The AI Thirst Trap: Surge in Data Centres Adding to 'Global Water Bankruptcy' |
Listen to this article:
In Thakurpada, a slum outside Mumbai, drinking water comes every other day.
Ruksana Mohammed, a woman in her 50s who runs a grocery store, is used to interrupting her day to collect water. “When it comes, we need to drop whatever we are doing,” she said.
On Sundays, Umesh Ganu, an office attendant, lines up at his local water pipe. He fills up several plastic jerrycans and buckets. The water is not potable and not safe for drinking. To drink, he relies on store-bought cans of filtered water.
Residents of Thakurpada, many of whom are factory workers or daily wage earners living in makeshift homes covered with tarp or corrugated metal roofs, have contended with water shortages for decades. Yet, data centres emerging in their neighbourhood have access to water 24/7.
A new seven-storey steel and concrete data centre by Digital Edge, a Singapore-based company, is just the beginning. The company has plans to build six more data centres on this site. It purchased a 47-acre plot from Mukand Ltd, a local steel manufacturer. The $553 million expansion will consume 206,000 litres of water every day, according to company’s filings.
At least eight other data centres are planned within a three-mile radius. Next door, a Japanese company, NTT Global Data Centers, is building another massive facility on 55 acres purchased from the same steel company. This facility will consume 223,000 litres of water daily.
A new data centre by Singapore-based Digital Edge towers over slums in Thakurpada, a low-income neighbourhood in Navi Mumbai. Photo: Shamsheer Yousaf/Environmental Reporting Collective
Hyperscale data centres like those emerging in Thakurpada are notorious water-guzzlers. Intensive AI computing, especially, utilises high-powered chips to run complex tasks, generating enormous heat that requires large amounts of water for cooling.
This adds to the strain on the world’s freshwater supply, which is already being drained by other industries, human consumption, and the warming effects of climate change, with scientists warning of a “global water bankruptcy“.
Billions of people around the world will be affected by dwindling freshwater, according to a recent United Nations report. While the more “powerful actors” profit from water-intensive industries such as AI, the most acute effects will be felt by low-income groups, indigenous people, women, youth, and other vulnerable communities that bear a disproportionate burden of the crisis.
In Mumbai, data centres are guaranteed water 24/7 but only 4% of the metropolitan region receives around-the-clock supply. More than 71% receive water for less than four hours a day, according to a May 2025 report by Praja Foundation, a non-governmental organisation.
Here, the poorest households bear the brunt. Slum areas receive just 45 litres of water per person every day compared to 135 litres in wealthier neighbourhoods.
Across India, data centres consumed 150 billion litres of water last year — a figure that’s poised to double by 2030, according to industry estimates. India has 18% of the world’s population but just 4% of its freshwater reserves. Across the country, 600 million people already face high to extreme levels of water scarcity, according to government data.
To meet the growing water demand in the Mumbai metropolitan region — home to more than half of India’s data centres — the state government has approved several new dam projects. To build the Kalu Dam, which has been fast-tracked, the government is proposing to acquire 999 hectares of forest and more than 1,200 hectares of private land.
The project faces stiff resistance from local communities, including indigenous Adivasis who would be displaced. All the affected tribal village councils have rejected the proposal.
In Spain, in the landlocked region of Aragón, located between two major economic powerhouses, Madrid and Catalonia, there is mounting backlash over the high water demand as the region becomes one of the new promised lands for the data centre industry, looking to meet the burgeoning AI and high-density computing demand in Europe.
In 2022, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s cloud and computing division........