Investment in Space Resources: Property Rights to Natural Resources Extracted in Space and the Position of Iraqi legal system

Abstract

In the second half of the last century, the space activities have increased paralleled with the rapid development in space technology. The greed of giant corporations has exceeded the universe and tried to reach resources outside Earth. Exploring other planets is not something new, while racing to reach the resources outside earth by private space exploration companies as human’s off earth destiny is quite recent. Many nations have plan to reach the moon by 2020 including the United States who has plan to establish a permanent base on moon by 2024. The ambition to reach outer space is not just for the scientific purposes, but rather to exploit resources form space. As long as space is a common sphere among all the nations, there are many treaties signed and ratified to lay down broad rules and principle to organize the area. Mining celestial materials is one of the issues that does not have a legal framework as private companies are eagerly trying to mine materials which are not existed on earth such as Helium three or any other bodies that are scarce on earth. Until now, the international community has not been successful in establishing a solid legal system to regulate outer space activities. Besides, there are attempts by some countries to have particular legislation allowing private companies to extract natural resources. However, technological, economic and military powers of countries are the major factors in exercising the activities outside our planet due to the special nature of such activities. This paper argues that despite the difficulties of having a consensus over a legal framework, there are many other issues that need to be taken into consideration. Further, the perspective of the Iraqi legal system is also examined with regard to the possibility of adopting particular law on outer space activities. It also argues that although the lack of advanced technological skills might avoid countries reaching outer space, it will not prevent states from adopting specific legislation to regulate private corporations’ attempt to explore in this field.