Sustainable Development Goals vs Space – 2/2

How the Outer Space could help us to reach the World’s ambitious targets

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Outer Space, the transformative element that could push the UN Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, to the next level. Is it applicable to all SDGs or only to a few? For the first seven it is evident (see article Sustainable Development Goals vs Space 1/2). Let’s have a look at the remaining ones…

Poverty, hunger, good health, education, gender equality, water and energy: these issues are at the core of the first seven UN Sustainable Development Goals. What else? Here follow the other themes included in this important program aimed at saving the World.

SDG 8 – Decent Work and Economic Growth
This goal is obviously connected to SGD1 (Erase Poverty) and SDG2 (Zero Hunger), and space is a key contributor to it, offering the same benefits it brings to the other two. Furthermore, space is also influencing directly the growth of the global economy: the new space industry is ramping up year after year, Morgan Stanley expects it to hit US$ 1.1 trillion by 2040, while Bank of America estimates that it will grow eight times bigger in the next thirty years, reaching US$ 2.7 trillion in 2045.
Obviously, such a huge growth will bring a great contribution also to the overall employment levels, requiring a proportional increase of new and qualified jobs.
Looking even further in time, the exploitation of space resources instead of terrestrial ones will support our unstoppable economic expansion in a more sustainable way for our planet, and this is the basis of the Spacepolitan thought (see the Spacepolitans Manifesto).

SDG 9 – Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
For decades space has provided the ideal infrastructure for telecommunications and geopositioning services. This is very likely the most known benefit, experienced by many of us in our daily activities, and it is headed to expand even more in future years, with the launch to LEO of the internet satellite constellations and the 5G cellular network extensions.
And what can be said about innovation? Space is innovation, space exploration means doing things never tried before, inventing solutions, developing new technologies. Is there a more powerful flywheel to accelerate innovation itself? If so, it is hard to find one, probably only high energy physics and quantum physics can play a similar role, but not as wide in its range of applications.
Lastly, according to the Spacepolitans tenet (see again the Spacepolitans Manifesto), when heavy industries move into Outer Space, we will finally be able to host only truly sustainable activities on the planet , removing the main source of pollution.

SDG 10 – Reduced Inequalities
This SDG aims at reducing inequality within and among countries in terms of income, age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, religion, and so on.
Satellite data can support, plan and monitor mobility and migration of people, especially between different areas of the world, as well as assist in improving refugees’ conditions, disaster planning and emergency response.
Again, the next connectivity services based on satellites will also help to reduce the so called “digital divide”, bringing access to the internet and information all over the world, as already mentioned in SDG4 (Quality Education) paragraph.
However, space could also introduce some risk, that could be named the “space divide”, since exploiting space requires great initial investments and the most disadvantaged countries could be left out. However, risks can often be transformed into opportunities. This is the case of UNOOSA initiative Access to Space for All, which is helping developing countries to become emerging space nations, by facilitating satellite deployments and, in the near future, microgravity and exploration experiments.Kenya, the first country to participate, is now operating its first satellite in orbit. Mauritius‘satellite will be deployed in space in 2021, and more countries will follow suit in the near future.
Then, although it may seem repetitive, if implemented in the right way, the “good old” Space Tax should indeed reduce inequalities, sharing benefits also with SDG1 (erase poverty), SDG2 (zero hunger), and SDG8 (Decent Work and Econimic Growth).

SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities and Communities
GPS, 5G and IoT satellite communication, Earth Observation technologies are important contributions that space can make towards achieving this goal and in support of the realization of the so-called smart cities. This new concept of urbanization leverages on data connection between devices and vehicles, but also on new ways to monitor air pollution or the state of infrastructures. It is then easy to see that the above space technologies are the perfect enablers to realize the cities of the future.
Space can even contribute to save lives in our cities, by providing precious information to support rescue in case of any form of disaster. It can even help to prevent it, especially the kind that is not taken into consideration by most people: the issue of potentially hazardous objects, also known as the asteroid threat. Ever heard about Chelyabinsk? It’s a Russian city which became newsworthy in 2013, after a small meteor of just twenty meters of diameter exploded over the city, at an altitude of thirty kilometers, injuring more than one thousand people and damaging over seven thousand buildings. How can space help to address this kind of events? Nowadays there are a lot of initiatives aimed at mapping all Near Earth Ojbects, or NEOs, the most likely impactors. NASA itself received specific instructions by the American Congress to find and track them, in order to be able to predict such disgraceful impact events.
National space agencies sent already many spacecrafts to make rendezvous with asteroids and understand better their nature (i.e. NASA Dawn mission). Some of them took and are currently taking samples back to Earth (i.e. Jaxa Hayabusa2 mission), and others will soon be launched to test trajectory deflection strategies and technologies (i.e. NASA DART mission). So, investing in these space technologies could really help us not to end up like the dinosaurs! Interesting, isn’t it? However, it is a topic that deserves a dedicated post (mmm… good idea!).

SDG 12 – Responsible Consumption and Production
If you consider the benefits already identified for SDG6 (Clean Water) and SDG7 (Affordable Energy), you will realise that they apply also to this SDG, since they are strongly related.
Another important application of actual space technologies is the so called Smart Farming: satellite data are used in crop cultivation to cut or even get rid of the use of pesticides, whilst increasing land productivity. Then we have livestock grazing, images from space and herds geolocaliztion are helping the new “space cowboys” improving the yield of their work, just managing better the available resources.
Talking about technology transfer, in addition to what has been said for SDG6 and SD7, the development of In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) technologies could be transferred to terrestrial operations in order to use available resources in a more effective way. Need an example? Let’s take 3D printing construction capabilities. To develop future bases on the Moon or even on Mars, we could not bring a huge amount of construction materials from the Earth, since it would be too expensive. So, the basic idea is to take only construction tools and use any resource available there. NASA ran a competition about 3d printed buildings, and many startup companies participated, proving that this technology is already feasible. The winner, AI Space Factory, demonstrated the construction of a 3D printed habitat, named Marsha, a future Martian habitat. Furthermore, they developed a terrestrial habitat, Tera, built with the same technology, using a fraction of the resources commonly used in standard constructions. As we know, the construction industry is responsible of introducing a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere, so the positive side effects of this 3D printing construction technologies can again be beneficial to other SDGs (see below)…
Thinking about the distant future, as already said and restated for SDG8 and SDG9, if we don’t move population and production into Outer Space, and continue to consume our resources at the current rate, we will completely exhaust our beloved planet with no chance to recover.

SDG 13 – Climate Action
If we want to understand what climate change is, we need to consider scientific data, like air and water temperature, sea level, ice and snow coverage, extreme weather conditions, CO2 levels, and many more, gathering them from the entire planet.The only way to do so is to send special satellites to orbit, as already shared in “Observing the Earth From Space”, one of our previous posts. Monitoring and analyzing these data, year by year, will be the key to describe various climate dynamics and to unveil their possible causes, separating natural and artificial ones, and finally have a chance to mitigate the rapid changes we see today.
Focusing specifically on CO2 levels in the atmosphere, scientists all over the world have identified the increase in this measure as one of the most important accelerating factors of climate change, CO2 being a gas involved in the so called greenhouse effect which causes the average air temperature to increase over time.
Is there anything that space development could offer, besides helping with CO2 and temperature measurements? Of course there is and it is a mitigating factor. Let us talk about CO2 removal technologies. For years, devices have been used on space stations and crewed spacecrafts to remove CO2 from their artificial atmosphere. However, today they cannot be applied directly to the Earth’s atmosphere for various technical reasons which perhaps could be fixed in the future. But there is another new project that could help in the short run: a study led by the University of California and the Berkeley Lab aimed to develop a technology that will allow to capture the CO2 available in the Martian atmosphere, to help would-be settlers on Mars. This new machine, called Biohybrid, can capture the energy of sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into building blocks for organic molecules, to be used in the manufacturing of plastics, fuel and even drugs in situ on Mars. But the most interesting thing for this SDG is that the Biohybrid can also pull CO2 from the air on our planet, finally helping to mitigate issues related to climate change.

SDG 14 – Life Below Water
Here we are again with many benefits from Earth Observation:

• mapping and monitoring of natural and protected areas,
• assessment and monitoring of marine and coastal resources,
• fishing vessel tracking and navigation to monitor illegal, unregulated and unreported fisheries,
• water temperature monitoring (see also SDG13),
• identification of algal blooms,

just to list “a few”.
However, satellite data are already helping to support another important issue about water: plastic litter. Many projects have already started to use data from satellites to localize, track and monitor plastic concentration. These data will help to take action not only about its removal, but also identifying its sources and stopping the increase of plastic waste pollution in the water.
Going a step further, actually submarine habitats are helping astronauts to prepare for their life in space. In the same way, lessons learned in the construction of space habitats like the ISS could improve the construction of submarine habitats, that could be used for monitoring and running advanced studies of marine life and for improving its preservation.

SDG 15 – Life On Land
Like SDG14, this goal is specifically about how humans could preserve other life forms than their own. Preserving biodiversity, fighting desertification, managing forests: all these activities are part of this incredibly important commitment. Space is a great ally. Satellite data support the monitoring of endangered species (GPS tracking for wildlife) and protected areas (Bio-geophysical Variable Mapping), as well as detecting and monitoring wildfires that destroy acres of forests every year all over the planet.
Nevertheless, we know that monitoring, tracking, detecting are not enough. We should leverage on space more, using it as an enabler to finally declare and treat the entire planet as a natural reserve, an immense sanctuary of life. This could be the most important achievement of the human race and we all should bear this in mind in every action we take, every day. Already heard about this? Correct! It was the second big “A” in our Spacepolitans Manifesto.

SDG 16 – Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
Finally a goal that space cannot help us achieve. Or maybe it can. Wait a moment, has anyone said that space technologies are helping UN peacekeeping missions? Correct! Nowadays the UN peacekeeping missions are strongly supported by satellite data to monitor wars and conflicts.
And has anyone mentioned that the laws and regulations for a peaceful use of space are a powerful justice asset? Correct again! The Space Treaty, the Moon Treaty, and the other agreements of the international space law have been developed in the name of peace and justice and they cover:

• non-appropriation of outer space by any one country,
• arms control,
• the freedom of exploration,
• liability for damage caused by space objects,
• the safety and rescue of spacecraft and astronauts,
• the prevention of harmful interference with space activities and the environment,
• the notification and registration of space activities and scientific investigations,
• the exploitation of natural resources in outer space,
• the settlement of disputes.

It is already a lot of stuff! And much more will be needed to support the exponential growth of the new space economy, as well as the development and strengthening of institutions like the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space and the UNOOSA (UN Office for Outer Space Affairs) itself.

SDG 17 – Partnership for the Goals
A successful sustainable development agenda requires partnerships between governments, the private sector and civil society. Many space missions and projects are based on international collaboration, putting together efforts, funds and resources. The best example is obviously the International Space Station (ISS), which, for more than 20 years, has been the perfect result of the combined work of several countries.
However, space is not only a topic for partnership between countries, it also involves many different companies from the private sector. The various national space agencies, the UNOOSA and the new space economy itself are pushing further such collaborations. NASA Commercial Space Economy Program is a clear example, and so is the China Commercial Space Alliance, to highlight that public-private partnership is a worldwide key factor for space development and for the success of many projects supporting the SDGs.

…

We have reached the end, haven’t we? Well, to be honest, not yet! There is an initiative worth to be cited in this context, led by four international students, named SDG18 – Space for All. Their vision is about adding another SDG, focusing on space, and they want to bring it directly to the UN. Their objective is to increase the awareness about space as the great enabler to support the SDG agenda, as we have seen in these last entries.This potential new goal will be different from previous SDGs, although closer to SDG17, focusing on how to accelerate the Sustainable Development Agenda, instead of addressing a particular issue. They have already held a UN75 Dialogue on this matter and nowadays they are currently creating an organisation finalized to achieve their final goal!

Although probably unaware, but they are well on their way to Becoming Spacepolitans, like all of you who have reached the end of this long review. So, inspired by what we have learnt together and by SDG18, let us shout out the brand new Spacepolitans motto: Space for All, All for Space!