SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
global south
If AI Knows the Planet Is Dying, Why Can't It Tell Us Who's Drowning?
AI that monitors planetary health without a justice framework becomes sophisticated surveillance rather than equitable care.
Oct 30, 2025
Seven of nine planetary boundaries have been breached. Climate change, biosphere collapse, freshwater depletion and, for the first time, ocean acidification. These boundaries are the vital signs of a planet teetering beyond the range that sustained human civilization for 12,000 years. Alarm bells ring in every chart and graph of the Planetary Health Check 2025, yet our collective response remains inadequate.
Meanwhile, a technological revolution is underway. Artificial intelligence now processes vast satellite datasets to deliver near-real-time indicators of Earth's health. Initiatives from the Potsdam Institute and Stockholm Resilience Centre envision leveraging the latest satellite data and AI to create enhanced Earth monitoring systems, where machine-learning algorithms track carbon dioxide emissions, detect deforestation as it happens, and flag ecosystem stress long before human eyes register the crisis. AI promises faster, more precise environmental intelligence than ever before.
But there is a troubling blind spot in this approach. These powerful systems can quantify atmospheric CO2 down to decimal points, yet they cannot capture which communities suffer first when planetary boundaries break. They report that 22.6% of global land faces freshwater disturbance in streamflow, yet satellite dashboards remain silent on who lacks safe drinking water. They classify aerosol loading as within "safe" global limits even as monsoon disruptions devastate millions of farmers. Precise metrics obscure systemic inequities.
When aerosol pollution over South Asia weakens the monsoon—a lifeline for more than a billion people—satellites detect changing moisture indices but ignore caste-based water access, rural poverty, and entrenched social vulnerabilities that determine who drowns and who survives. Scholars warn of "computational asymmetries" and neocolonial dynamics in AI for climate action, perpetuating power imbalances by extracting information without empowering affected communities.
If AI-driven planetary monitoring is to fulfill its promise, it must be designed to protect everyone, especially the most.
Moreover, who controls these AI systems? Research centers in Europe and North America design and deploy them. Satellites are launched by NASA, the European Space Agency, and private firms. Datasets and codes are often proprietary. Access barriers exclude local researchers and grassroots organizations from meaningful participation. As a result, climate solutions driven by AI risk concentrating power in the same institutions that shaped the crisis rather than democratizing environmental protection.
This is not a call to reject AI in environmental science. On the contrary, these tools can transform early warning systems, improve emissions accounting, and optimize conservation strategies. The challenge lies in embedding justice at their core. We must ask urgent questions: Who has access to the data? Who shapes the algorithms? Who defines the metrics of success? AI that monitors planetary health without a justice framework becomes sophisticated surveillance rather than equitable care.
So How Do We Move Forward?
First, codesign monitoring systems with frontline communities. Indigenous Peoples, smallholder farmers, informal settlements—they possess critical local knowledge about changing environmental conditions. Participatory data collection initiatives, community-controlled sensor networks, and open-source platforms can bridge global datasets with ground truth.
Second, adopt data sovereignty principles. Data gathered from the Global South must remain accessible to local stakeholders. Intellectual property should not become a barrier to research and advocacy. Partnerships between Western labs and regional institutions must prioritize capacity building and fair data governance, following frameworks like CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance.
Third, expand AI metrics beyond biophysical variables. Incorporate indicators of social vulnerability—income inequality, water access, health outcomes—to contextualize environmental data. For example, freshwater disturbance indices should be mapped alongside demographic data on marginalized groups.
Finally, dedicate funding to interdisciplinary teams blending Earth system scientists, social scientists, and justice advocates. Building equitable AI systems requires collaboration across domains. Grant programs should support projects that integrate algorithm development with community engagement and policy analysis.
The machines watching our planet's vital signs can tell us when thresholds are crossed. They cannot tell us who pays the price. If AI-driven planetary monitoring is to fulfill its promise, it must be designed to protect everyone, especially the most vulnerable, rather than just refine our awareness of a crisis we're already failing to solve.
Here, justice must guide the next revolution in environmental intelligence.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Lancet Study Warns Cancer Deaths Could Surge Nearly 75% by 2050
One researcher called the projections "an impending disaster" for low-income nations.
Sep 25, 2025
An ominous new study in the Lancet medical journal projects that deaths from cancer will surge over the next two-and-a-half decades, with lower-income countries set to be the hardest hit.
The study, which was released on Wednesday, estimates that there will be 18.6 million cancer deaths and 30.5 million cancer cases in 2030. The estimated number of cancer deaths would represent a nearly 75% increase from the estimated 10.4 million cancer deaths in 2023.
The study explains that the forecasted death increases "are greater in low-income and middle-income countries" than in wealthy nations, and that most of the projected increases are likely to come from an older population, not a rise in the lethality of cancer overall.
All the same, the study warns that the total increase in cancer cases and deaths will put a strain on global health systems.
"Effectively and sustainably addressing cancer burden globally will require comprehensive national and international efforts that consider health systems and context in the development and implementation of cancer-control strategies across the continuum of prevention, diagnosis, and treatment," the study says.
Meghnath Dhimal, chief research officer at the Nepal Health Research Council, who worked on the study, told Euronews that the projections showed "an impending disaster" for low-income nations. Dhimal also said that these nations needed to do more to improve their citizens' access to cancer screenings and treatments to prevent their systems from potentially being overwhelmed.
"There are cost-effective interventions for cancer in countries at all stages of development," he said.
Dr. Theo Vos, a researcher at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation who helped author the study, told Euronews that the incidence of cancer could be significantly reduced by lowering tobacco use, unsafe sex, obesity, and high blood sugar, among other factors.
"There are tremendous opportunities for countries to target these risk factors, potentially preventing cases of cancer and saving lives," Vos explained.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Report Shows How to End 'Climate Colonialism' and Ensure a Just Transition for Global South
"A just transition must redistribute power and resources, curb overconsumption, and prioritize dignity and rights for all," Oxfam International stresses in a new report.
Sep 24, 2025
A report published Wednesday details how "climate colonialism" of wealthier nations "hijacks" investment and profits from the Global South—and lays out how the world can "move beyond extractive models and build an energy system rooted in equality, justice, care, and collective prosperity."
The Oxfam International report notes that "the global energy transition stands at a pivotal moment: It can either dismantle the inequalities driving the climate crisis or deepen them. Today, the transition risks reproducing patterns of extractivism and exploitation, with the most marginalized paying the highest price while elites profit."
"From transition mineral mining to debt burdens and unequal energy access, the current trajectory mirrors centuries of colonial injustice," the publication states. "A just transition must redistribute power and resources, curb overconsumption, and prioritize dignity and rights for all."
The report continues:
Today, the warning signs are clear: The global renewable energy transition is being built on unequal foundations. We are witnessing climate inequality inaction: a transition focused on replacing fossil fuels with green alternatives, without questioning the excessive energy use of the richest, while often leaving lower-income communities to bear the greatest costs, including through the harmful impacts of transition mineral mining, inadequate benefit sharing, and global financial and trade systems rigged against their interests. Put simply, the same dynamics that drove historical colonialism are reaemerging in new forms through the green transition.
These patterns of inequality play out both between and within countries. While stark inequalities exist between the richest and poorest within high-income countries too, global inequality is most sharply felt in the Global South, where structural barriers and historic injustices have left entire nations bearing the brunt of the climate crisis and now shouldering the greatest risks in the renewable energy transition.
"Unless the logic underpinning the transition changes, it will continue to replicate the history of extractivism and exploitation," the report warns. "These inequalities intersect with gender, race, class, age, and other marginalized people or groups, meaning that the costs of an unjust transition fall heaviest on Indigenous peoples, Black communities and other racialized groups, women, workers, peasants, and of course young people and future generations."
"This concentration of wealth and power is mirrored in patterns of energy use: A small minority live in extreme luxury and overconsume planetary resources, while others still lack basic electricity," the report's authors wrote. "If just one year’s energy consumption of the wealthiest 1% were redistributed, it could meet the modern energy needs of all the people in the world without electricity seven times over, while redistributing the consumption of the top 10% global energy consumers could meet the needs of the entire Global South nine times over."
The report also highlights how a "colonial financial system" plays a key role in perpetuating injustice, noting that "while rich countries can pour billions into their own clean energy transitions, the Global South is left with rising debt, punishing interest rates, and shrinking fiscal space."
For every #ElectricVehicle that contains about 3kg of cobalt mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tesla earns approximately $3,150 in profit. While the DRC government receives less than $10 in royalties and the average miner earns just $7!📢 Read our new report to learn more: oxf.am/3W68E2o
[image or embed]
— Oxfam International (@oxfaminternational.bsky.social) September 24, 2025 at 6:46 AM
According to Oxfam:
In 2024, high-income countries accounted for roughly 50% of global clean energy investment, and China for 29%, while Africa accounted for just 2%, despite sub-Saharan Africa being home to 85% of all the people in the world without electricity. The inequality is not only in where finance flows, but in how much it costs: Clean energy projects in the Global South face interest rates of 9–13.5%, compared with just 3–6% in richer countries, slowing the pace of the transition. These costs are not inevitable—they reflect a system that prices risk through the racialized lens of colonial legacies. The impact is stark: Powering 100,000 people with clean energy costs about $95 million in advanced economies like the UK, but $139 million (45% higher) in emerging economies such as India and $188 million (97% higher) in African countries such as Nigeria.
How does the Global South reclaim its energy future from climate colonialism? According to the report's authors, "Rather than treating the energy future as a race with few winners, we must reimagine it as a shared global project."
"Energy should not be hoarded, withheld, or used as leverage for geopolitical or corporate power," the report advises. "This structural change requires reparative justice: making rich polluters pay, redistributing resources, confronting overconsumption, and prioritizing the rights of those historically excluded while embracing economic models that put equality, well-being, and ecological limits at the center.
"Tackling inequality is both a moral imperative and an effective strategy for climate mitigation," the authors stressed, offering the following recommendations:
- Differentiating transition pathways based on historical responsibility and capacity;
- Working toward more equitable energy consumption;
- Reforming trade, investment, and taxation systems;
- Replacing extractive financial models with debt cancellation, grant-based climate finance, and reparations initiatives;
- Safeguarding communities and nature;
- Democratizing energy governance; and
- Adopting an international mechanism at the United Nations Climate Change Conference to ensure policy coherence and accelerate, consolidate, and achieve a holistic just transition.
The UN conference, or COP30—scheduled to begin November 10 in Belém, Brazil—is set to feature the theme of a just transition as a central agenda item.
"There is no single blueprint for a just transition—it will differ across contexts, shaped by diverse histories, knowledge, and needs," the Oxfam report states. "But all just transitions must share one principle: Energy should serve life, not profit."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular