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United Nations Environment Programme
TOPIC A: The Environmental Footprint of AI Data Centers in Water and Energy-Stressed Regions
TOPIC B: Deep-Sea Mining in the Pacific and the Future of Ocean Governance
The world is entering a new era in regard to the environment. The most pressing threats once associated with environmental pollution, like smokestack emissions, spills, and logging, are invisible in data centers, supply chains, and the ocean floor. Artificial intelligence will raise the demand for data centers, requiring more land, water, and power, and generating a larger need for cooling infrastructure. Governments and private companies are looking to the depths of the ocean to mine for minerals needed for the batteries of electric vehicles and the tech of both war and green energy.
This creates a difficult paradox. Many technologies touted as climate change solutions become new threats to the environment. The infrastructure of AI can place stress on local services of water and power. Deep-sea mining provides a green transition, however, it can harm fragile and unexplored ecosystems. Both mining and AI place the world in a position where many significant decisions must be made before these threats can be fully evaluated.
As UNEP members, delegates must address the governing of new environmental frontiers. The committee will challenge delegates to consider the balance of scientific views and the corporate economy, resource imbalance, Indigenous and local community concerns, and the separation of the global North and South. Delegates must consider if the world requires new guidelines and boundaries of sustainable innovation, more evaluations of environmental impact, more significant economic support to developing countries, temporary bans, or concentrated governance of the international sphere.
Note from the Director
Dear Delegates,
It is truly an honor to have you at UNEP as a part of CSMUN 2026. I am Alex, your Director for this committee. I have enjoyed my experience with Model UN and how UNEP has helped me bring the balance of environmental preservation and sustainability with economic growth and progress. As we work through these challenges this year, our committee will deal particularly with two issues concerning promising yet equally pressing environmental problems, the potentially unbridled use of AI data centers in countries of scarce water and energy resources coupled with the still growing samaritan risk of deep-sea mining in the Pacific.
These two issues will certainly put pressure on the international community in trying to develop and utilize new technologies without engendering new environmental problems. You will have to analyze and predict the future effects of drawing of minerals from beneath the sea as well as addressing the current and future water and energy demands of AI and how they relate to various national interests of both developed and developing countries. Be prepared to think outside the box and to be flexible to strike the balance between your country's interests and goals and those of other delegations.
I believe your thoughts and comments will contribute to a stimulating committee session. I invite you all to think about the concerns of you and your delegation, participate in the discussions and address the viewpoints and opinions of your colleagues. I wish everyone the best of luck and success for a memorable CSMUN committee this year.
Sincerely,
Alex Song
Director, UNEP
alexsong2028@crecsentschool.org
The Dais
Alex Song
DIRECTOR
Thomas Cai
CHAIR
Jessica Du
CHAIR
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