AI's Cross Border Energy and Water Footprints: State Duties, No Harm Thresholds, and Paris Agreement Compliance Frameworks

Authors

  • Dr. Muhammad Asghar Assistant Professor Law, Department of Law Ibadat, International University Islamabad. Email: muhammad.asghar@law.iiui.edu.pk
  • Hazrat Usman Advocate High Court, Pujab Bar Council, Punjab, Pakistan. Email: hazratusmanadvocate@gmail.com
  • Maria Mazhar Kharal Lecturer, Ibadat International university Islamabad, Email- maria.Mazhar@law.iiui.edu.pk
  • Dr. Mohaddas Mehboob Assistant Professor Department of Law, IBADAT International University Islamabad, Pakistan. Email: mohaddas.naqvi@law.iiui.edu.pk

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.70670/sra.v3i3.875

Keywords:

AI Environmental Footprint, Transboundary No‑Harm, Virtual Water Accounting, Paris Agreement Compliance, Sustainable Data Centers.

Abstract

The world’s largest artificial intelligence models now draw more electricity than some mid-sized nations and evaporate billions of liters of freshwater each year, yet neither international climate law nor the classical transboundary harm doctrine has fully absorbed their impact.  This article conducts a systematic review of empirical footprint studies with a comparative legal analysis of the no harm principle, emerging corporate due diligence statutes, and transparency rules of the Paris Agreement.  Lifecycle data show that training a single GPT 3 class model consumes about 1.3 GWh of power and 5.4 million L of water, while global inference loads could withdraw 22 billion L annually by 2027—concentrated in already stressed basins.  Because affordable mitigation tools (carbon-aware routing, liquid cooling, and a mixture of expert architectures) can reduce these impacts by 40–60 percent, failure to deploy them breaches the due diligence standard embedded in Trail Smelter and its progeny.   This study proposes a hybrid allocation framework that attributes operational footprints to host states but assigns embodied and service-based impacts to consumer states, enabling parties to integrate Scope 3 emissions and virtual water transfers into Biennial Transparency Reports without amending treaty text.  Embedding dual carbon and water baselines into Article 6 crediting schemes would channel finance toward low-impact data centers and close a rapidly widening governance gap.

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Published

10-07-2025

How to Cite

Dr. Muhammad Asghar, Hazrat Usman, Maria Mazhar Kharal, & Dr. Mohaddas Mehboob. (2025). AI’s Cross Border Energy and Water Footprints: State Duties, No Harm Thresholds, and Paris Agreement Compliance Frameworks. Social Science Review Archives, 3(3), 398–408. https://doi.org/10.70670/sra.v3i3.875