When a tiny scrap of space debris hit the Shenzhou XX capsule with the energy of a rifle bullet, delaying the valiant crew’s return from China’s Tiangong space station, the space finance community took a deep breath: Will this be the point space debris goes mainstream and gets the attention it deserves?

In Hong Kong, we have a significant opportunity to lead the world in space sustainability. The city is Earth’s superconnector in finance, and we have a fast-growing private space investment and technology ecosystem.

But we also have a very human connection to space: our first taikonaut, a police officer, wife and mother who will, in the not too distant future, be strapped into a Long March 2F filled with 500 metric tons of rocket fuel and blasted toward Tiangong.

At that point, with the city’s representative soaring toward the heavens at 3 kilometers per second, will it be too late to ask if we, as analysts, investors and venture capitalists, have done everything we can, in terms of the space environment, to ensure the success and safety of those flying into harm’s way.

The Shenzhou XX debris impact was a stark and very public warning of the dangers faced. Our taikonaut, who once rode the MTR and navigated the pedestrian walkways of Hong Kong, will be piloting with her colleagues through a sea of hundreds of millions of pieces of debris and junk, much of it invisible to us on the ground, yet posing genuine threats to their spacecraft.

The space sustainability issue is well established in space-investment orbits, but sustainability in space still struggles for even a tiny voice in mainstream investment communities.

This isn’t hyperbole. Every sector in every market has its own sustainability reporting guidelines, except space.

It’s time for that to change.

And this is where Hong Kong can punch — like a frozen droplet of potassium coolant or paint flake from a destroyed satellite — well above its weight.

“Space” isn’t dominant on Hong Kong’s stock exchange, but we do have listed satellite firms as well as many telecom entities and research and information-technology firms with space connections. Measuring their impact in the final frontier, even as a small scale voluntary initiative, shouldn’t be something we can continue to ignore, especially not while one member of “Hong Kong’s finest” is heading into orbit.

Although private initiatives may eventually step in to fill the cold vacuum of space-sustainability reporting in due course, our Hong Kong and indeed Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area exchanges can take a leadership role here by kick-starting the discussion

The creation of a voluntary space sector sustainability reporting framework can establish our city as the first global finance center to take the issue seriously and give us a head start in forming investment and market consensus ahead of the upcoming landmark United Nations Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNISPACE IV) meeting on space debris, to be held in 2027 in Vienna.

So what exactly is space-sector sustainability reporting, and why does it matter for space sustainability?

Fifteen years ago, researching sustainability issues in space tourism, I raised the alarm over a lack of space expertise in mainstream corporate sustainability reporting.

The 2010s were a golden time for “environmental, social, governance” (ESG) reporting (or corporate social responsibility as it was known then), with global investment markets making either voluntary or mandatory disclosures on “nonfinancial” metrics alongside their annual reporting.

But space was never part of that. While many sectors, such as logistics, food and oil, developed detailed sector-specific reporting, space activities went largely unchecked.

That’s not to say space firms were reckless. Quite the opposite – the very reason I studied space ESG in the first place, for a master’s thesis at the University of Hong Kong, was a curiosity as to why, with woolly environmental laws in space, space companies were behaving very much better than, say, many petrochemical companies down here on Earth, where the laws are very clear.

Space companies I visited out in the Californian Mojave Desert, home of so many legendary flight tests and rocket firms, overwhelmingly put the space environment and the safety of their people above anything else. That wasn’t corporate greenwashing; it was evidently real in every conversation and action they took, without any enforceable law or public pressure. Which in itself is very interesting.

However, I found the lack of a global reporting framework to be a problem.

Why? Because small companies operating out of Mojave hangars, who had the issue at the forefront of their corporate brains, were being consumed by larger listed companies that followed global best practices on sustainability reporting.

And global best practice, unfortunately, while offering world-class environmental protections for our societies on Earth, ignored space. Even today, the International Financial Reporting Standards still has no specific space sector guidelines.

And so, as small firms were subsumed, their space sustainability culture would be lost.

Can we say SpaceX, founded as a scrappy startup with sustainability and reuse as its major goal, would have continued its reusability mission if it had been acquired by an aerospace giant?

I would argue not, precisely because reusable rockets, until demonstrated as successful, might well have ticked zero boxes on any investor document or ESG report from a listed aerospace giant.

As a side note, it is worth noting that while “reusable rockets” began as a sustainability issue, the concept is proving essential to support the intense launch cadences required for satellite constellations and human planetary exploration.

In space, “sustainable” is inextricable from survival.

Right now, the window of opportunity is open for Hong Kong.

The Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Ltd requires voluntary reporting on sector-specific issues, which means an investment service provider or the exchange itself could develop a set of criteria for “sustainability in space” and begin auditing those metrics.

What do those metrics look like? The issues aren’t just debris and space junk, although these are critical and hugely important. I’ve previously proposed a set of about 15 additional metrics along the lines of astronaut and taikonaut safety; power structures in Earth observation; resilience of crowded orbits; and the prevention of reckless space tourism against the excitement and innovation of the sector.

Although private initiatives may eventually step in to fill the cold vacuum of space-sustainability reporting in due course, our Hong Kong and indeed Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area exchanges can take a leadership role here by kick-starting the discussion.

As one participant said at the Maritime Silk Road space seminar organized by Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee in September, space companies from the Middle East, for example, are on the brink of flocking to Hong Kong to raise capital; these companies need to know we take space sustainability seriously and can offer them a platform for excellence in the field.

The author is a Hong Kong-based journalist and sustainability researcher, and a permanent resident of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.