Planetary parks twenty years on. Balancing space protection with development

Abstract

With increasing activity in space by both national space agencies and private organizations, there is a renewed purpose in considering how to achieve the protection of certain regions of the extraterrestrial environment, yet allow for the commercial development of space to encourage a permanent human presence beyond Earth. This paper revisits the idea of planetary parks twenty years on. One advantage of this concept is that, like national parks on Earth, they can allow for the protection of land for many reasons including scientific value, aesthetic beauty, sites containing historical artefacts, and others. None of these motivations are mutually exclusive and they can be manifested to different degrees in different places. Planetary parks provide the flexibility to incorporate these motivations within a single framework. Outside planetary parks, land can be developed and transformed. Planetary parks offer a way to move beyond the generic notion of ‘planetary protection’ towards a more local targeted preservation mechanism, encouraging the emergence of a space environmental ethic in parallel with the objective of commercial space development.