Technical and legal issues surrounding space debris—India's position in the UN
Abstract This article briefly presents the historical background, as seen by ISRO and India, to the growing problem of space debris. It describes the technical aspects of ISRO's activities in the field of space debris, and the grey areas in technical understanding, which may impede legal discussions. Analysis of the cost and technical aspects of reorbiting satellites from geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) is detailed, since this is an important area for India and other developing countries. The article also briefly describes ISRO's views of the applicability and relevance of the existing space treaties to a possible future legal regime for space debris. Debates are currently taking place in the UN and other multilateral fora on the subject of space debris and the situation is dynamic. The main aim of this article is to inform readers of ISRO's and India's position in the UN on the subject of space debris, in terms of its technical, political and legal aspects. Certain issues of importance from the legal point of view, though not of immediate urgency, are also discussed.
Just Scraps of Paper?
Despite its importance in the global system, the literature provides little guidance on how treaty-making emerged as a well-accepted practice. In either assuming the appropriateness of treaty-making (and then analysing design) or treating treaties as strategic choices in the pursuit of gains (without analysing how treaties came to be a way to pursue gains), the current literature discounts the emergence and evolution of treaty-making. This lacuna contributes to a biased view of treaty-making as the epiphenomenal result of specific, ahistorical factors, rather than as a patterned, historical practice. We contend that the evolution of the practice of treaty-making is significant for questions of design/compliance, the future of multilateral interaction and global order. In addressing this concern, we pursue two linked goals. The first is self-consciously descriptive. We introduce a dataset of multilateral treaties that provides a novel picture of treaty-making across time, space and issue-areas. The second goal is explanatory. We develop and test a social constructivist and path-dependent explanation for the patterns of treaty-making evident in the data, especially 150 years of exponential growth, the spread of treaty-making across multiple issues and the diffusion of the practice across the world.
Regional strategies for the minerals industries of the states of the SADCC
The SADCC has been in existence for eleven years but little progress has been made in regional coordination of the minerals sector even though this sector is the most important exporter of the region. There is however scope for minerals development at the regional level.