Environmental organizations worldwide are turning to artificial intelligence to analyze climate data, monitor wildfires, and track endangered animal populations, despite their growing warnings about the environmental impact of the data centers powering this technology, their electricity and water consumption, and the resulting greenhouse gas emissions.
This contradiction presents these organizations with a difficult equation; they seek to leverage AI capabilities to protect nature and combat climate change, while limiting the environmental damage associated with its use.
Ali Swanson, the AI lead at the US-based Conservation International, said this technology may come with environmental costs, but it can simultaneously accelerate work and improve data utilization amid growing climate and biodiversity crises.
The organization has started using AI to analyze hotspots detected by satellites and send instant alerts to forest ranger teams in Cambodia regarding potential wildfires in remote and environmentally sensitive areas.
Data centers raise growing environmental concerns
A Reuters poll of 15 major organizations working in environment, nature conservation, and development showed that all of them use AI to varying degrees. However, they are concerned about the environmental impact of the data centers this technology relies on, due to their massive electricity and cooling water needs.
This issue is gaining importance as the world prepares to discuss it during the UN Climate Conference COP31, scheduled to be held this month in Turkey, where the host country intends to invite governments, companies, and institutions to sign a pledge establishing principles to ensure the sustainable development and use of AI.
Estimates by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health indicate that the global spatial footprint of data centers could more than double by 2030.
The International Energy Agency also expects data center electricity consumption to rise to about 945 terawatt-hours annually by 2030, roughly double the current consumption, with emissions exceeding 300 million tons of carbon dioxide.
Their annual water consumption is also expected to increase from about 560 billion liters in 2023 to 1.2 trillion liters by 2030.
Major tech companies, including Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, have reported increased emissions partly linked to data center expansion. Conversely, Amazon stated that its AI-driven products are among the most sustainable, citing its investments in low-carbon energy and improved electricity and water efficiency.
AI achieves previously impossible results
Despite environmental concerns, many organizations believe AI's benefits currently outweigh its costs, given its ability to perform tasks that previously took a long time or required significant financial and human resources.
In Kenya, Save the Elephants uses machine learning techniques to improve animal counting operations and study elephant communication methods.
Frank Pope, the organization's CEO, said an aerial survey of Kenya's largest nature reserve produced about 200,000 images last year, taking nine people nine months to review manually. However, AI models can now complete similar analyses in hours.
The results revealed that traditional monitoring methods lacked accuracy, while improving data accuracy helps support wildlife conservation efforts and attract necessary funding.
At the Jane Goodall Institute, founded by the late primatologist Jane Goodall, researchers use AI to convert decades of handwritten field notes on chimpanzee behavior in Tanzania into analyzable digital data.
This process was expected to take between 13 and 15 years, due to notes being written in a local language and using scientific abbreviations. However, a tool developed in collaboration with Amazon Web Services helped scan, translate, and organize the records in minutes, reducing the project's duration to about two years.
Lilian Pintea, the institute's vice president of conservation science, emphasized that Jane Goodall supported using AI to aid environmental research, provided humans remain the decision-makers on how it is utilized.
Solutions to reduce AI's environmental footprint
Some institutions are trying to limit resource consumption associated with AI use. For example, the World Resources Institute restricts energy-intensive applications, such as image and video generation, and retains previous search results to avoid reprocessing identical queries.
The Nature Conservancy adopts a similar approach, using AI to analyze video clips recorded on commercial fishing vessels to identify fish species and quantities. Instead of transferring massive amounts of video to centralized data centers, the organization relies on AI-equipped digital cameras to process data directly on board the ships, reducing energy consumption and the volume of transmitted data.
Greenpeace International uses some AI tools but sets internal controls focusing on transparency, human oversight, and deliberate use. However, the organization prefers to avoid this technology as much as possible due to its environmental impacts and opposes the massive expansion of data centers.
Conversely, other organizations view AI as an important tool for environmental action. Stuart Butchart, chief scientist at the UK-based BirdLife International, said using this technology could help protect the planet more efficiently, especially given limited available resources, considering that ignoring its potential could mean falling short in fulfilling environmental responsibility.
