The Environmental Cost of Digital Sovereignty: Water, Energy, and Emissions Impacts of Sovereign AI Infrastructure in the Global South
arXiv:2607.13443v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Sovereign AI has become a strategic priority across the Global South, with over \$200 billion in state-led commitments announced between 2024 and 2026. Yet the physical infrastructure that compute sovereignty demands, above all data centers, imposes water, energy, and carbon costs that fall hardest on countries least equipped to absorb them. This paper presents a comparative environmental stress analysis across four cases: the United Arab Emirates,
Record details
Published: 16 July 2026
Source: arXiv cs.CY
Category: Research
Topics: Environment
Retrieved: 16 July 2026
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ethics.ai (16 July 2026), “The Environmental Cost of Digital Sovereignty: Water, Energy, and Emissions Impacts of Sovereign AI Infrastructure in the Global South,” evidence record 10541, https://ethics.ai/record/10541 (originally published by arXiv cs.CY).
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