As countries gathered in Geneva this week for the first United Nations dialogue on the governance of artificial intelligence, activists said the debate over the rapidly evolving technology was overlooking the potential harm it could cause to nature and biodiversity.
Activists have warned that not only is nature absent from discussions about the environmental impact of AI data centers, which primarily focus on carbon emissions and water use, but there is also no consideration of how industry’s adoption of AI could eat up more natural resources.
Brian O’Donnell, director of the Campaign for Nature, said that while AI could help protect wildlife and forests, the potential benefits would be far outweighed by the potential benefits, as AI would boost economic growth broadly.
“More than $250 billion of private capital is being poured into AI in 2024 alone, almost all of it seeking economic returns, and that funding following commercial value,” he told reporters. “Extraction, industrial agriculture, resource logistics and the drivers of further consumption are all activities that lead to biodiversity loss.”
The leading conservationist added that policy documents produced by major AI companies do not address the downstream impacts of their technologies on nature and biodiversity, but instead focus on jobs and other social issues.
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As countries gathered in Geneva this week for the first United Nations dialogue on the governance of artificial intelligence, activists said the debate over the rapidly evolving technology was overlooking the potential harm it could cause to nature and biodiversity.
Activists have warned that not only is nature absent from discussions about the environmental impact of AI data centers, which primarily focus on carbon emissions and water use, but there is also no consideration of how industry’s adoption of AI could eat up more natural resources.
Brian O’Donnell, director of the Campaign for Nature, said that while AI could help protect wildlife and forests, the potential benefits would be far outweighed by the potential benefits, as AI would boost economic growth broadly.
“More than $250 billion of private capital is being poured into AI in 2024 alone, almost all of it seeking economic returns, and that funding following commercial value,” he told reporters. “Extraction, industrial agriculture, resource logistics and the drivers of further consumption are all activities that lead to biodiversity loss.”
The leading conservationist added that policy documents produced by major AI companies do not address the downstream impacts of their technologies on nature and biodiversity, but instead focus on jobs and other social issues.
He pointed out that while some companies are putting a little money into projects that support conservation, none are seriously addressing the issue, and none are incorporating nature into their model safety rules.
“The living world on which all of this depends – nature, which is the foundation of our economy, society, and all life on this planet – is not the primary concern in the governance of AI, as AI companies are proposing,” O’Donnell said.
Positive usage attracts attention
Last month, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres launched an effort to hold big AI companies accountable for their exploding environmental impacts, including carbon emissions, the amount of water and land used in data centers, and the energy they consume.
The UN Secretary-General also wants major companies to commit to supplying all data centers with renewable energy by 2030. On Monday, in a wide-ranging speech in Geneva, he again brought up his proposed AI Environmental Transparency Initiative. However, nature is not featured in his comments on this issue.
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Moreover, environmental issues are only briefly mentioned in the preliminary report of the newly established Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, which assesses the opportunities, risks, and impacts of AI.
The report, which examines available scientific evidence and was presented to governments at a dialogue in Geneva, does not focus on threats to nature or biodiversity, but cites research showing how AI has been used for tracking. Reduce conflicts between humans and wildlife.
O’Donnell pointed to “very important technical uses of AI for biodiversity,” such as monitoring species, forest damage and tree cover, and using camera traps to see what wildlife is moving into a particular area. But he added that these receive disproportionate attention compared to the threat from more voracious resource extraction, which he perceives to be much larger.
By making commercial activities cheaper, faster and more efficient, and opening up access to undeveloped areas of land and sea, AI could cause biodiversity loss through increased overfishing of fish, wildlife and timber, worsen pollution and spread invasive species through faster trade networks, he added.
Indigenous concerns
Indigenous peoples are also concerned that their lands, vital mineral reserves and knowledge will be usurped by AI and AI-accelerated economic development, said Hindu Omar Ibrahim, a global environmental activist and Chadian indigenous leader.
Ibrahim, who authored a report on indigenous peoples and AI for the United Nations in April, told journalists that before indigenous peoples can share their know-how on forest management and conservation, companies and governments need to put principles in place to ensure this happens in a fair way that prevents it from being misused by bad actors.
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Her report also points to positive ways that AI can support indigenous cultures and rights, including addressing lack of access to digital tools, preserving languages and knowledge, and mapping territories to enhance threat detection and biodiversity protection.
Ibrahim said efforts like the United Nations to shape the future of AI governance should look not only at what AI can do, but also who it benefits and how it protects the planet.
“When we answer these questions with indigenous peoples as equal partners, we can build AI that serves humanity, protects biodiversity, and helps restore balance between people and the planet in a fair and just way,” she added.
Policy processes are lagging behind AI developments
O’Donnell and Ibrahim said they would lobby countries, the United Nations and AI companies themselves to put nature and biodiversity on the political agenda, including at the United Nations Biodiversity Summit in Armenia in October.
O’Donnell told Climate Home News that while AI was still in its infancy when the Global Biodiversity Framework, the world’s main treaty for nature conservation, was agreed in 2022, it has exploded in terms of investment and economic impact since then.
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He pointed to a mismatch between the timeline of the United Nations effort to develop governance guidelines and the speed of AI development in the real world.
“We cannot ignore nature in these discussions,” he said, calling for a swift and comprehensive response from policymakers, businesses and the environmental community.
“There is a very short window for incorporating nature into both the company’s own governance codes and formal regulations. [system] In the future,” he added.
