2024-AI-and-Environmental-Justice.md

2024: AI and Environmental Justice

Funding focus

For the past two years, the Mozilla Technology Fund has funded research and development in the world of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems; specifically, we have supported open source projects that have increased transparency and mitigated bias in the AI ecosystem. Increasingly, we are learning about the effects that the growing use of AI will have on ecosystems and the people who live in them. What steps might we take to reduce the environmental and climate impacts of AI adoption? And is there a role AI systems can play in addressing topics like environmental degradation, climate change, indigenous justice, food justice and energy justice? This year, the Mozilla Technology Fund seeks to fund open source projects at the intersection of environmental justice and AI which are making a positive impact in ecosystems and human communities.

Awardees

Project Name	Awardee	Location
Leveraging AI for Environmental Justice	Center for Justice Governance & Environmental (ACTI)	Kenya
AIG SMS for the Mau	L. Lusike Mukhongo	Kenya/U.S.
Estimating and Validating PM2.5 Levels	AirQo	Uganda
Air Quality for Asunción	Fernanda Carlés	Paraguay
Amazon Mining Watch	Rainforest Investigations Network/Earth Genome/Amazon Conservation	U.S.
Public Utility Data Liberation	Catalyst Coop	U.S.
CodeCarbon	CodeCarbon	France
MethaneMapper	EyeClimate	U.S.
Sand Mining Watch	University of California, Berkeley	India/U.S.
Zeus	Jae-Won Chung	U.S.

Selection committee

Name	Affiliation
Lisa Gutermuth	Program Officer, Data Futures Lab
Bogdana Rakova	Senior Trustworthy AI Fellow, Mozilla Foundation
Maya Richman	Co-Lead, Green Screen Coalition
Jenny Wong	Sustainability Lead, Mozilla Corporation

Program staff

The staff who ran the MTF 2024 cohort consisted of the following Mozilla Foundation employees:

Name	Role
Mehan Jayasuriya	Senior Program Officer
Jaselle Edward-Gill	Program Associate
Bogdana Rakova	Senior Trustworthy AI Fellow

Blog Posts

• Mozilla Technology Fund Awardee AirQo Announces African Air Quality Prediction Challenge
• Mozilla Technology Fund Seeks Projects at Intersection of AI, Environmental Justice
• Open-Source AI for Environmental Justice: Introducing the 2024 Mozilla Technology Fund Cohort

Videos

• AI Climate Change Tracking
• How Much Carbon is Created From Everyday Computer Tasks?
• How CodeCarbon is Helping the Environment