Artificial intelligence holds immense promises for climate action—from forecasting extreme weather to tracking deforestation and optimizing freshwater resources. Yet across the Global South, the countries most vulnerable to climate disruption face structural barriers: restricted computing capacity, fragmented data governance and severe technical skills gaps. Compounding this challenge, the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure carries its own significant carbon, energy and water footprint.
To bridge these divides, UNESCO, the Government of Brazil and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) have formed a strategic partnership to establish the Artificial Intelligence Climate Institute (AICI). Announced at COP30[VL1]  in Belém and now moving to full implementation, the Institute aims to provide developing nations with the institutional and technical capacity to design, deploy and govern their own ethical, resource-efficient AI solutions.
A multilateral triad for green digital action
Anchored under ITU’s Green Digital Action Hub and institutionally hosted by Brazil’s National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel), AICI operationalizes Objective 4 of the COP29 Declaration on Green Digital Action—expanding digital inclusion, literacy and targeted skills development for climate resilience.
The initiative combines regulatory leadership, global technical standards and human-rights-based ethical governance into a shared operational model:
- Brazil (Anatel): Provides institutional hosting for the AICI Secretariat within its Green Digital Action Hub, steering regional cooperation and linking regulatory frameworks with digital infrastructure deployment.
- International Telecommunication Union (ITU): Delivers technical expertise in telecommunications and digital infrastructure, creating direct operational synergies with the ITU Academy and the AI Skills Coalition.
- UNESCO: Grounds the Institute’s curriculum and projects in the 2021 Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and its Open Science framework. Recent findings on resource-efficient AI, such as a joint UNESCO-UCL study demonstrated that task-specific models and optimized prompts can reduce AI energy consumption by up to 90%. Based on this research, UNESCO champions green, energy-efficient algorithms while deploying modules across its scientific networks, including the Intergovernmental Hydrological Programme (IHP) and Man and the Biosphere (MAB) reserves.
From COP30 announcement to operational delivery
The foundational milestone took place on 11 November 2025 during COP30 in BelĂ©m, where  the Institute’s vision was unveiled. The partners committed to a two-year operational roadmap (2026-2027) focused on country-led capacity building.Â
This roadmap translated into concrete action on 4 August 2026 in Manaus, Brazil, with an inaugural workshop “Infrastructure, Intelligence and Impact: the Pathway to a Sustainable Future.” Hosted by Anatel and the UNESCO BrasĂlia Office, the event brought together regional regulators, digital policymakers, and multilateral development banks—to finalize AICI’s operational structure:
