Announcing Dirty Data, our Latest Cross-Border Investigation
The Cost of Data Center Infrastructures Powering AI and the People Paying the Price
Hello! After far too long, welcome back to Green Echoes, a newsletter from the Environmental Reporting Collective that highlights key investigative stories, data sources, funding, reporting and training opportunities and our projects from across Asia.
Let me (re)introduce myself, I’m Nithin Coca, a Japan-based freelance journalist. Longtime subscribers might remember me running this newsletter back a few years ago. I’m back, and look forward to re-engaging with all of you over the next several months.
While this newsletter has been quiet, ERC’s core team and partner newsrooms and journalists have been hard-at-work over the past few months on our latest investigation.
Announcing Dirty Data
This collaboration brought together nearly 40 journalists — reporters, photographers, editors, and designers — from Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, India, China, Taiwan, Peru, Brazil, Spain and France. It examines how governments are embracing data centers, pinning their hopes on AI as an engine of economic growth without considering the strain on the environment, resources, and communities.
Our first round of stories includes
Litigating The Boom: Taking the Data Center Fight to the Courts investigates the growing opposition to data centers due to environmental, social, labor, and economic impacts in Spain and France.
The AI Thirst Trap focuses on ever-increasing water use as India, Brazil, Spain and France seek to become data center hubs.
The Data Center Fever and the Mirage of Jobs finds that the promises of jobs and economic prosperity are mirages for communities in Brazil and India living alongside data centers.
As Data Centers Arrive, India’s Poorest Face Displacement, Health Risks uncovers that communities near data centers in India are facing worrying environmental and health risks.
Locals say they’re in the dark, even as Thailand’s data dream shines bright exposes how communities aren’t involved in data center planning and fear strain on already-stretched water and energy supplies.
Brazil’s AI City explores how indigenous communities in Brazil fear that new massive data centers could increase flood risk and displace them.
To keep up with Dirty Data, follow our dedicated Instagram account
For editors and publishers: All Dirty Data content is available to be translated, adapted, and republished for free under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-NC 4.0). If you’re interested, respond to this email.
More to come: Over the next few weeks, partner outlets will continue to publish local and regional stories on the impacts of Data Centers around the world. We’ll share those stories here. We’ll also share Q&As and features with journalists about their on-the-ground reporting.
Get Involved: ERC is holding office hours for environmental journalists, researchers, and activists to get practical guidance from experienced practitioners, all off the record. If you’re interested in joining, please fill out this form.
Opportunities and Resources
Rest of World is accepting pitches for their Labor X Tech program, for story ideas on the changing nature of work at a moment of extreme upheaval, including the impacts of AI tools and robotics.
Dark Light Viewer is a new open source tool that let’s anyone track how forests, cities, and other regions change at night over time. Can be useful to track urban development, energy consumption, or much more.
JournalismFund Europe is accepting proposals for cross-border grants for investigative journalism project (Deadline 19 March).
The Walkley Foundation is accepting applications for Grants for Freelance Journalism for individual journalists or small teams (up to four people) that focus on public interest journalism (deadline 23 March).
The Pulitzer Center’s next AI Spotlight Series will take place on March 30th, and will focus on how editors can cover AI (deadline to apply is 16 March).
Join the ERC Slack community to meet and engage with fellow journalists and for more grants and other opportunities.
The Environmental Reporting Collective is a growing network of journalists and newsrooms from over a dozen countries, all dedicated to investigating environmental crimes collaboratively.
To learn more about our work, check out our website, Investigative.Earth, and follow us on Instagram, Linkedin, Facebook and X.