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Paper short abstract

Amidst growing understanding of how AI can reinforce existing inequalities and generate others, this paper foregrounds the potential of AI applications for agency shifts in power and bottom-up resistance, drawing on examples from around the world that further climate and environmental justice.

Paper long abstract

There is growing understanding and debate on the ways that AI technologies, infrastructure and knowledge reinforce existing inequalities and generate others. This paper provides a counter-point to techno-solutionist critiques by taking a critical view of the conditions under which AI is being repurposed in development contexts to address injustice and tackle unequal power relations. It does so by foregrounding examples of the emancipatory use of AI by marginalised communities and environmental justice activists in the Global South and marginalised areas of the Global North. It argues that growing deployment of AI-enabled tools such as satellite imagery analysis, machine learning for pollution detection, and automated evidence compilation can help to identify, publicise, and challenge environmental harms. The aim is to critically examine whether and how AI can be appropriated from below to resist environmental injustices and produce counter-expertise.