Eloy Peña-Asensio from QuantumGrain together with researcher Elisa Simó-Soler from the University of Valencia have published an article on planetary defense in the prestigious journal Acta Astronautica combining a scientific approach with a political-legal focus.
The work lays the foundations of a necessary debate for politicians and legislators before the development of planetary defense technologies: the regulatory and preventive framework against the threat of a collision of an asteroid with the Earth. The paper is a call to learn from global crises such as covid or climate change, inviting to change the ‘wait and see’ for ‘prevention is better than cure’. The authors propose three necessary anticipatory actions in planetary defense: establishing a legal framework; defining how states are to act and take responsibility; and the relief and protection of ‘impact refugees’. They also foresee the possible configuration of states without territory due to geographic devastation.
The paper titled «From impact refugees to deterritorialized states: Foresighting extreme legal-policy cases in asteroid impact scenarios.» can be read in open access at the following link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2021.12.015