© Unsplash/T. Vic Despite the growing interest in regulating artificial intelligence, the environmental consequences of its development still remain poorly understood. Ecological footprint of AI: experts from Russia, China and India propose to protect the planet Climate and Environment
Artificial intelligence is already helping to predict floods, track deforestation and use water more efficiently. But at the same time, it itself is becoming an increasingly serious burden on the environment. This is the conclusion reached by the authors of an international report on the relationship between artificial intelligence and ecology.
The White Paper on: AI and Environment was prepared by the Nature and People Foundation together with Fudan University (China) and the Pahlé India Foundation (India) with the participation of the Dynamic Coalition on Environment of the UN Internet Governance Forum. The research was presented on July 6 in Geneva at the first meeting of the Global Dialogue on the Governance of Artificial Intelligence, established by the UN General Assembly.The authors call their work a comprehensive study that examines two aspects of AI development at once. On the one hand, new technologies can accelerate the fight against climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation and water scarcity. On the other hand, the rapid growth of computing power requires huge amounts of electricity, water for cooling data centers and natural resources for the production of equipment. years
“Whether artificial intelligence ultimately becomes nature’s ally or its adversary will depend less on the technology itself and more on the engineering decisions, transparency requirements, and regulatory policy frameworks that the world adopts in the coming years,” says Columbia University professor and director of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network Jeffrey Sachs in the foreword to the publication. UN Secretary Antonio Guterres has called on leading AI companies to openly publish data on the environmental impact of their technologies. However, despite the growing interest in the regulation of artificial intelligence, the environmental consequences of its development still remain poorly understood.The report provides many examples of how AI is already helping the environment. Algorithms improve the accuracy of climate models and weather forecasts, make it possible to more quickly detect forest fires, track greenhouse gas emissions, monitor the status of rare animal species, predict droughts and floods, detect leaks in water supply systems and optimize irrigation in agriculture. and the reverse side. As generative AI becomes more widespread, the main environmental burden is gradually shifting away from training the models and toward the daily use of them by billions of people. According to the report, in 2025, all AI systems in the world could generate 32.6-79.7 million tons of CO₂ emissions – about the same as New York City produces in a year.
Water consumption
At the same time, information on the actual consumption of electricity, water and other resources is still clearly insufficient. The authors call the lack of transparency one of the main problems. It is estimated that as early as 2025, AI could consume between 312 and 765 billion liters of water—about the same amount that humanity uses on bottled water each year. And by 2027, this figure could reach a volume comparable to half of the UK’s annual water consumption. At the same time, data centers are often built in regions where fresh water is already in short supply, which creates additional stress on local resources.Ahead of key 2026 UN summits on combating desertification, climate change, biodiversity conservation and water management, our report provides an objective picture of how artificial intelligence is already impacting the environment today. Researchers compared approaches to AI regulation in Russia, India, China, the United States and the European Union. They concluded that today none of the existing models fully takes into account the environmental consequences of the development of artificial intelligence. Priority steps include introducing common international environmental reporting standards for AI, assessing its life-cycle impacts, making data on energy and water use more open, and better coordinating international efforts. Ahead of key 2026 UN summits on combating desertification, climate change, biodiversity conservation and governance water resources, our report gives an objective picture of how artificial intelligence is already influencing the environment today,” explains Sergei Rybakov, CEO of the Nature and People Foundation, co-chair of the Dynamic Coalition on the Environment of the UN Internet Governance Forum.
The main conclusion of the study sounds quite simple: the environmental footprint of artificial intelligence is not the inevitable price of technological progress. What happens in ten or twenty years depends on the decisions that governments, companies and international organizations make today.