- A recent report underlines ten emerging technologies offering potential to accelerate climate action, restore ecosystems, and drive sustainable innovation within safe planetary boundaries. These technologies include AI-supported Earth observation, automated food waste upcycling, green concrete, and more.
- Innovative AI improvements in Earth observations (EO) can better identify and track human-caused environmental impacts and offer improved early warning alerts for planetary boundary overshoot. Such systems use AI-powered analytics to synthesize satellite, drone and ground-based data for near real-time results.
- Artificial intelligence and automation can also work in tandem to manage citywide food waste programs, assuring that food scraps are diverted from landfills or incineration, decreasing carbon emissions and reducing waste.
- Another tech solution is green concrete which could not only reduce emissions from traditional cement production, but when incorporated into infrastructure construction, can offer a permanent storage place for captured CO2.
In a world deluged by dire environmental news and seemingly short on scalable solutions, a recent report spotlights ten breakthrough technological innovations that could accelerate global efforts to tackle climate change, restore ecosystems, build long-term resilience, and improve planetary health. This inaugural report was researched and published by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and open science publisher Frontiers.
“From breakthroughs in clean energy and resource efficiency, to innovations in materials, agriculture and ecosystem restoration, these solutions have the potential to address and mitigate key drivers of planetary boundary transgressions,” said Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and chairman of the Frontiers Planet Prize’s Jury of 100.
Of course, no single technology can solve the complex environmental challenges humanity faces, Rockström noted, but a suite of emerging technologies offers new ways of transforming economies within Earth’s safe operating space.
Three tech solutions highlighted here in this article include: timely and specific Earth observation (conducted via AI data synthesis), automated food waste upcycling (turning scraps into valued resources), and green concrete (transforming global construction).
The other seven tech solutions found in the report are precision fermentation (to create animal-free proteins), green ammonia production (for decarbonizing synthetic fertilizer manufacture), methane capture and utilization (converting a potent greenhouse gas into a valuable resource), next-gen bi-direction charging (making stored battery power more flexible), modular geothermal energy (scaling up renewable heat and electricity), regeneration desalination (to recover lost resources and deliver clean water), and soil health technology convergence (restoring soil health with sensors microbes and AI).
“Technology has a vital role to play to help us build a more sustainable future, adapt to the consequences of the changing climate, and repair the harm already done to the Earth and its ecosystems,” WEF head of Technology for Earth Helen Burdett told Mongabay. She also noted that, while technology’s role in conserving and repairing Earth systems must be approached cautiously, humanity can recognize its best path forward by relying on both existing and emerging technologies.
Timely and specific Earth observation: Near real-time high-resolution tracking
Among the ten emerging technologies to support planetary health, one stands out, given its state of advancement and its capacity to more quickly track and pinpoint ongoing and escalating Earth changes, including flooding, droughts and deforestation events.
A new wave of Earth observation (EO) tools is closing the Earth Systems knowledge gap — moving beyond coarse low resolution snapshots to high-resolution, near real-time views of planetary change.
Satellite, drone and ground-based data can be synthesized with AI-powered analytics, allowing Earth observation systems to provide meter-scale insights (or even finer resolution) on key environmental and human-influenced impacts such as precipitation, soil moisture, vegetation health and land-use dynamics. These conditions all directly affect multiple planetary boundaries — including climate change, land-system change, freshwater use, biosphere integrity and biogeochemical flows.
As they come online, these new data systems will provide scientists with an unprecedented ability to measure key variables and inform decisions regarding agriculture and disaster response in a time of extreme climate risk, and to monitor and pinpoint ongoing deforestation drivers.
Advanced Earth observation platforms are already being implemented, said Luca Brocca, from the Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection (IRPI) in Perugia, Italy. In an email, he offered Mongabay two real-world examples: “The Copernicus satellite observation programme run by the European Space Agency [which] can monitor floods anywhere in Europe, and the ‘Early Warning for All’ initiative, [which is] very useful in isolated regions of Africa that have little access to internet.”
This solution can forecast flooding and landslides, and manage irrigation for precision agriculture, and track human interaction with hydric systems affected by the building of dams and irrigation.
Automated food waste upcycling
Automated food waste upcycling can reduce methane emissions by diverting food scraps destined for anaerobic decomposition in landfills and enabling recovery through composting and biogas systems.
This technology, utilizing a combination of AI and automation, can also support nutrient cycling by enabling food waste (organic matter and plant nutrients) to be returned to soil systems rather than lost through disposal — increasing soil carbon while reducing the need for petrochemical-based synthetic fertilizers.
In addition, “Reducing the human component in the [food waste] sorting plant can have a positive impact on workers’ health,” Maria Pilar Bernal of the Spanish National Research Council told Mongabay during a phone interview. “We can eliminate laborious inefficient hand sorting,” she noted, by combining near-infrared sensors with robotic arms guided by AI and machine learning. Cutting edge “robotics separates elements smaller than what’s visible by the human eye,” she added.
This technology could sort and separate food waste from plastic waste, reducing plastics and organics going into landfills, producing quality compost for agriculture (free of PFAS forever chemicals and other toxins frequently found in plastics), while helping slash methane, CO2 and nitrous oxide emissions.
Green concrete
Concrete is the most widely used construction material on Earth, and the production of its key binding ingredient, Portland cement, contributes approximately 8% of global CO2 emissions and drives unsustainable demand for sand mining which strips riverbeds and coastlines and damages ecosystems.
Novel cement-free green concrete technologies offer a sustainable alternative by eliminating Portland cement altogether and instead use binders derived from industrial byproducts or construction and demolition waste.
Green concrete technologies enable CO2 mineralization during curing, where CO2 is actively introduced and sequestered into the concrete matrix, allowing a permanent storage route for captured CO2 in newly built infrastructure.
These advances also cut demand for raw materials extraction and ease pressure on at least four planetary boundaries — climate change, land-system change, biogeochemical flows, and novel entities.
The WEF report notes that green concrete structural and lifecycle assessments have indicated durability, high reuse potential and significantly reduced emissions. Various approaches for this solution have gained regulatory approval in Germany, Canada, the U.S. and elsewhere.
AI sustainability opportunities and trade-offs
As already mentioned, several of the ten proposed tech solutions are enhanced by an artificial intelligence component. But WEF Managing Director Jeremy Jurgens noted that AI presents society with both opportunities and trade-offs. “Building the data centers to power AI requires energy, water, and support from local communities,” he said.
“At the same time, the technology can help protect the planet by making other processes more effective, such as by making energy utilization more efficient in transport, cooling and manufacturing.” Jurgens notes that AI is already “improving agricultural yields, monitoring illegal deforestation [and] mining, and accelerating scientific discovery.”
He cautions that as AI utilization rapidly expands, a holistic approach will be vital to determine how best to produce energy efficiently for data centers, reuse water, and support local affected communities. Such an approach isn’t meant to slow innovation, but rather to ensure it is sustainable. Lastly, securing an open transparent dialogue between tech companies, government, and affected communities is important.
Jurgens notes that WEF’s AI Governance Alliance initiative is meant to promote the responsible use of energy and close gaps that prevent AI from fully enabling a greener, more affordable, and secure energy future.
“The key is to integrate environmental considerations into AI development from the start,” he said.
Banner image: By fusing satellite, drone and ground-based data with AI-powered analytics, Earth observation systems now provide meter-scale insights (or finer) for key human-driven environmental impacts. Image courtesy of WEF.
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