Partnering with the Embassy of the Moon: Reflections on Expert Meeting and Public Event
16 July 2026
The PlanetStewards project recently attended the second gathering of the Embassy of the Moon, an expert meeting followed by a public event reflecting on the future of our celestial neighbor. With so much of today’s conversations about lunar governance dominated by industry and great power competition, the Embassy of the Moon aims to create space for non-commercial interests in narratives about lunar activities. It seeks to connect people, facilitate discussions, forge diplomatic ties, and in so doing, amplify visions of the Moon’s future often overlooked in mainstream discourse. We experienced this event – one bringing together civil society actors, engineers, astronauts, artists, legal experts, astronomers, writers, governance scholars, curators, and more – as an important exercise in democratic debate, which fundamentally includes disagreement. The key friction that emerged throughout the event had to do with differing levels of support for human interference with the Moon. As a convener and facilitator, the Embassy of the Moon allowed various competing ideologies to coexist and converse.
The Embassy of the Moon’s commitment to democracy created the conditions for a multiplicity of perspectives in both of the day’s events. Rather than organizing around a principle of “us versus them,” the Embassy asks “how can we come together?” This drive to find common ground punctures polarization. While several participants of the expert meeting expressed discomfort with views expressed, we also agreed that discomfort can be healthy, and that these tensions are highly productive. Sharing a room and listening to one another allowed us to humanize perspectives we may not agree with, and presented the opportunity to engage in respectful debate.
One of the main recurring tensions concerned the parallels between space exploration and colonialism. Those advocating for human development of the Moon often deploy a narrative of inevitability akin to the ideological tool that justified imperial expansion as a natural force of historical progress. Manifest Destiny, for instance, drove the territorial growth of the United States through the violent dispossession and subjugation of Indigenous peoples – echoing a broader theme intrinsic to Western colonialism that paints destructive processes as inherently moral and necessary, without critically examining who actually benefits. We see Silicon Valley leaders use the inevitability card today, too, in the context of the AI boom. The common argument, “if we don’t build it, someone else will,” effectively shuts down conversations about alternatives and positions those driving technological development as the decisionmakers about humanity’s future. The framing of humans going to the Moon for geopolitical, commercial, or scientific purposes as inevitable – as well as the frequently expressed assumption that scientific purposes are inherently beneficial, wholly distinct from commercial activities, and non-problematic – thus set off alarm bells for some participants. As a result, some considered the responsibility of the Embassy to be inclusive of less dominant perspectives favoring “non-use” and rejecting narratives of inevitability. In the expert meeting, someone posed the question: what can we learn from the histories of other places we have mined? Perhaps the disconnect here has to do with differing assessments of the consequences of such histories.
Spiritual and artistic approaches to lunar governance kept appearing as alternatives to narratives rooted in conquest. Human culture includes so many profound relationships with the Moon, including those embedded in Indigenous knowledge systems and spiritual practices around the world. Yet leading visions for the Moon’s future tend to consider only the interests grounded in resource accumulation, military prowess, and a technologically-oriented vision of human “progress.” In an effort to reflect another kind of voice, during the public event a reader periodically reclaimed the podium to recite poetry written by the Embassy’s founder Marjolijn van Heemstra, following a regular rhythm of recurrence just like the Moon’s cycles. The readings, voiced from the perspective of the Moon herself, reminded participants of the vast ecosystems that depend on the Moon, from the rotation of Earth’s seasons to the pollination of the sea grape – injecting awareness of the voices outside the conference room into the discussion on lunar futures. This revival of the emotional aspect of our interactions with our environments could be an important path forward for lunar governance.
As the Embassy of the Moon looks to the future after wrapping up its second gathering since its inception, discussions about the fundamental role the Embassy should play pointed to the divergent potential directives for the growing community. Seeking to eventually be seen in high-level places as a collective of many different voices for the Moon, a fundamental distinction was questioned: should the Embassy be seen as the voice of the Moon itself? Or instead be seen as giving voice to the many Earthly human and non-human relationships with the Moon? Given the uniquely anticipatory nature and complexity of the task at hand, the event highlighted the need to maintain momentum in continuing to facilitate important discussions that will shape the goals and role of the Embassy. We look forward to continuing to participate in the meaningful conversations that the Embassy of the Moon has started, especially given the initiative's alignment with PlanetStewards’ Moon Stewardship Plan recently initiated at the Earth-Space Sustainability conference in Leiden. We are happy to become an institutional partner of the Embassy of the Moon and explore future collaborations toward our common goal.