SPACE TECHNOLOGIES FOR GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE: TRANSITIONS IN THINKING, DIFFUSIONS OF POWER.

The Information Age has fuelled many transitions in thinking about environment, security and world politics, including the growing need for states to engage in and secure access to space technologies not simply for power projection, but because of the lifeline they provide to the world economy and knowledge about resources and the environment. From a backdrop of economic liberalization, growing dependencies by large and small states on Earth observation and communication satellites, and the tenuous balance between private, civilian and military interests in space for commerce, environment and defence, this paper will address the potential opportunity for international collaboration in Earth observation to hedge against policies of unilateral space control by dominant military actors. Through an examination of a need for cooperation in global change research utilizing Earth observation from space, the paper characterizes this cooperation as a form of environmental governance consistent with a power shift beyond U.S. dominance. As an original leader in global change research and a growing stakeholder in the competitive commercial remote sensing market, the U.S. has created unique challenges, responsibilities and opportunities for itself in balancing dominant military discourses of space control with global demands for environmental information. Past and present proposals for institutionalized cooperation in Global Earth Observing Systems, the European Union's recent Global Monitoring for Environment and Security initiative and the U.S. Earth Observation System will be discussed as potential models for responding to these challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]