scenarios are 1) Tragedy of the Commons in Space as current ‘business as usual’ continues in space which leads to unsustainable use of resources of the orbit and other celestial bodies, which ultimately limits future access to space; 2) Space Club as the use of space resources becomes dominated by the rich and advanced; 3) Open Space aka Space Utopia as open access of space resources leads to thriving developments in space at the expense of sustainable development on Earth; and finally, 4) Earth-Space Sustainability where challenges on Earth and in space are addressed simultaneously with an integrative governance model to ensure a sustainable multi-planetary future.

Participants can share their perspectives, assess trade-offs among the four scenarios, and help identify opportunities and challenges for a sustainable Earth-Space future! Join us to collectively build these future scenarios for the commons in space!

Workshop Part 1 focuses on exploring future scenarios from the perspective of different types of stakeholders, and Workshop Part 2 focuses on transformation strategies to desirable futures.