Page:SATCON2 Community Engagement Report.pdf/46

 # Earth-orbiting space should be considered part of Earth’s environment, legally and otherwise. There was a strong consensus that the region of space occupied by Earth-orbiting satellites and the night sky should be considered an integral part of the environment and of the human experience of the natural world. To limit the concept of the environment to the surface of Earth and its atmosphere but to exclude the starry night sky or even objects passing through the atmosphere en route to or returning from LEO is to make an arbitrary distinction that defies common sense and universal experience. Rh
 * 1) Satellite constellations should not be exempt from NEPA. There was strong consensus that NEPA, which the FCC has so far declined to invoke in considering licence applications by potential operators of satellite constellations, should in fact be applied, and that environmental impact studies should be required components of such license applications.
 * 2) Sovereignty should be respected with regard to space and the night sky. Even if the FCC does not consider space to be part of the environment or subject to NEPA review, other nations can and do consider space, the starry sky, the Milky Way, the planets and the Moon to be part of the environment, nature, cosmology, cultural and spiritual heritage and practice. Introducing satellite constellations to the night sky, especially if bright enough to be seen naked eye, thus threatens the autonomy and wellbeing of people of other sovereign nations including Indigenous and First Nations people, and undermines the concept of space as a commons as enshrined in the OST.