Conservationist Earth-Space Governance

• Conservationist Earth–space governance is a framework that applies terrestrial conservation ethics to celestial bodies, emphasizing preservation and non-interference.
• Regulatory instruments such as planetary parks, bioburden limits, and the one-eighth principle illustrate its practical application in safeguarding space environments.
• The paradigm underpins international policy by integrating scientific integrity, intergenerational justice, and ethical stewardship for sustainable space exploration.

The conservationist paradigm of Earth–space governance is a framework for managing human activities in outer space and on celestial bodies with a focus on preservation, intrinsic value, sustainability, and risk mitigation. This paradigm draws analogies from terrestrial conservation—such as wilderness reserves, national parks, and protected ecosystems—and applies them to off-world environments by advocating regulatory, ethical, and legal measures that minimize biological, physical, and cultural harm to extraterrestrial environments. Emerging from debates in planetary protection, international space law, and environmental ethics, this paradigm underpins many policy documents from organizations such as the United Nations, NASA, and COSPAR (Likavčan, 27 Aug 2025). Its theoretical and practical implications have been critically analyzed and contrasted with alternative approaches, such as the constructivist paradigm, in recent research.

1. Core Assumptions and Ethical Foundations

The conservationist paradigm regards celestial bodies (planets, moons, asteroids) as pristine entities with intrinsic value, analogous to terrestrial wilderness areas (Likavčan, 27 Aug 2025). This ontological stance treats planets as static, bounded, and isolated objects warranting strict protection protocols. The ethical backbone is “planetocentric ethics,” which assigns value to the natural state and evolutionary history of extraterrestrial environments, independent of direct utility to humans or instrumental worth. Influential scholars such as Cockell, Horneck, and Sullivan have advocated for frameworks where the primary maxim is to “cause neither physical nor biological harm to any planetary body and its ecosystems.” This imperative closely echoes the wilderness conservation ethics found in frameworks like the Antarctic Treaty and the US Wilderness Act (Likavčan, 27 Aug 2025).

Policy justifications are rooted in both intrinsic and instrumental value arguments:

• Scientific integrity: Avoiding biological or chemical contamination preserves the ability to paper planetary processes and biosignatures in their native state.
• Intergenerational justice: Reserving celestial environments as wildernesses ensures their availability for future scientific, cultural, and technological generations (Elvis et al., 2019).
• Moral obligation: As uniquely evolved “nature’s projects,” planets should be insulated from irreversible human impact.

2. Regulatory Instruments and Policy Implementations

The paradigm is operationalized through a multi-layered set of planetary protection policies, international agreements, and quantitative protocols:

• Planetary Protection Standards: Numerical bioburden limits are set for spacecraft sent to sensitive environments (e.g., a Mars-bound Category IV spacecraft must carry fewer than $5.0 \times 10^5$ total spores on hardware) (Likavčan, 27 Aug 2025). These standards, developed by agencies such as NASA and COSPAR, legally codify non-interference.
• Planetary Parks and Wilderness Reserves: Designation of “planetary parks” or wilderness areas is proposed as an analog to terrestrial conservation. For Mars, these parks are to be allocated by international panels based on scientific, aesthetic, historical, and environmental criteria, and are made off-limits to settlement, unregulated resource use, and travel (Bruhns et al., 2015, Profitiliotis et al., 2023).
• One-Eighth Principle: For the solar system as a whole, it is proposed to limit human exploitation to 1/8 of all exploitable resources, with the remainder preserved as wilderness. This creates a buffer against risks inherent to exponential economic or population growth: $U_n = (1/8) \times 2^n$, where $U_n$ is the fraction of resources exploited after $n$ doubling periods. At a typical growth rate, reaching the 1/8 threshold occurs centuries before total resource exhaustion, serving as an early “tripwire” for stewardship and policy reform (Elvis et al., 2019).

Policy Example	Quantitative Limit/Rule	Conservationist Goal
Mars bioburden (NASA)	$5.0 \times 10^5$ spores	Preventing forward contamination
One-eighth principle	$\leq 1/8$ of resource exploited	Intergenerational protection of resources
Planetary parks	Geofenced protected zones	Intrinsic, scientific, heritage value

3. Analogies to Terrestrial Conservation and Value Frameworks

The scientific and ethical rationale of the conservationist paradigm extensively draws upon terrestrial analogies:

• Wilderness/Protected Areas: The primary metaphor is that of national parks or wilderness reserves, where zones are set aside for preservation of natural values and processes. Planetary parks on Mars function as extraterrestrial analogs to Yellowstone or the Antarctic Specially Protected Areas (Profitiliotis et al., 2023, Bruhns et al., 2015).
• Intrinsic Value: Echoing biocentric terrestrial ethics, the conservationist paradigm argues for respecting the inherent worth of planetary bodies—preserving evolutionary trajectories and geologic histories independent of human activities.
• Risk of Irreversibility: Conservationist advocates stress that cross-contamination or large-scale transformation (terraforming, industrialization) entails risks that may be practically irreversible, thus requiring an abundance of caution (Likavčan, 27 Aug 2025).

4. Critiques, Contrasts, and the Constructivist Alternative

The conservationist paradigm has been critically contrasted with the constructivist paradigm, which frames the solar system as an inherently dynamic “construction site” rather than a static wilderness (Likavčan, 27 Aug 2025). Key divergences include:

• Ontology: Conservationist: isolation and statis; Constructivist: dynamic, porous, evolutionarily active.
• Governance: Conservationist: strict non-interference, absolute limits (e.g., zero biological contamination); Constructivist: risk-managed, adaptive protocols, harmonizing human activity with ongoing cosmic processes such as cross-contamination through meteorites (e.g., ALH84001).
• Policy: Conservationist approach favors “hard” prohibitions and static protected zones; constructivist approach recommends “handshake protocols” (evidence-based, flexible risk management allowing controlled interaction where justified by clear benefits and manageable risks).

The Editor’s term “conservation-as-modality” describes an overview where conservation is subsumed as one strategic option within a broader toolkit of risk management and managed construction (Likavčan, 27 Aug 2025).

5. Implications for Earth-Space Governance Structures

The conservationist paradigm informs past and current proposals for international space governance:

• Legal Basis: It draws legitimacy from the Outer Space Treaty’s non-appropriation clause (OST Article II), interpreting “province of all mankind” as grounds for global stewardship (Bruhns et al., 2015). Its policy mechanisms echo the established norms of the Antarctic Treaty System and wilderness protection legislation.
• Implementation Challenges: Strict conservation faces practical and ontological obstacles, given natural processes of cross-contamination (meteorite exchange), planetary interconnectedness, and the reality that humans are not external to the cosmic environment. Sectoral approaches (e.g., mass vs. surface area vs. volume accounting for resource usage) are proposed to make conservation quantifiable and enforceable (Elvis et al., 2019).
• Dialogue, Deliberation, and Pluralism: Approaches such as the Policy Delphi highlight the need for broad stakeholder engagement—including scientific, corporate, government, and public actors—to define conservation priorities and adapt protocols (“planetary parks” as consensus-driven rather than technocratically assigned) (Profitiliotis et al., 2023).

6. Policy Evolution: From Absolute Imperatives to Pragmatic Protocols

A primary conclusion of recent analysis is that conservation, while conceptually coherent, should not be seen as diametrically opposed to construction. Instead, it functions as one policy modality among several within a risk-managed, pragmatically constructed governance system (Likavčan, 27 Aug 2025). Rather than upholding rigid, universal prohibitions, governance frameworks are encouraged to:

• Adopt evidence-driven, dynamic protocols;
• Evaluate specific risks and benefits of human intervention on a case-by-case basis;
• Integrate both non-interference (conservation) and constructive engagement according to the scientific, ethical, and practical context.

Summary Table: Conservationist vs. Constructivist Paradigms (Likavčan, 27 Aug 2025)

Feature	Conservationist	Constructivist
Metaphor	Wilderness	Construction Site
Ontology	Isolation, stasis	Porosity, dynamism
Policy focus	Absolute non-interference	Risk-managed, adaptive engagement
Governance	Protected zones, static bioburden limits	Handshake protocols, controlled containment

7. Long-term Outlook and Integration with Broader Space Policy

The conservationist paradigm is expected to remain a foundational influence on planetary protection, international space law, and governance as human activity expands across the solar system. However, ongoing scholarship urges that conservation be situated within a pragmatic, pluralistic policy architecture, recognizing both the scientific value of wilderness preservation and the inevitability of constructive human–extraterrestrial engagement. This suggests future Earth–space governance regimes will combine elements of absolute protection with dynamic, scientifically justified protocols, aiming for sustainability, reversibility, and global equity in the management of the shared cosmic environment.