Dr. Val Munsami & Claire A. Nelson

CONVERSATIONS ON THE FUTURE WE WANT: UN SDGS AND AFRICA’S AGENDA 2030

with Dr. Val Munsami & Claire A. Nelson

IT is June and we are exploring the question on how we share space. There is no UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) specifically targeted towards space. Rather there are those who feel the successful accomplishment of the SDGs are all linked to how we share space. In this conversation I speak with Dr. Val Munsami, who is Chancellor of the International Space University. Given his role as someone who is embedded at senior levels of the space ecosystem, I am looking forward to hearing his perspectives on how we share space.

NELSON: Greetings and salutations, I’m speaking to Val Munsami, who has recently been appointed the chancellor of the International Space University in Strasbourg, France. So, let’s begin by asking you a little bit more for about the International Space University. What is it? What is the mission?

MUNSAMI: The International Space University was, established in the 1980s. The space sector is one of the biggest and growing sectors in the world today. And there was not then a tertiary institution that was solely focused on educating the workforce of the future. And so, this is where the International Space University came along. Over the years, it’s grown in stature, in terms of the alumni base, and in terms of the curriculum, because the space domain has been evolving over the years. Today we speak about space 4.0, which takes account of the increasing private industry involvement in the space sector.

But if you go back to space 1.0, which is just astronomy, we see that the whole context and the policy environment for space, has changed over the last few decades. And so, the ISU has been keeping in step, in terms of the changes in the space sector. And that’s very important, especially from a curriculum perspective. The ISU’s goal is to train the workforce in terms of the relevance of what’s required today in the sector. I would like to highlight two flagship projects or programs. First, the Space Studies Program, which is a nine-week course. What is great about the Space Studies Program is that it’s not restricted to engineers and scientists. It welcomes musicians, artists, lawyers, and so on. In fact, any discipline can apply. We see students from multidisciplinary facets, even the medical field, and so on. They are brought together and form this kind of student base, which brings different perspectives, every year, into the space domain. The course is structured with students getting lectured by some

of the leading experts in the world, i.e., astronauts, people that are responsible for the astronaut corps, scientists working on the medical research in space, engineers and so on. This year, we have as guest speaker, the chief scientist from NASA -- Jim Green. So, students are getting a high caliber of experts coming through to lecture.

And so, through the nine weeks, I think the first five or six weeks is very intensive lectures, but towards the latter part of it, the students get to do a technical project. The group is normally split into three, and each group takes a topical issue and addresses it. The students must come together (in a relatively very short space of time) and develop a mini thesis. This essentially provides the networking and learning platform to undertake technical projects in a very constrained environment, in terms of time and resources. There’s a shorter version, which runs over six weeks, called the Southern Hemisphere Space Studies Program. Normally it has been held in Australia, but the plan is to move that around into different geographic regions in the South. There’s also a Master’s in Space Studies which is a full year course. That includes research-based projects as well. This is where ISU is today.

NELSON: We are talking here about the future, and I’m wondering if the inclusion of a space futures program is contemplated. How do we provide the education and training platform for helping us think through some of the thorny issues that are being raised regarding how we share space? How we share the future? What are your thoughts on expanding your curriculum to having a specific and in-depth articulation of futures thinking?

MUNSAMI: The ISU is obviously keeping in step in terms of what the current environment looks like, and what the current demands are. To give you some perspectives, we’re not looking at it just from a technical point of view. You can choose many different sorts of subjects or themes at the ISU. You can do space business, space economics, space policy, or space and society, which is futures oriented. Electives are therefore not limited just to the engineering and scientific discipline. We include the social aspect and the policy aspects as well. In that regard, I think we are keeping in step not only from a developed country perspective, but also from the point of view of the developing countries.

With the ISU, we have what is called three I’s. International, meaning geographic spread; Interdisciplinary, where we have the very different domains that’s coming through together; and, Intercultural, where the students get to experience each other’s culture. In nine weeks, you get to experience not just the technical aspects, but also the social aspects of dealing with space i.e., policy, future perspectives, and the inter-cultural dimensions.

NELSON: For most developing countries, the big question is why space? There is no SDG for Space, but there is a blossoming

interest in establishing an SDG for Space. What are your thoughts about a SDG for Space, or space and its utility in helping to achieve the SDGs?

MUNSAMI: At the moment, we don’t talk about space for the SDGs. Space is ancillary. Mainstream policy must look at the social, economic and political aspects, and tie in sustainability issues. One does not invest in space for the sake of space. Space is an enabling tool for the broader policy domain. It contributes to what we call evidence-based policy making. If you want to know what happened with regards to your environmental resources, such as water quality, agriculture, rural development, or urban planning, you look at historical data and once you make the policy, you need to monitor the effects of the policy implementation. That’s when remote sensing and earth observation becomes very critical. Space products and services are there to support government in terms of delivering on the socio-economic, environmental and political issues. There are studies that state that to achieve the SDGs you cannot do it without space. SDG 13 on climate change, for example, 60 to 70% of the essential climate variables that are used to monitor climate change come from satellite platforms. You cannot do that solely through ground-based measurements.

If you want to look at water resource management, how do you monitor the oceans? You cannot do that by ships, as it is impractical to monitor the entire coastal economic zones. The only way you can do that is by observing the ocean from space. And then, there’s some issues like COVID-19, as a classic example. Actually, COVID-19 gave us a good wakeup call on the utility of space. In South Africa, we’ve used space (satellite data) quite innovatively, during the COVID-19 lockdown and restrictions, as an example. When the initial restrictions were imposed in South Africa, we could see, at a glance, what was happening on our roads and how the traffic was moving across provincial boundaries. You could look at open parking at shopping malls and see how much cars were in there and so on.

When we started to impose lockdowns within provincial boundaries, we could see the traffic actually moving to beat the looming deadlines. And so, we could get a sense as to what was happening on the ground. We also used geospatial information to address a number of operational questions such as, how many health workers to deploy in different areas for administering vaccines based on the population density? Earth observation of satellite imagery could be overlaid with key vector data. The National Corona Council Command Center in South Africa has been using satellite imagery to aid in its decision making. Given the understanding of how space intersects and supports our interventions around COVID-19, it puts space front-center, right now, in the battle against a global pandemic.

NELSON: In the past, the issue of telecommunications and the ITU, gave rise to conversations about orbital slots and spectrum rights. But, more often than not, the voice of the non-spacefaring nations have not been present in some of these conversations. You have

been in the forefront of building foundational space capacity for developing countries, how might we improve the capacity to project the concerns of the small island development states and the lesser developed countries who are barely surviving at this point, in this conversation about space? How do we build the foundational capacity that will allow all of us to achieve better global sustainability?

MUNSAMI: First of all, I think the policy drivers have changed since the late 1950s, 1960s. Initially because of the cold war, space was seen as proving technical superiority. And so, space exploration was one of the core focus areas, landing on the moon, exploring other planets, and so on. But I think the policy drivers have changed because we’ve seen the utility of space in terms of what benefits we can extract through earth observation and telecommunications. Right now, we can’t have this call without telecommunication satellites. Global Navigation Satellite Services (GNSS) for safety of life and GNSS applications has become very important in developing countries where, for example, you have informal settlements. Here in South Africa, we have quite a few informal settlements. There’s no post office addresses, but you can use a GPS location pin to give an address for each dwelling. And when we are doing your national census, we can overlay that data on geospatial maps for each dwelling to answer fundamental questions, such as how many people are living in this abode, and what is the net income? We are therefore able to look at different statistics around the population based on just GNSS and earth observation applications.

Space exploration is quite interesting but not many developing countries are focusing on landing on the moon or going to Mars right now. It’s quite an expensive endeavor; even when about taking an astronaut to the international space station, it costs about US$70 to $80 million. That’s not a cheap ride. There are not many space-emerging countries that can afford that. So, you have to make intelligence choices as to where you play, with regards to space. Now, how do we change that conversation?

I think the biggest challenges are around the political front and getting politicians to understand the value proposition and utility of space. I don’t think we have necessarily cracked that yet, because the moment you speak about space, they believe we are talking of going to the moon, or to Mars, but that’s far from it.

The fact is if you switch off all the satellites today, we are going to have a real problem. Even our economic transactions depend on space technology. We don’t realize it. It’s just seamlessly integrated into our IT network. Once our policy makers grasp how important space is, in respect of our daily lives, I think we are going to start to think and act very differently. : Space science and technology does not exist in isolation. Actually, the foundations of a space program is based on what has been invested in the science and technology landscape. Because space is ancillary. Space is there to support health, education, environment, and many other scientific domains. A weak science and technology base, weakens your space program. From a policy perspective, we need to keep all of that balancing in mind when we are looking at space. Indeed, sustainability is the key policy driver for space in emerging and developing countries.

NELSON: Indeed, if you want to achieve the SDGs, you want to have the ability to better educate, better feed, better healthcare, telehealth, precision agriculture, and education in rural areas. You must have foundational STEM literacy in the K-12 schools, so you have the students who have the math, the physics, and the data science necessary to even just read basic data and understand what they’re looking at. And then, furthermore, on the policy side of it we need to make sure that we have the support of the politicians, because usually it’s going to be the lawyers and political science majors that go into politics, not these scientists and engineers. We must make sure that they are science literate, so they can make better decisions as politicians and technocrats.

MUNSAMI: Absolutely, I fully agree that we must have a whole of society approach.

NELSON: I have mixed feelings about this. Do you think that we need to have a separate SDG-18 that’s related to space? I talk about it, but I’m not sure it’s necessary or desirable. What are your thoughts on that?

MUNSAMI: Like you, I’m not sure that there is need for a separate SDG 18 on space. I think that if you take the 17 sustainable development goals, we see that each one of those requires space science and technology in some way of other. So, space is cross-cutting and already prevalent in the SDGs. In Africa, we talk about Agenda 2063 which has got 20 goals, very similar to the SDGs. And the interesting thing is that when the Agenda 2063 was being conceptualized, there was a working paper called “The Common African Position”, which was actually an input into the Agenda 2063 and subsequently used as one of many working papers for the SDGs, when the SDGs was being crafted. And that is why we have such good synergy between African Union (AU) Agenda 2063 and the SDGs.

And when you examine the objectives of the African Union Commission, what you pick up is that 90% of the work of the African Union Commission requires space science and technology. You can’t run away from that particular fact.

NELSON: Another fact is that we did not anticipate the private sector having a space exploration capability. Now we have people throwing up satellites and CubeSats by the thousands at a time. That’s my concern. We have these ideas about mining in space - asteroid mining, lunar mining, and so on. We have people talking about designing capsules to jettison waste, as they travel to Mars. And so, the question then is, how might we, through, for example, The International Space University (ISU), educate and train people around the world to have the conversation on how we share space. How do you think the ISU, or the other organizations you’re involved in, should conduct the education necessary to support the conversations for better decisions? How do you think the ISU might evolve? Do you see more partnerships with other educational institutions? How do we scale-up the work of the ISU for the global public good?

MUNSAMI: The ISU program includes space policy and law. We talk about the UN treaties and conventions, the 1960 Outer Space Treaty, which promulgated the idea of the peaceful uses of outer space, the Moon Treaty and the Liability Conventions, and so on. We include the UNCOPUOS (UN Committee on the Peaceful Use of Outer Space) Guidelines on The Long-term Sustainability of

Outer Space, which provides a framework to limit space debris, manage space traffic, and prohibit anti-satellite tests. We teach all of this. We don’t want developing nations to be caught on the back foot, and not have access to space in the long run. All of us need to use outer space sparingly and efficiently, which is a key resource for all of us.

NELSON: When you think about the ISUin the year 2030, what would be your headline of choice? As the new chancellor, what will you do that is going to make a difference?

MUNSAMI: Because of the linkage with the SDGs, a lot of national development plans are tied to 2030. So, when students come to the ISU, we want to make sure that what they’re getting out of the various courses, is relevant to what they can take back home. And so, we have successfully included something more substantial around the SDGs in terms of curriculum and focus as well. Accessibility is another big issue, because ISU is not necessarily cheap by any means. So, by 2030, in order to support participation of students coming from developing countries, we should have raised the global brand awareness; and increased accessibility in terms of moving the program, not just keeping it just in the North, but moving it to the Southern hemisphere and the islands as well. Just to create a bit more awareness and visibility about the ISU. And then, obviously, that will impact on the accessibility of students to the ISU programs. At present, we are exploring setting up an endowment fund, to ensure the sustainability of the University and in the near future start leveraging funds to bring in more students from different geographic reach into the ISU. So those are the kinds of ideas that we are exploring now, that we hope will lead to greater successes by 2030.

NELSON: In 1969, was the first time man stepped foot on the moon. Tell me about 2069. If you had to look out into the far future, thinking about all these accords, going back to Mars, space mining. etc. what do you hope the alumni who would have been educated to ensure, ‘how we share space?’

MUNSAMI: In Africa alone, in the last five years, we’ve seen just over 20 space agencies being formed. The primary reason for that is that there is now an awareness of the strategic utility of space at a national level. Whether they have that capability or not, it is something that countries are grappling with. One of the key components from an ecosystem point of view, is the need for strong human capital development programs. A sustainable space program requires that a country trains its own engineers and scientists. You can’t import technologies and then try to force fit that into your local environment. You’ve got to have the technical capability on the ground to maximize the utility of space science and technology. When developing countries start to do that adequately, in terms of building capabilities in STEM education, and in the engineering and scientific domains, I think the immediate focus is going to be, how do we use space science and technology or the applications, products and services, whether it’s earth observation, telecommunications, or global navigation satellite services, or GPS as most people like to call it - for our own socio-economic, environmental development. After you build the basis and the foundation, by the 2040s I think you’re going to see many developing countries starting to be more adventurous. And there might be spinoffs into, let’s get an astronaut in space, for example. Let’s partner with other countries in terms of, maybe sending up a payload into the moon, or maybe to Mars as well. Developing countries might not afford having their own satellites or probes going to Mars, but the landscape is opening from a commercial point of view, where they can now put up a payload on a platform, for example, that’s going to Mars.

Opportunities for developing countries are increasing, and I think developing countries are going to take advantage of that opening. You’re going to see a lot more, in terms of the levelling of the playing field in terms of access to space. We might not have the big budgets of Europe, and NASA, and so on, but the cost barriers are coming down, with the increasing involvement of the industry. The price tag for putting a payload on the international space station, or landing a payload on the moon, or going to Mars, is becoming more and more affordable.

I think 2069, you’re going to see developing countries more involved in space exploration. On whether we’re going to get to space mining, I think that’s a huge possibility. The Outer Space Treaty, which says that space is a province of all mankind, is going to be really tested, because how do we share the economic benefits of space exploration when just a few countries have invested heavily. The protocols for the responsible use of other space is going to be very core. I think we’re going to see more regulations by 2069, for us to be more responsible, in terms of our activities in outer space.

NELSON: Thank you for your insight. Ad Astra.

THE AUTHOR

Dr. Valanathan (Val) Munsami is Chancellor of the International Space University, Space Strategy/Business Expert, and Co-Founder of the African Space Leadership Institute.

TECHNICAL NOTES