Aotearoa and Australia host important EO infrastructure and need to consider the social impacts of EO. Better earth-space governance systems, guided by SIA is important to reduce the harms.
Satellite Earth observations (EO) from space are transforming the way governments, civil society, and industry respond to planetary sustainability challenges. However, satellite EO also has a ‘dark side’ associated with access to land and the atmosphere, water and energy use, material harms, and uneven conditions of data capture and access, which all generate social and environmental impacts and governance challenges for Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia. Social impact assessment as a tool and practice can help to minimise the harms, and maximise potential benefits associated with the EO assemblage. Considering satellite EO as an assemblage brings to light the complex materialities, relationality, power relations, and constantly evolving nature of satellite EO data and its infrastructures.
Measuring the social impact of EO across Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia are presented here as research gaps.[CG1.1] This presentation provides examples where social impact assessments could apply across seven thematic areas: 1) the materiality of satellite infrastructure, 2) uneven conditions of data access, 3) the distance between satellite Earth observation and local context, 4) issues of trust and surveillance, 5) the commercialisation of space, 6) the cultural, social, ecological or scientific loss of dark night skies, and 7) Indigenous data sovereignty. Addressing these thematic areas is critical to future efforts towards realising locally contextualised, non-extractive, and just possibilities for satellite EO.
Carolle is a public policy PhD Candidate at the University of Auckland and a Space Security Research Fellow at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research