Is AI a climate change villain, whose insatiable hunger for electricity will roast the planet? Or will it help predict where the next climate disaster will strike and what to do about it?
In order to weigh these questions up, a good starting point is with AI’s energy consumption.
The 2015 Paris agreement was a deal among almost 200 countries to keep “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and pursue efforts “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels”.
Training and deploying AI models takes place in large data centres which use a lot of power. A typical AI-focused data centre consumes as much electricity as 100,000 households. That’s why energy use is at the heart of this question about how AI will affect climate change.
Data centre use rises
But AI’s energy consumption is increasing fast. According to the International Energy Agency, the power used to train large language models (LLMs) and to run them has risen roughly tenfold since ChatGPT was launched in November 2022. And AI data centres of the future will consume far more electricity than they do today, perhaps 20 times more.
Use of AI has grown very fast, and is still growing. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet which is Google’s parent company, recently said that Google’s monthly usage of its AI products has increased sevenfold to 3.2 quadrillion tokens (the units of data AI models read and process) since last year.
However, power consumption per AI task is going down. So efficiency is growing. The problem is that our demand for it is also growing. Economists know this as Jevons’s paradox: where technological gains can wipe out efficiencies as they create more use.
AI consumes about 155 terawatt-hours of electricity a year, based on IEA figures, and a third of the energy used by data centres overall. That is a lot. But it is still only about 0.5% of the world’s electricity, and around 0.1% of its total energy use (when we also consider oil, gas and carbon).
However, other factors are also significant. Data centres cluster, and in places where they do, such as Ireland and northern Virginia, they already strain local grids.
How AI is driving energy use.
Can AI help with climate change?
But what about AI’s potential to help with climate change? In 2025, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts put an AI model into use, AIFS, which produces forecasts that improve on traditional physics-based models. It cannot tell you whether rain will fall on your street 30 days from now, but it can assess the probabilities of extreme weather events with much more geographical detail and offer more time to plan ahead.
This massively improves the possibility for insurers to assess risks as well as for government departments to put plans in place to avoid, or mitigate, disasters. It also significantly uses less energy than other physics-based weather forecasting systems.
AI could be a powerful lever for the IPCC to better serve its mission. A public AI model (similar to the AIFS) could potentially reduce biases, if used well. And it could do more than forecasting. It could suggest actions as well as describe risks; cover adaptation as well as mitigation; and reach not only government departments but city councils, farmers and households. This would turn global science into a decision-supporting system about which crop to plant or whether to insulate a roof as well as the policy decisions on how to manage energy transition.
That will not happen by itself. We need incentives to make the use of AI more energy efficient.
Here lies the most striking contrast between the two sides of the argument over AI and climate change. The world has a governance mechanism for climate change, however imperfect: the Conference of the Parties (COP), which has met almost every year since 1995. But AI has little more than voluntary codes, occasional summits and a UN scientific panel created only last year.
The work suggests that AI’s appetite for energy could be smaller than feared, and its potential is larger. But concludes that neither will matter much unless we learn to govern it.
Whether AI warms or cools the planet could depend less on its chips than on the institutions we build around AI, and how we use it.
Economist Mahmoud Moheildin, speaking at the Building Bridges sustainable finance summit in Geneva, on 8 October 2026. (Building Bridges 2026)
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As thousands of finance leaders gather in Thailand for IMF and World Bank meetings, the Egyptian economist warns that tackling today’s biggest development challenges will require looking beyond the existing international financial system to more localised solutions.
Mahmoud Mohieldin has spent much of his career mobilising financing to tackle the world’s greatest development challenges. A former senior executive at the World Bank and at the International Monetary Fund, he became the UN secretary-general’s special envoy on financing the 2030 Agenda in 2020, just as the Covid-19 pandemic began and further derailed progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
With less than four years left until the 2030 deadline, the goals remain badly off track. Developing countries face mounting debt burdens, while geopolitical tensions have weakened the international cooperation needed to address them. Mohieldin, who served as Egypt’s climate champion ahead of COP27 in 2022, argues that governments must do more to mobilise national resources, attract private investment and reform international financial institutions. In Geneva to attend the Building Bridges finance summit last week, he spoke with Geneva Solutions about the future of development finance, the upcoming climate summit in Antalya, and what it will take to turn global pledges into practical results.
Geneva Solutions: We’re less than four years from 2030, and the UN’s own figures show that only 36 per cent of SDG targets are on track or making moderate progress. At the same time, development financing is under severe pressure. What has gone wrong and what prospects do you see for the agenda beyond 2030?
Mahmoud Mohieldin: The 2026 SDGs report was really disappointing. Politicians tend to blame global economic shocks, from Covid to the wars in Ukraine and the Gulf. But the 2019 update showed that even then, the world was not on track. Instead, I would blame a lack of leadership; a lack of trust in the global system; limited capacity and capital for multilateral development banks to support development finance for developing economies; and finance ministers’ failure to prioritise the SDGs in their budgets. We have also seen excessive borrowing to the point that many countries now spend more on debt service than on education, health, and essential services combined. This kind of political, economic, and fiscal environment doesn’t really help in achieving any kind of meaningful goal for humanity or the planet. That said, we cannot ignore some notable successes. We also cannot ignore that China declared the end of extreme poverty, the first goal of the SDGs, in 2020. In 2024, India announced the same, and many OECD and Nordic countries have done well on their SDGs.
Development progress will not end in 2030. We need to start the next decade on a better note. This means more mobilisation of finance, more capacity- building and use of technology, and more incentives, including from governments and key economic agents. Without adequate finance and preparedness, artificial intelligence could become another source of inequality. Higher energy costs also mean more constraints on the public purse, leaving less money for development finance and for education, health and infrastructure.
The additional financing developing countries need is estimated at around $4 trillion annually. Where does that money need to come from?
We keep talking about the huge $4 trillion-a-year bill to achieve the SDGs, but most of it really is infrastructure-related, and here we need to be more innovative. We need a new architecture for infrastructure finance. We have seen a great deal of myopia in terms of priorities, with the private sector crowded out of many essential logistical projects by governments where they should be crowding it in.
In today’s world, it would be ridiculous to borrow to build your next airport or seaport. That should be the job of public-private partnerships through build-operate-transfer schemes or something like that. Borrowing should be reserved for areas the private sector is not ready to engage in and where public-sector budgets lack sufficient funds.
The UN secretary general race is in full swing. The person who takes over on 1 January 2027 will inherit unfinished SDGs and the job of shaping whatever comes after 2030. Candidates have expressed different opinions on what they would do – where do you stand?
The UN’s primary function is peace and security, and we shouldn’t forget the price we pay for war, hostilities, and the trust deficit. We need to strengthen the interlinkages among the UN’s three pillars: security and peace, humanitarian work, and development. Secondly, humanitarian finance and the humanitarian support system require a revolution. It needs to be built based on adequate insurance mechanisms and prior investment in prevention – and that would require a completely different architecture.
And last but not least, we cannot ignore the role of legacy institutions like the World Bank, regional development banks, and national development finance institutions. The UN’s work should be complementary and provide catalytic resources. It can really help by enhancing countries’ capacity to improve their partnerships with development finance institutions and the private sector.
You were Egypt’s UN climate champion ahead of Cop27 in 2022. We’re now just weeks away from the next summit in Turkey. Has there been a political disengagement from climate action as governments prioritise security, energy and the economy?
The climate agenda was, to a great extent, hijacked by some advanced economies, which focused only on mitigation and decarbonisation and forgot the importance of a balanced approach between mitigation and adaptation, as outlined in the Paris Agreement.
Now, Global South countries have started to hold very strong views that climate action should not be distanced from development action. Climate action is development action, just as climate finance is development finance. If you invest in renewables, it supports energy and SDG 7. If you invest in adaptation, this means water, agriculture and food. These are all part of the SDGs.
Second, there was also more preaching and political motivation pushing the climate agenda rather than reliance on science and practical solutions. Now, people are taking a more pragmatic approach, realising that climate solutions are affordable and serve communities affected by climate change. As FT journalist Gillian Tett has aptly described, the world is moving from greenwashing to greenhushing. In the past, people claimed they were doing more on climate action than they really were. Now they might be doing more, but because of concerns in some jurisdictions, like the US, they are doing it in silence.
COP29 put a $300bn annual climate-finance goal on the table for developing countries by 2035, alongside an ambition to scale overall flows to $1.3 trillion. What needs to happen at Cop31 to make these pledges credible?
The story of these pledges, commitments and delivery is really a sad one. Some people claim the previous $100bn commitment was delivered based on some methodology, but because of double, if not multiple, counting, and the use of dedicated funds for purposes beyond climate action, we never achieved it.
My advice to developing economies is to keep at it. We need to keep monitoring commitments and hold those who promise and pledge to deliver. But there are also many things we can do at home, regionally and nationally, to mobilise funding. We should not limit the work to external financing; we definitely need to do a better job of mobilising finance domestically, locally and regionally.
COP31, hosted by Turkey and Australia, faces difficult questions over fossil fuels. Are you pessimistic about the prospects for meaningful progress on the energy transition?
I’m betting not on Cops. I’m betting on technology. Daniel Yergin, an influential scholar, reminds us in his book, The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations, that the shift from one energy source to another is primarily a function of technology, not declarations.
The cost of producing electricity from solar or wind today is a fraction of what it was ten years ago. That makes people move towards these sources because it makes economic sense. Technology is telling us that, even if you are stubborn today and resist change, it is upon us.
At IMF and World Bank meetings, global policymakers are set to discuss the huge challenges facing developing countries, from rising debt and energy costs to other crises. Can the international financial system respond?
The crises we face today are far beyond our institutions’ capacity. They have a lot to do with the tough geopolitical environment, which does not make cooperative solutions the first option. We are at a low point in international cooperation.
Many reports offer specific, practical solutions to deal with debt crises, but very few have been fully adopted. We are victims of one of the worst geopolitical moments, with the worst deficits in trust in modern history since the Second World War. That has economic and financial implications.
I see solutions becoming more localised, more nationalised and more regional. If we wait for international institutions to do what they did in the past, we will put a burden on them that, given the tough geopolitics, they will not be able to handle.
What reform of the international financial architecture could make the greatest difference to developing countries?
One major reform would concern voice, governance, agency, and even-handedness in the international financial institutions. That would be a good start to build trust. The weight of developing economies and emerging markets today is very different from their weight in 1945. Changes in shareholders’ agreements, voice, influence and representation have not adequately reflected this, despite some slight improvements. We need to make these institutions more representative, well-respected, relevant and fit for purpose. Otherwise, they will become empty shells, and their relevance will diminish over time.
AR7 report was scheduled for 2028 in time for Cop33 summit but some petro-states and major developing countries want to postpone it
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Scientists are coming under pressure from some petro-states and major developing countries to delay publication of a key global report on the climate, despite pleas from vulnerable countries worried that postponement could spell disaster for them.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN-convened body of the world’s leading climate scientists, is meeting this week in Addis Ababa to discuss its seventh assessment report, a comprehensive survey of all that is known about the climate crisis.
The report, known as AR7, was scheduled to appear in 2028 in time for deliberations at the UN climate summit, Cop33, late that year. Cop33 is scheduled to critique governments’ actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris agreement target of limiting temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
But a group of countries, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia and including India and China, is pressing for publication of the report to be pushed back to 2029.
They argue this is necessary in order to allow developing countries to have more input into the scientific findings. Climate science has been dominated for three decades by countries and blocs including the EU, the UK and the US, though under Donald Trump’s presidency in the last of these it has has been severely curtailed.
Waves crash against the waterfront promenade as Hurricane Simon approaches Mexico’s Pacific coast in Puerto Vallarta, on Sunday. More extreme weather is forecast globally. Photograph: Christian Ruano/Reuters
Many poor and vulnerable countries – which are also among those contributing least to the science – strongly oppose any such delay. Ministers from 34 members of the High Ambition Coalition, made up of some of the poorest countries and those most at risk from climate breakdown, as well as the EU and the Least Developed Countries grouping, called on Friday for publication of AR7 to be expedited.
Jess Gasper, a minister for the Marshall Islands, said: “We cannot allow political interests to determine which science the world is willing to hear.”
Jiwoh Emmanuel Abdulai, the minister of environment for Sierra Leone, added: “The Paris agreement can only deliver on its promise if the best available science continues to guide climate change negotiations.”
Global temperatures have already exceeded the threshold of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, though the IPCC has previously suggested there is still a way to restore them. If current national emissions targets are met, global temperatures would exceed 1.8C. That is a very big “if”, as most countries do not have fully articulated plans for meeting the targets, meaning far higher temperatures are likely.
The global stocktake at Cop33 in 2028 is meant to provide a check on whether governments need to ramp up their efforts, and is crucial to the Paris agreement “ratchet” which demands stronger action.
The overflowing Gomti river flooded the Fazullaganj residential area of Lucknow, India, last week. Photograph: Rajesh Kumar Singh/AP
AR7 is the latest in a series of comprehensive reports on climate science dating back to 1988 that have grown increasingly stark in their warnings of the impacts of pouring carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The last such assessment, published in three parts in 2021 and 2022, found that unless emissions were swiftly reduced the world would face unstoppable impacts that would swiftly become catastrophic and in some cases irreversible.
AR7 is expected to strike an even more urgent note, as greenhouse gases in the interim have continued to rise, and the impacts such as rising temperatures, heatwaves, floods and droughts are increasingly apparent. This year has seen temperature records tumble and drought grip swathes of Europe and the US, while a gathering El Nino weather system, supercharged by the climate crisis, is forecast to bring extreme weather and rising food prices.
The IPCC is supposed to carry on its work free from government interference. However, key documents known as the “summary for policymakers”, published alongside the thousands of pages of the official reports, are subject to approval from all governments that wish to play a role.
The Guardian has previously uncovered evidence of involvement in the IPCC’s assessments of representatives of oil interests under control of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Despite these flaws, the IPCC is the most authoritative global body on climate science, and many experts say delaying its input to the Cop talks would weaken the global response to the climate crisis at a time when adverse geopolitics already threaten progress on emissions. The US is leading attacks on climate action, but far-right populist politicians across Europe also want to water down the EU’s regulations, and in Latin America a tide of rightwing populism, particularly in Brazil, Colombia and Argentina, threatens the same.
Water levels in the Jatigede reservoir recede amid drought in Sumedang Regency, West Java province, Indonesia. Photograph: Claudio Pramana/Reuters
Within this context, waiting for developing countries to be able to contribute more science makes little sense, according to Claudio Angelo of the Observatório do Clima in Brazil. “It’s extremely concerning the way the structural issue of equity is being weaponised by some big developing countries,” he said. “It’s true that integrated assessment [climate science] models are mostly built by global north countries and therefore biased. [But] that’s not a problem that can be fixed just by giving the IPCC an extra few months to work. We can’t afford to leave Addis without a decision [to press ahead with the 2028 timetable].”
Angelo queried why countries such as India and Saudi Arabia were claiming to be standing up for developing countries by backing a delay. “They have the money and the technology to send rockets to the moon – why couldn’t they bother to build their own models to be reviewed by the IPCC?”
But the row has exposed splits within the environmental NGO movement. Some civil society groups are sympathetic to calls for more science from developing countries, and the Guardian understands that some are considering backing the call for a delay.
The IPCC declined to comment. The Guardian has approached Saudi Arabia, Russia, China and India for comment.
For decades, sustainable architecture has been shaped by a fundamental ambition: to reduce the environmental damage caused by buildings. Energy-efficient envelopes, renewable energy systems, recycled materials, and green certification schemes have helped establish measurable standards for improving the relationship between the built environment and the natural world.
Yet, despite these advances, the ecological consequences of construction remain profound. Buildings consume resources, fragment habitats, alter hydrological systems, and contribute to the depletion of biodiversity, even when their operational carbon emissions approach zero.
Regenerative architecture proposes a more ambitious objective. Rather than simply minimizing negative impacts, it seeks to create buildings and settlements that actively contribute to the recovery of the ecosystems in which they exist. This approach positions architecture as an ecological participant capable of supporting biodiversity, rebuilding soil health, restoring water cycles, and strengthening the resilience of landscapes. Its central question is no longer whether a building can operate without producing net emissions, but whether its presence can leave a place ecologically healthier than it was before construction.
Net-zero has become an influential benchmark in contemporary building design, particularly in response to climate change. A net-zero energy building generally produces as much energy annually as it consumes, while a net-zero carbon building seeks to balance its greenhouse gas emissions through reductions, renewable energy, and, where necessary, compensatory measures. Although these strategies are essential, they address only part of the environmental consequences associated with architecture.
An energy-efficient building can still occupy a biologically valuable landscape, introduce toxic materials into local environments, or disrupt the movement of wildlife. Similarly, a development that offsets its emissions may continue to depend on extractive supply chains and construction practices that degrade ecosystems elsewhere. Environmental accounting can therefore produce misleading conclusions when it treats a building as an isolated technical object rather than a component of interconnected ecological systems.
Regenerative architecture expands the definition of performance by examining relationships among buildings, landscapes, communities, and living organisms. It considers whether development can improve ecological functions, support species diversity, and strengthen the capacity of a place to recover from disturbance. This does not make carbon reduction irrelevant; instead, it places decarbonization within a broader framework of ecological repair. A genuinely regenerative project must demonstrate positive contributions to its context rather than relying exclusively on the absence of measurable harm.
Architecture as an Instrument of Biodiversity Recovery
One of the most significant contributions of regenerative architecture lies in its potential to restore habitats within increasingly fragmented urban and rural environments. Conventional development frequently replaces complex ecosystems with simplified surfaces, isolated ornamental planting, and impermeable boundaries. Such landscapes may appear green while offering limited food, shelter, or breeding opportunities for wildlife. Regenerative design challenges this visual understanding of nature by prioritizing ecological function over decorative appearance.
Buildings can support biodiversity through green roofs, vegetated façades, habitat corridors, native planting, and carefully designed nesting and shelter features. However, the effectiveness of these interventions depends on their ecological specificity. A roof covered with non-native ornamental plants cannot automatically compensate for the destruction of a diverse native habitat, while isolated green spaces may provide little benefit to species that require connected territories. Designers must therefore collaborate with ecologists to identify local species, migration patterns, habitat requirements, and existing environmental pressures.
At a larger scale, architectural and urban projects can contribute to networks of interconnected habitats. Restored waterways, tree-lined streets, ecological corridors, and permeable boundaries allow species to move through developed areas and access resources that would otherwise remain disconnected. The architectural site consequently becomes part of a wider ecological infrastructure rather than an enclosed property defined exclusively by human requirements.
Rebuilding Soil: The Hidden Foundation of Regeneration
Soil is one of the most overlooked components of architectural sustainability, despite its essential role in supporting terrestrial ecosystems. Construction commonly involves excavation, compaction, contamination, and the removal of fertile topsoil, processes that can destroy microbial communities and reduce the capacity of land to retain water and nutrients. Once damaged, soil may require years or decades to recover its biological functions, particularly when disturbance is extensive.
Regenerative projects address these conditions by treating soil as a living system rather than an inert construction surface. Strategies include preserving existing topsoil during site preparation, restoring contaminated land through appropriate remediation, introducing organic matter, reducing compaction, and re-establishing native vegetation. Landscape design can also support soil regeneration through composting systems, locally adapted planting, and the integration of productive gardens that return organic nutrients to the ground.
The benefits extend beyond vegetation growth. Healthy soils store carbon, filter pollutants, regulate water movement, and sustain organisms essential to ecosystem stability. By protecting these functions, architecture can contribute to ecological recovery that is largely invisible from the building’s exterior but fundamental to its long-term environmental value. Such interventions are particularly important on former industrial sites, degraded urban land, and developments where ecological restoration can transform neglected areas into functioning landscapes.
Conventional urban development frequently disrupts natural hydrological processes. Roads, parking areas, roofs, and other impermeable surfaces accelerate runoff, increase flood risks, and prevent rainfall from replenishing groundwater. Pollutants carried by stormwater can further damage rivers, wetlands, and coastal ecosystems. Regenerative architecture responds by redesigning the relationship between buildings and water, treating rainfall as a resource that should remain within the landscape whenever local conditions permit.
Nature-based systems provide practical mechanisms for achieving this objective. Bioswales, rain gardens, constructed wetlands, permeable paving, and restored stream corridors slow runoff while supporting filtration and infiltration. Rainwater harvesting can supply irrigation and certain non-potable building uses, reducing pressure on municipal water networks. Green roofs may also retain precipitation, moderate surface temperatures, and create additional habitat, although their performance depends on climate, substrate depth, vegetation, and maintenance.
Water regeneration requires more than installing isolated sustainable drainage features. Designers must understand watershed boundaries, seasonal rainfall patterns, groundwater conditions, and the ecological needs of downstream environments. In water-scarce regions, maximizing infiltration without considering groundwater quality or availability may be inappropriate, while excessive irrigation can undermine the intended benefits of native landscaping. Effective regenerative design therefore works with the natural behavior of water rather than imposing a universal technical solution on every site.
The ecological consequences of architecture extend far beyond the boundaries of a construction site. Extraction, manufacturing, transportation, and disposal generate environmental pressures across global supply chains, including habitat destruction, mineral depletion, pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions. Regenerative architecture addresses these impacts by reconsidering where materials originate, how they are processed, how long they remain useful, and what happens when buildings reach the end of their service lives.
Adaptive reuse is particularly valuable because retaining existing structures can avoid substantial quantities of demolition waste and the embodied impacts associated with new construction. Where new materials are necessary, designers can prioritize responsibly sourced timber, recycled components, low-impact mineral products, and materials that can be separated and reused without significant degradation. Designing for disassembly makes future recovery more feasible by replacing irreversible connections and composite assemblies with systems that support repair and material separation.
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Nevertheless, circularity and regeneration are not interchangeable concepts. Recycling a material does not necessarily restore the ecosystem from which its original resources were extracted, and renewable materials are not automatically sustainable if their production damages forests, soils, or water supplies. A regenerative material strategy must consider both technical life cycles and the ecological conditions of production. Its success depends on whether material demand can be reduced while supply chains become more transparent, accountable, and compatible with the recovery of natural systems.
Regenerative architecture also draws on ecological processes to inform the organization and performance of buildings. Biomimicry, biophilic design, and climate-responsive architecture offer related but distinct contributions. Biomimicry studies biological strategies that may inspire technical solutions, biophilic design strengthens human relationships with nature, and regenerative design evaluates whether these relationships contribute to the health of wider ecological systems.
Buildings inspired by termite mounds, for example, have informed investigations into passive ventilation and temperature regulation. Other projects explore shading patterns derived from vegetation, building envelopes that respond to changing environmental conditions, and landscape systems that manage water through principles observed in natural ecosystems. Such approaches can reduce dependence on mechanical systems while improving the adaptability of the built environment.
However, copying the appearance or mechanics of a natural organism is not sufficient to make a building regenerative. A biomimetic façade may reduce cooling demand without providing any measurable ecological benefit beyond energy savings. The regenerative potential emerges when technical innovation is connected to the needs of a specific place, such as restoring habitat, reducing pressure on local resources, or improving environmental conditions for surrounding communities. Nature becomes not merely a source of architectural inspiration but a reference for understanding interdependence, adaptation, and ecological continuity.
Measuring Regeneration: From Intentions to Evidence
One of the greatest challenges facing regenerative architecture is determining whether a project actually improves ecological conditions. Conventional building assessments often rely on indicators such as energy consumption, carbon emissions, water efficiency, and recycled material content. These metrics remain useful, but they cannot independently establish whether biodiversity has increased, soil has recovered, or ecosystem functions have improved.
A regenerative assessment requires a broader set of indicators tailored to the project and its ecological context. These may include changes in native species abundance, habitat connectivity, soil organic carbon, infiltration rates, water quality, vegetation survival, and the condition of nearby ecological systems. Establishing a reliable baseline before construction is essential because a project’s apparent success cannot be evaluated without understanding the conditions that existed beforehand.
Monitoring must also continue after occupation. Newly planted landscapes may initially appear successful but fail during drought, while green roofs can lose ecological value if maintenance practices gradually replace diverse vegetation with simplified planting. Long-term assessment allows designers and building operators to identify failures, adapt management strategies, and distinguish temporary improvements from lasting ecological recovery. Regeneration should therefore be understood as an ongoing process of observation, intervention, and adjustment rather than a certification awarded at project completion.
Ecosystems do not exist separately from human communities. Environmental degradation frequently affects disadvantaged populations through polluted water, inadequate green space, urban heat, flooding, and restricted access to healthy environments. A regenerative architectural project that improves biodiversity while displacing residents or restricting public access to restored landscapes may achieve ecological gains without producing a genuinely equitable outcome.
Social regeneration requires meaningful participation in planning, recognition of local knowledge, and the distribution of environmental benefits across communities. Publicly accessible green spaces, community gardens, restored waterfronts, and climate-responsive housing can support both ecological recovery and everyday well-being. In this context, architecture must consider not only what an ecosystem needs to recover but also who participates in the process, who benefits from its outcomes, and who bears the costs.
This relationship is especially important in urban regeneration, where environmental improvements can increase land values and contribute to the displacement of existing residents. Affordable housing provisions, inclusive governance, and long-term community stewardship can help prevent ecological restoration from becoming an instrument of exclusion. Regenerative architecture is most convincing when environmental health and social justice reinforce one another rather than compete for priority.
Moving beyond net-zero requires a fundamental shift in how architecture defines success. Carbon-neutral operation, resource efficiency, and reduced environmental impact remain necessary achievements, but they cannot fully address the ecological damage associated with contemporary development. Regenerative architecture introduces a more demanding ambition: to restore the relationships and processes that allow ecosystems to function, adapt, and sustain life.
Achieving this ambition requires cooperation among architects, landscape designers, ecologists, engineers, policymakers, and local communities. It also demands that ecological objectives influence decisions from site selection and material procurement to construction methods, landscape management, and long-term building operation. The most important measure of success is not the number of green technologies incorporated into a project, but the demonstrable improvement of the living systems connected to it.
Ultimately, architecture cannot independently reverse every form of environmental degradation, nor can a building compensate for the destruction of an ecosystem simply by adding vegetation or producing renewable energy. Its regenerative potential lies in recognizing these limits while actively contributing to broader ecological recovery. The transition beyond net-zero is therefore not merely a technical evolution in building design; it is a redefinition of architecture’s purpose, from occupying the environment with less damage to helping create the conditions under which both human and nonhuman life can flourish.
AI … new law under debate by Bahrain’s legislators
Bahrain could look into international experience to build a flexible legal framework for artificial intelligence, labelled nowadays as super intelligence by the Americans, that protects people and addresses and acknowledges emerging risks without holding back innovation, Shura Council human rights committee vice-chairman Ali Al Shehabi has said.
With AI, or SI, rapidly moving into almost every aspect of modern life, Mr Al Shehabi believes Bahrain’s proposed legislation, originally presented by him amongst others, had to be broad enough to keep pace with technological change while giving regulators the tools to deal with high-risk applications.
The proposed legislation calls for the creation of a specialised AI unit, with responsibilities including co-operation with government authorities using AI technologies and monitoring compliance with the proposed law to reduce risks arising from misuse.
It also provides a legal route for people harmed by AI applications to seek compensation, including circumstances where more than one party may be responsible. The owner of a robot or programmed intelligent machine could also be held responsible for damage caused by it.
The proposal includes administrative and criminal penalties, ranging from warnings and withdrawal of licences to escalating administrative fines, alongside criminal sanctions for specified offences.
But, the government has raised a series of concerns and called for the legislation to be reconsidered, arguing that AI is evolving at such a rapid pace that extensive technical studies are needed to properly assess its benefits, risks and impact on individual rights, freedoms, security and ethical standards.
The government has also pointed to existing Bahraini legislation covering electronic transactions, personal data protection, information technology crimes and civil liability, saying these laws already address a number of issues targeted by the proposal.
It has instead suggested that AI licensing and regulatory oversight could initially be developed through a regulatory sandbox, giving companies a controlled environment in which to test innovative products and services for a limited period.
Such an approach, it said, could support startups and technology companies while allowing regulators to monitor emerging risks without imposing unnecessarily heavy requirements on new businesses.
“We need legislation that is flexible enough to keep pace with artificial intelligence, rather than a law that becomes outdated as soon as technology moves forward,” Mr Al Shehabi said.
Mr Al Shehabi
He urged MPs to look closely at international models and consider modifying his proposed Bahraini law, already drafted by the government and referred to Parliament, to make it more practical, adaptable and capable of responding to emerging technologies.
Among the models he believes deserve attention is Taiwan’s Artificial Intelligence Basic Act, which establishes a national framework combining AI development with safeguards covering areas including privacy, data governance, cybersecurity, transparency, fairness and accountability.
This approach also provides for risk-based regulation, allowing greater controls to be applied to higher-risk AI applications rather than subjecting every technology and business to the same regulatory burden.
“The objective should not be to restrict artificial intelligence. It should be to regulate its risks, protect people and at the same time create an environment where innovation can grow,” Mr Al Shehabi said.
His comments come as MPs prepare to debate and vote on a proposed law regulating AI technologies and their uses during the exceptional term later this month.
The proposal, submitted by Mr Al Shehabi, Shura Council first vice-chairman Jamal Fakhro, second vice-chairwoman Dr Jihad Al Fadhel, public utilities and environment affairs committee chairman Dr Mohammed Ali Hassan and legislative and legal affairs committee chairwoman Dalal Al Zayed, seeks to regulate AI technologies and their peaceful uses in a manner consistent with public order and the public interest while protecting individual rights, security, freedoms and ethical principles.
It would also prohibit the use of dangerous robots and intelligent machines whose movements cannot be controlled.
Mr Al Shehabi said Bahrain could benefit from studying such international experiences while developing a framework suited to its own needs. “We should learn from the experiences of countries that have moved ahead of us, but the Bahraini framework must be designed for Bahrain,” he added. “We can take the best elements of international models and adapt them to our own legal, economic and social environment.”
He also believes the legislation should go beyond the limited areas of robot-assisted services, manufacturing and medical intervention.
The government has criticised the proposal for not sufficiently covering the full range of sectors in which robots and intelligent systems are being deployed, including autonomous vehicles, care and domestic robots, as well as emerging applications in legal services.
“Artificial intelligence is moving into every part of our lives. Our legislation must, therefore, be capable of moving with it, protecting society without placing unnecessary barriers in the path of innovation,” Mr Al Shehabi said.
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