Great Powers’ Backyard: The Environmental Cost of the AI Race in the Global South
Camila Rosa-Perez Montes
On September 24th, 2026, a highly anticipated event with the potential to transform U.S.-China relations and bipolar competition took place in the White House: the Xi-Trump Summit. While experts expected bilateral outcomes from the Summit, particularly to soothe AI race anxieties, both leaders exited talks without achieving much else than the positive optics of diplomacy.
Updates on the AI race were lukewarm. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s mid-September proposal for a formal U.S.-China AI Dialogue remains unconfirmed by Chinese authorities. No signs of backing down from competition showed on either side, with the U.S. continuing to shy away from regulations. Only a few days after the Summit, Trump stated he didn’t want to “mix it up” with competitors, ruling out the possibility of joint ventures in AI development.
Great leaders’ insistence on competition begs the question of how the winner of the race will be determined; the answer is access to the critical minerals AI entirely relies on. But how are the U.S. and China securing that access, and who pays the price?
African and Latin American nations have become the unspoken centerpiece of U.S.-China competition, and the biggest sufferers of the environmental collateral damage produced by the AI race. Despite Trump and Xi’s explicit rejection of AI bilaterality, cooperation might be the necessary road to reduce the environmental costs of AI development and prevent externalities in the Global South. U.S. foreign policy should de-center competition in favor of trust-building and an increasingly bilateral approach.
Competition breeds aggressive tactics of critical mineral extraction and refinement. Less consideration is given to aspects like environmental conservation due to the prioritization of not ceding ground, a logic made apparent by Trump’s post-Summit statements. The victims of these aggressive tactics are inevitably developing nations in the Global South, whose governance weaknesses and lackluster regulatory enforcement allow for noncompliance with mining regulations.
In West Africa, Chinese operations have included deep excavations and the use of harmful chemicals that have led to deforestation, soil erosion, and the pollution of freshwater bodies. Similarly, in Latin America, Chinese corporations’ mining expeditions have caused hydrological stress and, in areas with maximized extraction, such as the Peruvian Las Bambas district, emissions that reach 600,000 to 730,000 annual tonnes of greenhouse gases.
American practices are equally responsible for careless environmental destruction. As a fixed element in Microsoft and Apple’s supply chain, cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo generate toxic air pollution and cobalt-filled, carcinogenic rivers. Beyond the environmental costs, mining operations in the Global South tend to reinforce structural violence in the affected nations, with locals expressing concern about labor exploitation and the buildup of economic dependency.
In recent times, China has attempted to correct its environmental impacts in Latin America and Africa unilaterally through investment in sustainable energy and other green practices. While Chinese investment in clean energy and green transportation has environmental benefits and contributes to local innovators’ involvement in mitigating climate change, it cannot counteract the scale of demand for Global South minerals, which creates lasting environmental damage.
The U.S. has similarly attempted to counteract its environmental harm through the promise of green energy investment and the creation of formal lines of communication between America and the affected nations to connect U.S. firms with investment opportunities abroad. Though green investment’s potential positive impacts cannot be understated, this does not take away the fact that other American firms will continue to purchase minerals coming from poorly managed and environmentally costly mines.
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