Andrea Gentili, Giulio Amore

University of Padua

"The role of AI in international environmental law: the search for principles beyond a risk-based approach"

The interplay between climate change and the development of AI is two-sided. Its application could be decisive in curbing the effects of the ecological crisis, enhancing, for example, regional and global environmental monitoring tools such as IBM’s Green Horizon and Google’s Earth Engine. At the same time, these technologies also entail nontrivial burdens in terms of resources and emissions. As with any innovations of this magnitude, the issue lies in striking the right balance, avoiding both uncritical optimism and misguided technophobia. For this crucial mediation endeavor, the legal dimension will be of utmost importance.
Nevertheless, major regulations such as the European AI Act do not seem to have fully met this challenge, focusing mostly on managing the potential risks of new technologies and their classification. What appears to be missing is an overall legal vision regarding the implementation of AI, beyond the urgency of surveillance and restriction. From the perspective of international environmental law, this approach is particularly critical if, as is likely, AI-based tools will be implemented for the environmental impact assessments (EIA) necessary for the key preliminary tools for two globally recognized principles of environmental law: prevention and precaution (as per the Rio Declaration of 1992 and art. 191(2) TFEU). Therefore, we have a paradoxical result: the risk assessment procedure will itself be subject to a risk assessment.
Tackling this and other difficult issues, the objective of this paper will be to investigate how the relationship between environmental AI technology and principles of environmental law can be reconfigured to shift the legal focus from the category of “risk” to that of “responsibility.” This will involve looking particularly at the possibility of developing a legal strategy that involves the application of fundamental rights already interpreted in an environmental sense.

Bio

Andrea Gentili is currently completing his PhD in Philosophy at the University of Padua, focusing on contemporary environmental thought and ecological jurisprudence, with an emphasis on climate litigation and global justice. He holds a law degree (MA, University of Bologna) and a degree in Philosophical Sciences (MA, University of Padua and University of Jena). His research interests include classical German philosophy, continental philosophy of law, and ecological applications of phenomenology. He has undertaken several study and research periods in Germany, first in Jena and then in Darmstadt, under the supervision of A. Nordmann. He is a member of the Padua research group “Metamorfosi del trascendentale.”