When the World Economic Forum convenes each year in the Swiss Alps, it performs the paradox of a gathering of global elites claiming to represent the world even as they expose its fractures. In 2026, that paradox was laid bare by a tale of two speeches, one by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney that mourned the decline of a rules based global order and called for a cooperative response, and another by a U.S. president whose rhetoric reflected a very different, often unilateral, logic of power. The contrast between these visions mirrors the tensions now surfacing across the technological and environmental frontiers where AI and sustainability intersect.

Carney’s address was striking not simply for its sharp geopolitical diagnosis, that the orders of the past are fracturing under the strain of great power rivalry, but because it explicitly linked this rupture to the need for collective responses grounded in values, sovereignty, and sustainable development rather than coercion. He challenged the Davos audience to stop invoking an illusion of rules based stability and instead build alliances that reflect the realities of geopolitical competition and ecological crisis.

In contrast, and much commented upon in the global press, other speeches and reactions at Davos captured a very different mood, represented by competition over strategic assets like Greenland, tariff threats, and rhetorical appeals to national ascendancy rather than shared stewardship. This tension, between cooperation and competitive assertion, has direct implications for how humanity manages two of the defining challenges of our era: the governance of AI and the sustainability of our planetary systems.

AI, sustainability, and the fragility of resilience

In their idealised forms, AI and efforts to decarbonize our economies might seem complementary, where intelligent systems optimise energy use, accelerating climate modeling, and enhancing adaptive capacity across sectors. Yet at Davos, the debate revealed that the very governance structures which will shape AI deployment and climate action are also splitting along familiar economic and geopolitical lines.

On the AI front, discussions underscored a stark asymmetry: while leaders in the Global North emphasise competitiveness, AI sovereignty, and market advantage, much of the Global South worries about infrastructural dependency, digital extraction, and corporate control. From the vantage of emerging and middle powers, AI is less a tool of empowerment than a conduit through which external norms and economic leverage are exercised. This divergence mirrors long standing concerns that sustainability commitments are too often decoupled from the very power asymmetries that produce environmental harm in the first place.

The sustainability dimension was itself present in panels emphasising the environmental costs of AI, from energy intensive data centers to the material extraction required for high performance computing hardware. Leaders at Davos spoke of human centered AI and structural responses like AI taxation and safety nets for displaced labour, yet such frameworks remain aspirational and unevenly backed by policy. Where AI is subsidised without ecological accounting, efficiency gains risk becoming externalising mechanisms, one of improvements on paper that shift costs onto communities, ecosystems, and future generations.

A fractured global response to shared risk

The rift revealed in Davos reflects deeper structural tensions, in technological competition versus collective stewardship, national sovereignty versus transnational governance, and short term advantage versus long term ecological and economic viability. Carney’s call for middle powers to act together is, at its heart, a plea for a world that sees cooperation not as a luxury but as a survival strategy.

This is precisely where resilience must be rethought. Resilience cannot be merely adaptive; it must be transformative. It must take into account the uneven capacities of countries and communities to shape the trajectory of both AI and sustainability transitions. A Global South community that cannot contest algorithmic systems or influence data governance will find itself bearing not just technological dependencies but also environmental burdens and economic marginalization.

Carney’s framing, that the old order is gone and a new one must be built consciously, cooperatively, and sustainably, resonates with broader debates about the limits of adaptation. Resilience without justice is hollow, as adaptation that ignores structural inequities will reproduce vulnerability rather than dissipate it.

Toward a new architecture of governance

A truly sustainable and resilient future demands coherence between AI governance, climate policy, and global economic structures, and Europe has shown how can be done. This requires at least four shifts:

• Distributed Agency: AI systems must be designed and governed as public infrastructures, not proprietary black boxes controlled by a handful of hyperscale firms and powerful states. This is essential for equitable resilience.

• Ecological Accountability: AI’s environmental footprint, from hardware lifecycles to energy demand, must be integrated into governance frameworks, not treated as an afterthought in efficiency narratives.

• Transnational Cooperation: The fractures evident at Davos remind us that unilateral power politics undermine collective action. Shared risks, climate tipping points, AI displacement, digital exclusion, cannot be managed by any one state acting alone.

• Capacity Building in the Global South: Resilience will be meaningful only if countries with fewer resources can shape rules rather than have them imposed, whether in trade, technology, or climate finance.

Governance as the central frontier

The Davos narratives of 2026, from geopolitical tensions over Greenland to calls for new alliances, highlight the fundamental truth that we are living through a structural rupture, not a smooth transition. The futures of AI governance and sustainability are not separate questions; they are interlocked because both challenge the assumptions of unilateral power, short term gain, and technocratic neutrality.

To cultivate resilience in this era is not to adapt quietly to what is coming, but to forge systems of governance that reflect human values, ecological limits, and shared vulnerability. As global discussions fragment along lines of power and interest, the risks of fragmentation grow. But so does the possibility that communities, cities, nations, and coalitions, especially those historically marginalised, will insist on governance that is inclusive, sustainable, and just.

Our resilience, and that of the planet, depends on nothing less.