The same technology that monitors our forests consumes water, energy and rare minerals on an industrial scale. With the start of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP30), Brazil must decide: either regulate this paradox or pretend it does not exist.
AI systems like Imazon’s PrevisIA and Inpe platforms detect deforestation in real time, predict where devastation will occur and map secret roads where no inspector has ever set foot. This digital guardian protects the Amazon with an efficiency that the state alone cannot achieve. But according to the AI Index 2025 report, from Stanford University, the Llama 3.1 405B exercise generated 8,930 tons of carbon dioxide — the equivalent of 900 flights between Sao Paulo and New York.
The real impact is in the heuristics: every time millions of users consult ChatGPT daily, they generate emissions that can exceed the full cost of initial training. Every 20 to 50 questions consume half a liter of clean water. Data centers rely on lithium and tin extracted from destroyed ecosystems.
At this COP, Brazil will not need to provide rhetoric, but rather concrete legal solutions. And here lies our contradiction: while we monitor the Amazon region using cutting-edge artificial intelligence, we operate 180 data centers in the country – including the fifth largest in Latin America, in Barueri (SP) – without any regulatory framework that requires specific environmental oversight of this infrastructure. The “cloud computing” metaphor has created an illusion of irrelevance. The reality is physical: each model requires thousands of cryogenic servers that drain aquifers, are powered by energy that often comes from fossil fuels, and are built with mined minerals without a commitment to sustainability.
Our robust environmental legislation was designed in the analogue age. It was not possible to imagine structured algorithms that encourage unsustainable consumption, or data centers that consume water resources equivalent to small cities, or artificial intelligence models whose training generates emissions equivalent to hundreds of transatlantic flights.
Hosting the most important climate conference on the planet in the heart of the Amazon allows us to legally demonstrate our ability to innovate. Brazil brings together unique elements: we have the largest biodiversity heritage on the planet, operate advanced artificial intelligence systems to monitor it and host important data center infrastructure. This combination enables us to propose a model of governance that other countries can emulate. But this requires urgent legislative action.
First, classify data centers and AI infrastructure as potentially polluting activities, and subject them to a specific environmental license. Second, establishing radical transparency. Development companies must publish detailed reports on the environmental footprint of their models.
COP30 could serve as a forum for Brazil to propose an international standard for these metrics.
Third, integrate the protector and recipient principles, and create incentives for companies that develop AI with positive environmental externalities. Fourth, creating an “Environmental Artificial Intelligence Charter” that unifies duties, responsibilities, and incentives.
Regulatory inertia is not neutral. It allows technological progress to continue without internalizing its environmental externalities and passing the cost on to future generations. AI can be Amazon’s most powerful ally, but only if we have the legal wisdom to transform it into intelligence in the service of sustainability.
COP30 is not just a conference. This is the deadline we have set for ourselves to decide whether Brazil will become a leader in environmental governance in the twenty-first century or another country passively observing its contradictions.
Trends/Discussions
Articles published with a byline do not reflect the opinion of the newspaper. Its publication aims to stimulate debate on Brazilian and global problems and reflects different trends in contemporary thought.
About The Author
