Artificial intelligence, environmental monitoring, institutional readiness, strategic investments, digital governance, Albania

This research assesses the preparedness of the Albanian institutions to apply Artificial Intelligence (AI) to environmental monitoring through the lens of strategic investments as governed by Law No. 55/2015. Rather than depending on the collection of original data from the field, the assessment depends upon prior international reports and indexes in order to determine the present-day institutional capacity in fields of digital infrastructure, organization, regulation and skills. The research presents an uneven image; while Albania has made significant strides toward developing its Digital Government and currently possesses a very high degree of E-Government Development, the same cannot be said for environmental monitoring. Compared to the many recent development activities being carried out in the country, monitoring systems and enforcement capabilities remain extremely limited. During the years between 2016 and 2024, 49 large strategic investment projects worth more than €7.5 billion were approved by the government of Albania. Approximately all of these projects were either in tourism or located in environmentally sensitive coastal regions. Despite this added pressure, environmental oversight continues to be weak and ill-equipped for the application of AI-based tools. Generally speaking, the overall results of the study indicate that Albania's primary challenge is not AI technology itself, but rather the institutional conditions that need to exist for it to be used effectively. Before AI can contribute to the improvement of environmental governance, improvements in data management, organizational coordination, regulation and skills will need to occur. Insights developed within the framework of this research could also have relevance for other EU candidate countries that are confronting similar challenges during their own digital and institutional transformations.