{"id":225196,"date":"2026-06-03T10:04:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T14:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/03\/rising-emissions-depleting-water-and-vanishing-land-un-scientists-ai-is-threatening-natural-resources-for-billions\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T10:10:30","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T14:10:30","slug":"rising-emissions-depleting-water-and-vanishing-land-un-scientists-ai-is-threatening-natural-resources-for-billions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/03\/rising-emissions-depleting-water-and-vanishing-land-un-scientists-ai-is-threatening-natural-resources-for-billions\/","title":{"rendered":"Rising Emissions, Depleting Water and Vanishing Land\u2014UN Scientists: AI Is Threatening Natural Resources for Billions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/unu.edu\/inweh\/news\/environmental-cost-of-AIs-Enrgy-use-carbon-water-and-land-footprints\">Rising Emissions, Depleting Water and Vanishing Land\u2014UN Scientists: AI Is Threatening Natural Resources for Billions<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/unu.edu\/inweh\/news\/environmental-cost-of-AIs-Enrgy-use-carbon-water-and-land-footprints\">https:\/\/unu.edu\/inweh\/news\/environmental-cost-of-AIs-Enrgy-use-carbon-water-and-land-footprints<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-06-03 10:04:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"unu.edu\">unu.edu<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Mismeasurement of AI Environmental Costs<\/strong>: Current assessments focus mainly on carbon emissions from AI training, overlooking water and land footprints from cooling, power generation, and infrastructure.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Data Centre Energy Consumption<\/strong>: Global data centres consume a significant amount of electricity, water, and land, projected to reach 945 TWh, 9.3 trillion litres of water, and 14,500 km\u00b2 by 2030.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Dominance of Inference<\/strong>: Once deployed, running models to answer user prompts consume 80-90% of total AI energy use, rather than training models.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Model Efficiency &amp; Rebound Effect<\/strong>: Efficiency gains in AI model usage may increase overall energy consumption unless usage volume is controlled.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Geographical Inequality<\/strong>: AI infrastructure is largely concentrated in two countries, creating environmental and governance divides, impacting countries without access to AI compute.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Global Digital Divide<\/strong>: Over 90% of specialized AI data centers are in just two countries; less than half the world has sovereign AI compute infrastructure, leading to uneven benefits and burdens.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Sustainability Challenges<\/strong>: AI infrastructure is projected to create significant electronic waste and relies on minerals from regions with weaker environmental oversight.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Call for a Sustainable AI Ecosystem<\/strong>: The report proposes six principles for a responsible AI ecosystem to ensure transparency, efficiency, equity, global cooperation, and sustainability.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rising Emissions, Depleting Water and Vanishing Land\u2014UN Scientists: AI Is Threatening Natural Resources for Billions&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":225197,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/unu.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/og_image\/public\/2026-06\/photo_2026-06-02%2015.44.38.jpeg?itok=pWdEdtRY","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-225196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225196"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225196"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":225198,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225196\/revisions\/225198"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}