On the Commercialization of the Appropriation of Natural Resources of Celestial Bodies

INTRODUCTION. The article examines the issue of such a common word combination in the practice of communication on international “space” platforms as “space resources”, which, without proper consideration of the vocabulary and terminology base of current international law, was introduced into vocabulary circulation there as a result of borrowing and uncritical use of part of the name of the informal Hague International Space Resources Governance Working Group, created in 2014. Another issue under study is how, outside the framework of international treaty and customary law, the issue of granting legal entities and individuals the right to appropriate natural resources of celestial bodies (NRCB) is resolved under the pretext of commercializing space activities.

 MATERIALS AND METHODS. The materials for the study are the international space law (ISL) treaties, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties of 1969, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea of 1982, reports of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), as well as its Legal Subcommittee (LSC), statements of some delegations at their sessions, works of Russian and foreign scientists, regulatory acts and documents of the USA, New Zealand, the Hague International Space Resources Governance Working Group. Carrying out a comparative analysis of regulatory acts and documents of the named states and group, as well as some provisions of international treaties (taking into account their conceptual, vocabulary and terminological content), the author uses the general scientific method of cognition.

RESEARCH RESULTS. The current increase in interest to the issue of the development of the NRCB has revealed the need to clarify the international legal basis for this concept for its use in further possible practical and international legal actions of the global space community aimed at solving problems associated with development of outer space. The article examines the relationship between the concept of NRCB, the terms natural resources and minerals used in international law, and the American term space resource. The use of the first concept and the last term to regulate legal relations in space outside the limits of state supremacy makes it necessary to clarify what outer space is from the point of view of the current ISL.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS. According to the norms of the current customary and treaty ISL, states only have the right to dispose (for scientific purposes) samples of mineral and other substances of celestial bodies that, in essence, represent NRCB. Assessing the currently existing international legal basis for the development of the NRCB, it can be noted that the offensive implementation of the commercialization of their appropriation is carried out with an artificially created stagnation in the development of the ISL and simultaneous attempts to use the norms of national legislation outside the territorial supremacy of states in order to create a new norm of international customary law there. The ultimate beneficiary of these norms will be global financial structures, for whose interests are commercialized space activities.

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