Building trust and inclusivity in AI-Driven climate action

Climate change poses an existential threat for Asia, which is home to 60% of the world’s population. It is the world’s most disaster-prone region; in 2023, disasters affected more than 9 million people and killed 2,000. The impacts of climate change are projected to exacerbate health issues, with an increase in infectious diseases like dengue fever. By 2050, nearly 40 million people may face internal displacement due to climate effects in South Asia alone.

Given the increasing urgency to find solutions, policymakers are looking towards technology and particularly AI as a potential tool in the fight against climate change. With advancements in research, even traditional physics is being combined with AI to build more accurate weather forecasting tools. For example, Google recently developed NeuralGCM, the first machine learning application for accurate weather forecasting - predicting a range of scenarios, using traditional physics-based atmospheric factors with AI components.

In climate change affected sectors like agriculture where crop yield is decreasing and food security is threatened because of extreme weather events, initiatives like the AEGIS project are leveraging AI to study how ancient environmental DNA helped crop plants adapt to climate changes. At a global level, the United Nations Climate Technology Centre and Network (CTCN) mechanism recognises the role of AI to simplify our understanding of complex systems, make precise predictions, and build climate resilience.