Digital And Climate Colonialism Through Artificial Intelligence
- IJLLR Journal
- Jun 23
- 1 min read
Laasya Adury, LLM, Jindal Global Law School
ABSTARCT
This paper aims to highlight how the Global South is disproportionately burdened with the negative consequences of the AI boom. Global South Nations are already in a vulnerable position when it comes to climate change and sustainable development, and the slew of climate related burdens that AI bring about will worsen this. The rapid growth of these technologies necessitates more hardware or massive infrastructure development, which will cause an adverse impact on the environment. This paper will particularly focus on water depletion caused by AI’s massive data centres and the impact this will have on the already water-scarce Global South nations, like India. Such detrimental impacts of the tech expansion raise questions for international law. This area of global environmental and technological governance needs to be developed, especially in the context of global inequality and resource extraction from the Global South. This paper aims to address whether current international frameworks are adequate at addressing the issue at hand.
The paper first gives a brief overview of digital and climate colonialism in the context of globalization and AI development, in the context of the Global South. It then reviews the literature on TWAIL, digital colonialism and climate colonialism. The paper details how emerging technologies and their ancillary activities impact the Global South disproportionately. Ultimately, the paper identifies regulatory gaps and provides possible frameworks to ensure that the Global South is not appropriated for its resources or is placed at a disadvantaged position in the context of technology and climate change.
Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Digital Colonialism, Climate Colonialism and TWAIL.
