UNCCD COP17 — Sovereignty-Aligned AI for Environmental Diplomacy Dinner

​Environmental multilateralism is structurally unequal. Well-resourced delegations employ large well-equipped technical and legal teams and proprietary analytical tools, while negotiators from financially constrained and environmentally-vulnerable nations with the most at stake enter the same rooms without equivalent support. Young negotiators from so called Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Small Island Developing States (SIDS), are particularly underserved and vulnerable to biodiversity loss and degradation, yet their participation is essential to producing outcomes that reflect the needs and desires of those most affected by environmental breakdown.

​Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming this landscape — but without equitable governance, it risks deepening existing asymmetries and injustices. No evaluation framework currently exists to assess whether AI tools used in multilateral negotiations meet basic standards of sovereignty compliance, multilingual equity, factual reliability, or positional neutrality. At least six AI tools now operate in the climate negotiation space, yet none has been independently evaluated. For young negotiators stepping into multilateral arenas, issues like national data sovereignty are no longer theoretical: they are shaping power, security, and public trust in real time.

​At UNCCD COP17 in Ulaabaatar in Mongolia, GainForest and Youth Negotiators Academy, in collaboration with Protocol Labs and Robert Bosch Stiftung are convening the first kick-off workshop to build a coalition of AI developers, negotiators, UN bodies, and governments to co-develop shared governance principles for AI in multilateral diplomacy.

​The dinner will gather participants around food and informal conversation to explore sovereignty‑aligned AI values and co‑define principles for good governance as a starting point for the coalition's continued collaboration.