Good morning. My name is graham and im the Vice President for Technology Programs and strategy here at the Atlanta Council. Im delighted to welcome you this morning to a conversation with aarti hollamaini, director of the United Nations office for outer Space Affairs. To discuss the growing role of the private sector in International Space collaboration. By the end of the decade, it is expected that the global space economy will reach 1 trillion. This figure encompasses increased investment by governments and also includes the private sector. From Internet Services enabled by satellites to the continuous observation of earth, local space activities have changed the way that societies function and how we understand our planet. As we go back to the moon, venture deeper into the solar system, and find practical ways to use Space Capabilities to probe life here on earth, its essential that we collaborate. This notion is at the heart of the work here at the Atlanta CouncilAtlantic Council, to shaeupt Global Future together, and from the first times humans explored space, accord tpwhaeugs International Partners coordination with International Partners has been essential for success and safety when thousands of miles beyond our planet. Todays conversation will explore the roles of and facilitation between governments, companies and International Organizations like the u. N. Office for outer Space Affairs. I want to thank everybody for joining this morning here in washington, d. C. , and to those tuning in here from around the world. Thank you to our team. Thank you to the manager editor of pay load, an innovative news outlet covering the business and policy for space, for moderating todays conversation. And thank you so much to aarti and her team for making time in what seems to be an extraordinarily busy schedule to join us here today. Over to you to launch into it. Thank you so much and thank you to the council for hosting this conversation. I know im so excited to sit down with you on your first visit to the u. S. And hear a little bit about what youve been doing both over in vienna and here. So to start off with, in case any of our audience are unfamiliar, can you talk a little bit about what is the u. N. s office of outer Space Affairs and how does it fit into the web of our space policy structures that are out there. Art. Aarti sure. Thank you for having me. Ive joined the u. N. System only 6 1 2 months ago after spending my whole career in industry. So im learning as i go at this point and trying to understand the system. But it was actually formed back in 1957 as an expert unit within the u. N. Secretariat. And it was formed to support what was then an Ad Hoc Committee on the peaceful use of outer space. It grew over the years and in 1992 it became the office of Space Affairs division, outer Space Affairs division, in the secretariat and in 1993 it moved to vienna and was called unoosa officially. We are secretariat to Global Navigation satellite systems where, again, weve convened the different providers, the russian, the chinese, the american, the europeans so that they can discuss interoperability and cooperation coordination. Half of our mandate is the secretariat function. Making sure that all Member States are aware of an asteroid threat coming, this sort of thing. The other half of our work, which was not there at the outset of our office at the establishment of our office, is Capacity Building. We do Capacity Building for the United NationsMember States to make sure that Member States understand and can benefit from all that Space Technology, data has to offer. That wasnt thought of when we were established back in the day. We see a lot of u. N. Offices being established more recently in recent years like counterterrorism, office for youth, and if we were setting up i think if the United Nations was establishing this office now, it would probably be very different to what it was when it was set up. Jacqueline that makes a lot of sense, given how much the industry has changed since then. You mentioned you recently left industry to come to the United Nations. What was the driver in taking this new job . What was the appeal of being at the center of all these treaties and kind of setting the standards for International Space exploration . Aarti i will say, im not a space lawyer and the assumption is that if you work for unooss, thats what you do unoosa, thats what you do. For me, ive spent a long time in industry. I was secretary general of the global satellite operators association. To be very tangible, what i did well was being the ambassador for the Satellite Communications sector and i also got criticized by my members because in our publications sometimes i would advocate around the benefits of these services and i wouldnt necessarily even mention the word satellite. And my members would say, you havent even mentioned the word satellite. And youre meant to be promoting us and our companies and our work. And i said, look, you dont actually need to talk about the technology, its the service, its the difference that it makes to peoples lives, to governments, to businesses, to schools and so on that really counts. And so in transitioning to this role, i almost feel that it tunes in finer to where i want to go and what i would like to achieve with it. So perhaps that gives you some insight into the move from industries to this role. Jacqueline absolutely. And my next question is about how space impact life on earth . Commercial providers play a Critical Role from the space ecosystem now, that was probably not the case when the office was established. But how you have seen commercial capabilities and or bit and orbit impact life on earth . Aarti that is a big question. It would have a very big answer. But if i can give you perhaps a couple of examples. We have on the one hand totally invisible outcomes from Development Capabilities which are spinoff technologies embedded into our daily lives. Whether its the memory foam in your bed or the escalators when youre going to the underground system, you know, thats on the one hand. But whats really impressive, really exciting is when you think that without imagery from space, we wouldnt even know that theres a climate crisis. If kenya we have 245 schools who are connected, isolated into in the very corners, the deepest, remote of the corn, of the country where theres corners of the country, where normally theres no infrastructure at all and you have children being able to access a project online and if i can stay with that example for a second, the satellite operator involved, they did they measured the impact of this case study, they worked with the kenyon government and with the kenyan government and with the other providers and they saw that by giving children access to a sper Net Connection interNet Connection, not 5g or anything like that, the most basic connectivity, by giving them access to one hour per week, they were able to increase the learning age by 18 months. So thats so powerful. But whats really impressive is that when you dig a little bit deeper and you see what, ok, how much does that stkpho s because, you know cost . Because, you know, youre taking complex Space Technology and youre bringing it out into the sticks where theres nothing, you know, you have power issues, you have electricity and all of basic, basic issues in these areas, the answer is 3 per month per child, per year, sorry, 3 per child per year. Thats less than the cost of a starbucks every morning, right . Thats one example we could talk example. We could talk about so many others in deforestation, Climate Change is such a massive issue right now. So i know that a company like planet, thanks to the High Resolution imagery that they have provided, in brazil they prevented i think it was 40 illegal raids and why . Because using that kind of High Resolution imagery from space, you can see through clouds. You can see precise details. You can actually see the fine line of a road which has been deforested into a very big, dense forest, where then the equipment will be driven in to start the illegal activity. And by seeing with that precision from space, they were able to prevent 40 actions of illegal deforestation. There are numerous kpwafrpls, i could carry on examples, i could carry on forever and i think theyre really inspiring. Just to give you the sense of the difference we can make with earth observations, imagery on the one hand, Satellite Communications on the other. Jacqueline absolutely. Its very inspirational what space can do. Part of the reason i love covering it its so inspirational. So youve talked about the fact that the u. N. Previously has been focused on a lot of these big treaties. Working government to government, specifically in the state realm. But we just talked about all this very Exciting Technology in the commercial sector. So how is the u. N. Trying to harness that innovation in the commercial sector and what challenges does that pose compared to working directly government to government . Aarti for me in my observation, im so new to the u. N. , i didnt work in the Public Sector before, so im really observing with a great sense of objecttifickity objectivity and trying to figure out, a, how does the system work and how much flexibility do we have to not change it per se, but introduce novel angles which will be appreciated by the Member States who are there. And ive already seen that. So Member States, especially within the committee on peaceful use of outer space, are deliberating on really important issues. Whether its space for global health, whether its issues of space governance and the longterm sustainability, things like that. They really are deliberating on matters which are of fundamental importance to answer todays questions in the field. And they, when we bring private industry to, for example, make a technical presentation, they realize that, wow, we didnt know that these innovations were happening. We didnt know the fate of industry or our collective ability, for example, to remove debris from orbit. We didnt know that japan, for example, has introduced guidelines to put a license in place for active debris removal. The only country in the world to have done so. Now, if we want to scale these kind of examples, surely we need that knowledge to be wider disseminated so that other countries can also put such licenses and such guidelines in place. Right . So by involving the private sector we can bring a more dynamic approach, but fundamentally we can inform the decisions and hopefully accelerate some of the very necessary Decision Making that has to happen within the committee and perhaps more generally in policy all over the world. Jacqueline you talked about debris removal which is an area that there are other areas as well but specifically debris removal is something ive covered before. Where companies are kind of banding together and putting out sets of best practices on their own or working with other nongovernmental organizations on nonbinding agreements. How do you think those are helpful to have kind of these industrywide standards outside of a body like the u. N. . And how do you kind of approach those sort of standards that are set outside of a major body like that . Aarti i think its very unfortunate when we have to start arguing about mandates and who should do what. I think we have to be very realistic and pragmatic. The reality is that with the current state of geopolitics around the world, we are going to have to move forward in the space of in the field of space governance in a different way to what weve seen previously. There was a time for global treaties and so on but what we see now is, as it was harder to find consensus, we shifted more towards a time of guidelines and, most recently, longterm sustainability guidelines which were adopted by consensus. They took as long as any treaty would to negotiate, but the good thing about them is, would you rather have negotiated a treaty which would have been an agenda item in the committee all the way until it was adopted, and then remove that agenda eye telephone and wait for them to say, to ratify, look what happened with the moon treaty, how many have ratified it . Very few. Right . So would we rather be in that scenario or would we be in the situation which we are in now which is we have a set of guidelines which can evolve, which are being complemented by Member States now negotiating new guidelines, new additional guidelines, and which we can work with and the company has this as an ongoing agenda item, were now working with Member States to help them implement it. Its so important that Member States understand the nitty gritty within these guidelines. For example, there is one which talks about sharing data in order to prevent collisions in space and so on. So these were developed by the experts who sit within the committee, who may be space agencies, ministries of Foreign Affairs, in the case of the u. S. , state representatives, but also nasa representatives. But the people within Member States who are likely to implement these guidelines and take them and turn them into norms and binding rules may be the telecoms regulator. It may be a space agency, it may not be. Its not necessarily the interlocutors who sit within the committee. Its a huge responsibility on us to engage with others who are talking about rules, who are considering rules, be they Civil Society and nonPublic Sector players, be they regulators. So as i said, we have to have a pragmatic approach. Its a waste of time to be arguing about mandates. We know what is our mandate and we will continue to do what we can in the context in which we are working, which is not an easy one. But at the same time initiatives also by the private sector. For example, a Global Satellite Operator Association where i worked previously recently adopted a code of conduct. This is showing us that satellite operators are coming together to see, ok, what can we do . Its not going to be binding on us, but still what is the lowest common denominator where we do agree . And perhaps it informs individual operators to go an extra mile. Because maybe it helps them in terms of showing what Good Behavior looks like, what responsible behavior looks like, right . So i think we need to embrace all of whats happening but we must really see how can we move from recommendations and guidelines to empowering Member States to embed them into their national policymaking. Jacqueline youve touched on this but looking to go deeper. Youve touched on all of the varied stakeholders from state to space agencies to industry that can and should be involved in these kind of discussions. So where im looking to get your thoughts on where these discussions should be happening. There are u. N. Hosted events, there are various trade shows like space emposum where i understand youll be next week, nato meetings, theres a space adjacent, like the u. N. s Climate Change conference. Do you have thoughts on where these conversations should be focused . Aarti that is such an important question and i not so long ago in february had a moment on precisely this question. Because indeed we have events and useful discussions happening in many different fora and in present thats always good. Its always good to talk and advance your thinking and see where does that take news is what new avenues and ideas take us . What new avenues and ideas might we have . The problem i see is that being in the u. N. , the u. N. As a whole is at an inflexion point. Other companies are also at inflexion points. Its very easy to throw stones at the United Nations. At the highest level, at the more technical level like we set, its very easy to do that and say, oh, its not delivering. You cannot blame the United Nations for individual member state politics. It really is as simple as that. But why am i saying this . Because its had stones thrown at it for we need a new global treaty, we need binding rules, theyre not delivering, its deadlocked, they dont progress. But if youre going to have valuable and important discussions, for example, the Saudi Space Agency hosted a fantastic conference on active debris removal in february. Twoday conference with every relevant stakeholder to that topic. Being present. Really, really great. Both at institutional level, industry level. But none of the Decision Makers