The companies building artificial intelligence describe their work as virtual, cloud-based, and weightless. It is none of those things. AI data centers — the physical backbone of every query, every image generation, every language model — require servers that run hot, consume water, draw electricity, and must be housed somewhere. The relationship between AI data centers and environmental racism is direct: that somewhere has consistently been communities with less political power to push back.
This is not a new pattern. It is environmental racism operating in a new industry.
What Data Centers Actually Do to a Community
A large AI data center can consume between one and five million gallons of water per day for cooling. In regions already facing drought — including parts of the American Southwest and Southeast — this is not an abstraction. It is a direct competition with the drinking water, agriculture, and ecosystems that communities depend on.
1–5 million gallons
of water consumed per day by a single large AI data center — a direct competition with the drinking water, agriculture, and ecosystems of the communities closest to it.
Data centers also consume enormous amounts of electricity. The International Energy Agency projects that data center electricity consumption could double by 2026. That demand does not disappear — it drives the operation of power plants, often natural gas or coal facilities, that are themselves disproportionately sited near communities of color. The energy burden of AI is being distributed unevenly, and the communities closest to those plants are breathing the consequences.
Then there is heat. Large facilities raise local temperatures, contributing to urban heat island effects in communities already vulnerable to extreme heat. And noise — cooling systems running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with no community input and no community benefit.
The Siting Problem
“Data center alley” in Northern Virginia has consumed entire rural counties. Similar buildouts are accelerating across the South, the rural Midwest, and the Southwest — often in areas where land is cheap, zoning is permissive, and community resistance is limited. The pattern mirrors what environmental justice researchers have documented for decades with chemical plants, waste facilities, and nuclear infrastructure: the burden lands where political power is lowest.
Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta have all announced multi-billion-dollar AI infrastructure investments. The communities near their data centers did not negotiate those deals. They were not asked. And when they object to water usage, to electricity demand, to noise, or to the strain on local infrastructure—they are often met with the same argument that has been used to justify every previous wave of environmental harm: jobs, tax revenue, and progress.
What the Ubuntu Village Framework Asks
Ubuntu philosophy—umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, I am because we are—centers the community as the unit of analysis. When we ask, “Is this good?” the Ubuntu lens asks, “Good for whom?” Who bears the cost? Who was consulted? Who benefits and who absorbs the harm?
Applied to AI infrastructure, these are not abstract questions. They are planning and zoning questions, water rights questions, energy policy questions, and public health questions. They are questions that communities of color, Indigenous communities, and low-income communities have standing to demand answers to—before ground is broken, not after. The digital economy is not neutral. It has a carbon footprint, a water footprint, and a justice footprint. All three need to be part of the conversation.
“The digital economy is not neutral. It has a carbon footprint, a water footprint, and a justice footprint. All three need to be part of the conversation.”
Ubuntu Village
What Communities Can Do
Know your zoning. Data center development often moves quickly through local planning processes with little public attention. Sign up for local government meeting alerts. Find out what is proposed for your area before it is approved. Zoning board meetings are open to the public, and public comment periods are legally required — use them.
Demand environmental impact assessments. Federal and state environmental review processes can require disclosure of water usage, energy consumption, and local environmental impacts. Community advocates can engage those processes, request extensions for public comment, and challenge inadequate assessments.
Connect with environmental justice organizations. Groups like WE ACT for Environmental Justice, the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, and Earthjustice have experience with exactly these fights—challenging the siting of facilities that profit others while burdening local communities.
Follow the water. In drought-affected regions, data center water usage is increasingly a legal and political issue. Find out what water sources a proposed facility would draw from and whether local water boards have been consulted. Water is a community resource, not a corporate input.
Build a coalition. These fights are won in the community—by organizing neighbors, connecting with labor groups concerned about energy costs and local infrastructure, and building the kind of sustained political pressure that makes approval politically costly. The tech industry counts on communities being isolated and uninformed. Collective knowledge and collective action change that equation.
At Ubuntu Village, we understand that the digital economy is not separate from the physical world. It is built on land, water, energy, and air that belong to all of us. The communities that bear the environmental burden of AI deserve political agency over the decisions that affect their lives. That is what environmental justice means. That is what Ubuntu demands.
References
- International Energy Agency (2024). Electricity 2024: Analysis and Forecast to 2026. IEA. (Projects doubling of data center electricity consumption by 2026.)
- Li, S. et al. (2023). Making AI Less “Thirsty”: Uncovering and Addressing the Secret Water Footprint of AI Models. arXiv. (Documents water consumption of large AI models including ChatGPT.)
- Bullard, R.D. (1990). Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality. Westview Press. (Foundational text on the disproportionate siting of environmental hazards in communities of color.)
- Siddik, M.A.B. et al. (2021). The environmental footprint of data centers in the United States. npj Clean Water.
- WE ACT for Environmental Justice — weact.org | Deep South Center for Environmental Justice — dscej.org | Earthjustice — earthjustice.org
Related Reading
- ‣ Colonialism and Global Health Policy
- ‣ Reparations and Healing: A Public Health Argument
- ‣ Epigenetics and Ancestral Memory: What Your Body Remembers
- ‣ The Body Keeps the Ancestors: What Science Is Learning About Inherited Memory
Community is the medicine.
The digital economy is built on land, water, and energy that belong to all of us. Ubuntu Village advocates for communities bearing the environmental burden of others’ profit. Your support — in any form — keeps that work alive.
Michele Mitchell is the Founder, President & CEO of Ubuntu Village Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit rooted in East Harlem, New York, with programs in Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria. A writer, advocate, and community strategist working at the intersection of ancestral wisdom, public health, and community power, Michele leads Ubuntu Village’s work to center communities as the protagonists of their own healing. She writes from the conviction that science and spirit are complementary, that healing is relational, and that community is the medicine.
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