Climate, Code, and Justice: Why Inclusive Governance Matters for Emerging Climate Technologies
By Eshita Eshita
Emerging climate technologies, from AI-based early warning systems to blockchain-enabled carbon markets, are reshaping how societies mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis. But as these innovations scale, so do the risks of exclusion, bias, and inequity, especially for frontline communities often left out of digital and policy infrastructures.
During AAPI Heritage Month, it’s important not only to celebrate cultural contributions, but also to interrogate how diverse perspectives, like those of the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities, shape global systems of governance, law, and innovation. In the context of climate technology, AAPI experiences offer unique insight into what inclusive, just, and globally connected policy frameworks can look like.
The Double-Edged Sword of Climate Tech
The acceleration of technological solutions in the climate space has been hailed as a breakthrough. Artificial intelligence can optimize grid efficiency , drones can monitor deforestation, and digital sensors can forecast disasters with precision. Yet these technologies do not govern themselves. They rely on systems, legal, regulatory, and cultural—that determine their deployment, access, and accountability.
Critically, many of these systems remain underdeveloped or skewed. AI models can replicate the same systemic biases embedded in their training data. Carbon credit marketplaces can exclude indigenous land stewards from benefit-sharing. And digital tools introduced without sufficient localization or consent can alienate the very communities they intend to protect.
Governance, not just innovation, is the decisive factor in whether climate tech promotes resilience or deepens injustice.
Digital Infrastructure as a Climate Necessity
Digital public infrastructure (DPI), the software and data systems that underpin government services and digital inclusion, is increasingly recognized as essential to climate adaptation. Whether in the form of mobile-based weather alerts, Aadhaar-linked food distribution during floods in India, or broadband access in wildfire-prone California, DPI is the connective tissue of climate response.
The UNDP and Digital Public Goods Alliance have both emphasized the need for climate-ready DPI systems. However, challenges remain: many frontline regions, including rural Pacific Island communities and underserved urban neighborhoods in the U.S., remain digitally excluded.
AAPI researchers and practitioners are helping address this through a systems-level approach to digital equity, promoting open standards, multilingual access, and participatory design. This work reflects a broader ethic of “inclusive infrastructure,” grounded in cross-cultural lived experience and policy innovation across both the Global South and diaspora communities.
Governing Algorithms, Markets, and Data
The climate governance landscape is increasingly entangled with digital governance. As AI is deployed in emissions tracking, flood forecasting, or adaptation resource allocation, the need for robust legal and ethical oversight is urgent. Yet regulatory frameworks often lag behind technical development.
Organizations like CSET have proposed evaluation frameworks for frontier AI models, while Climate Change AI emphasizes the need for interdisciplinary checks on AI’s application in environmental contexts. These proposals often highlight:
● Bias and equity risks in predictive models
● Transparency and explainability in decision systems
● Access and usability in marginalized regions
AAPI policy experts working in international organizations, think tanks, and academia are contributing to these discussions—not only because of their technical expertise, but because their cross-cultural and transnational experiences shape a deeper understanding of power, access, and inclusion in climate decision-making.
International Legal Innovation and South-South Dialogue
AAPI communities, particularly those rooted in South and Southeast Asia or Pacific Island nations, are deeply engaged in legal and diplomatic innovations around climate justice. From pushing for an ICJ advisory opinion on climate and human rights, to shaping regional frameworks on climate migration, AAPI-aligned institutions are often at the vanguard of norm-building.
The lived experience of navigating displacement, diaspora, or development challenges gives AAPI thinkers a grounded understanding of how law must evolve to govern technological change, whether that means embedding climate clauses in digital trade agreements or designing tech-transfer frameworks that account for sovereignty and localization.
A key insight from this legal perspective: Emerging technologies are not neutral. They reflect the structures they are embedded in, and thus require intentional governance rooted in pluralism and public interest.
Rethinking Inclusion in the Climate Tech Era
During AAPI Heritage Month, inclusion must go beyond symbolic recognition. It must mean designing governance models that reflect the complexity, diversity, and distributed expertise of global communities.
This means:
● Reframing digital access as a climate right, not just a development goal
● Prioritizing co-creation in climate tech design, especially in indigenous and frontline settings
● Building legal and regulatory institutions that recognize intersectional risks—from surveillance and data extraction to algorithmic bias and platform monopolies
And it also means drawing from AAPI traditions, community accountability, multigenerational stewardship, and transnational solidarity, to enrich how we imagine and govern emerging technologies for the public good.
Conclusion
Climate technologies will shape the trajectory of global adaptation and resilience. But whether these tools serve equity or entrench exclusion depends on the systems we build around them.
AAPI professionals, communities, and values offer essential contributions to these systems—not only through leadership, but through frameworks of justice, connection, and care. Their perspectives remind us that the future of climate policy lies not only in emissions reductions or innovation pipelines, but in the shared governance of our digital and ecological commons.
Eshita is a lawyer and public policy professional pursuing her MALD '25, who explores the intersection of tech policy, business, governance, and climate resilience.