Artificial Intelligence Risks and Sustainability

The authors examine the deployment of AI, robotics, and sensor technology in agriculture, forestry, and marine resource extraction, noting that while these technologies are increasingly used for climate and environmental monitoring, systemic risks remain under-explored. The paper identifies four primary categories of systemic risk: algorithmic bias, unequal access, cascading failures, and trade-offs between efficiency and resilience.

• AI and related technologies, including robotics and sensor technology, are increasingly being integrated into sectors with high sustainability impact, such as farming, forestry, and marine resource extraction, and are expected to alter how actors respond to ecological and climate change.
• Despite the rapid increase in investments and deployment of AI for environmental monitoring and sustainability-critical domains, there has been a lack of in-depth research into the associated systemic risks.
• The authors categorize potential systemic risks associated with AI in these sustainability domains into four areas: algorithmic bias and allocative harms, unequal access and benefits, cascading failures and external disruptions, and trade-offs between efficiency and resilience.

APA

Stockholm Environment Institute (2021). Artificial Intelligence Risks and Sustainability. https://www.sei.org/publications/artificial-intelligence-risks-sustainability/

Chicago

Stockholm Environment Institute. Artificial Intelligence Risks and Sustainability. 2021. https://www.sei.org/publications/artificial-intelligence-risks-sustainability/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Stockholm Environment Institute |title=Artificial Intelligence Risks and Sustainability |date=17 September 2021 |url=https://www.sei.org/publications/artificial-intelligence-risks-sustainability/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{stockholmenvironmentinstitute2021artificial, author = {{Stockholm Environment Institute}}, title = {{Artificial Intelligence Risks and Sustainability}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2021}, month = sep, url = {https://www.sei.org/publications/artificial-intelligence-risks-sustainability/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }