Special issue on “AI and the planetary Poly-Crisis: Climate, Sustainability, and Global Governance”

Deadline: 31.03.2025

We invite contributions to a Special Issue on “AI and the planetary Poly-Crisis: Climate, Sustainability, and Global
Governance,” to be published by AI & Society – the Journal of Culture, Knowledge and Communication (Springer)

https://www.springer.com/journal/146 

Article submissions due: 31 March 2025

Humanity faces pressing socio-ecological crises such as biodiversity loss, pandemics, and climate change. Global and
intergenerational consequences accompany all these crises. Technologies can play a major role in mitigating or
exacerbating these crises, especially artificial intelligence (AI), which has an ever-increasing impact around the world,
making it one of the leading technologies of the Anthropocene. AI can contribute to one of the most pressing socioecological
crises of our time—climate change—due to its massive consumption of energy and water, as well as high CO2
emissions (Dodge et al. 2022, Strubell et al. 2019). However, it can also mitigate climate change by gathering and
processing data on temperature change and CO2 emissions, transforming mobility systems to emit less, managing energy
consumption, or nudging people toward more climate-friendly behavior. Therefore, how AI technologies are developed
and used is closely connected to global governance and (climate) justice questions.
This link between AI and climate change, or sustainability more broadly, is attracting increasing attention within academia,
politics, and the media, as is the debate on which AI systems should or can be seen as sustainable (e.g., Brevini 2022,
Coeckelbergh 2021, Hacker 2024, Sætra 2021, van Wynsberghe 2021). While the question of whether, and if so, how AI
should be developed and deployed to mitigate rather than fuel climate change is being investigated (Kaack et al. 2022),
much more research is required, and many open research questions remain to be explored. We aim to contribute to these
debates with a collection of critical investigations on ‘sustainable AI’ and ‘AI for climate.’ We, therefore, invite
contributions from various disciplines related to normative, epistemic, or policy and governance questions in the topic’s
context.

Special Issue Themes
This Special Issue of AI & Society (AI&S) will expand critical scholarly research by introducing and investigating AI in a
climate change and sustainability context. The aim of the special issue is to contribute to developing a vision for a new
global governance framework for AI technologies and to further the debate on which AI technologies can be seen as
sustainable in a rigorous manner, finally aiming at providing thoughts on how AI can support societies to create both local
and global transformations towards more sustainable and democratic—and, therefore, more just—futures. We aim to
collect articles for the Special Issue that span from discussing the topic from a more general angle, e.g., by asking whether
AI systems can ever be sustainable or whether it is the right tool to mitigate climate change and other socio-ecological
crises, to articles that discuss concrete fields of application, such as, e.g., how AI can help transform societies’ mobility
systems into more sustainable ones by providing means for smart and efficient use of energy, car availabilities, and traffic
avoidance.
Other topics and themes will include, but are not limited to:
• How to use AI ‘for climate’ without interfering with people’s autonomy in ways that are not acceptable in a
democratic system,
• How to govern both AI and climate change at a global level, taking global and intergenerational justice and postcolonial
perspectives into account,
• How to balance interests in mitigating climate change with potentially competing interests,
• How and whether climate-friendly AI applications should be regulated by law,
• How to use AI ‘for climate’ in a way that it also benefits non-human living beings,
• How to evaluate climate friendliness, or more generally sustainability, of AI systems,
• Non-Western philosophies and world views in (not) applying AI ‘for climate’ or in evaluating the sustainability of
AI systems

Contribution Types
We welcome contributions across the following formats:
• Original papers (max 10k words): substantial contribution, theory, method, application. Contributions may be
experimental, based on case studies, or conceptual discussions of how AI systems affect organisations, society and
humans. Original papers will be double blind peer-reviewed by two reviewers and the editorial team.
• Curmudgeon papers (max 1k words): short opinionated column on trends in technology, science and society,
commenting on issues of concern to the research community and wider society. Whilst the drive for artificial
intelligence promotes potential benefits to wider society, it also raises deep concerns of existential risk, thereby
highlighting the need for an ongoing conversation between technology and society. At the core of Curmudgeon
concern is the question: What are the political-philosophical concepts regarding the present sphere of AI technology?
Curmudgeon articles will be reviewed by the Journal editors.

Important Dates
• Manuscript submission: 1 March 2025
• Notifications: 31 July 2025
• Revised papers due: 31 August 2025
• Publication of Special Issue: Winter 2025/26

Special Issue Editors:
Mark Coeckelbergh, University of Vienna, mark.coeckelbergh@univie.ac.at
Leonie N. Bossert, University of Vienna, leonie.nora.bossert@univie.ac.at
Leonie Möck, University of Vienna, leonie.moeck@univie.ac.at

Submission Formatting
You can find more information about formatting under the section “Submission guidelines”
www.springer.com/journal/146.

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AI and Society

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https://link.springer.com/journal/146

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