Category World News

“Bubble” is probably the word most associated with “AI” right now, though we are slowly understanding that it is not just an economic time bomb; it also carries significant public health risks. Beyond the release of pollutants, the massive need for clean water by AI data centres can reduce sanitation and exacerbate gastrointestinal illness in nearby communities, placing additional strain on local health infrastructure.

AI’s energy consumption is massive and increasingly water-dependent

Generative AI is artificial intelligence that is able to generate new text, photos, code and more, and it has already infiltrated the lives of most people around the globe. ChatGPT alone is reported to receive around one billion queries in a single day, pointing to huge demand at the individual level.

This, however, is only the tip of the iceberg. Companies such as Google, Apple and Microsoft are now embedding AI into their key products. Applications that utilise search results are quickly moving to have AI as a new standard in their algorithms. Whether it is shopping on Amazon or booking a flight or a hotel, AI is now being used in searches, and that demands more energy. As an example, a single AI-powered Google search is estimated to use up to 30 times more energy than its standard version.

Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) are the current industry answer to this. They are chips that demand energy and produce heat. Though the thousands of small cores on GPUs enable parallel processing of massive, repetitive maths carried out by AI algorithms, a single chip can use up to 700 watts. This means that three chips alone can use roughly the same amount of energy as a home electric oven.

The large amount of heat produced by data centres is cooled by up to hundreds of thousands of gallons of fresh water each day. With thousands of heat-generating chips stacked next to and on top of one another, a simple fan does not do the trick. Instead, water is pumped or immersed between and around chips in order to avoid system overheating. A recent report from the United Kingdom’s Government Digital Sustainability Alliance predicts that AI will increase global water usage from 1.1 billion cubic metres to 6.6 billion cubic metres by 2027.

Some companies are attempting to use seawater in cooling. However, fresh water continues to be widely used for cooling in many facilities. Water recycling is another option, but not a simple one. Several companies use a “closed-loop system” to reduce the total amount of water needed. Nevertheless, dust and minerals collected during cooling can degrade water quality over time, requiring treatment or replacement.

How AI-driven water scarcity threatens public health

Data centres being placed where water is already scarce can quickly translate into a healthcare burden, even before pollution becomes an issue. In 2023, Microsoft reported that 41 percent of its water withdrawals were from areas with water stress. Google, on the other hand, said that 15 percent of its water consumption occurred in areas with high water scarcity. Amazon did not disclose comparable figures.

It is well established that water scarcity correlates with infections, malnourishment and declining hygiene. While most such studies focus on areas that are already impoverished, in many cases, these are exactly the places where data centres are planned to be built. In addition, the underlying cause remains the same. Less fresh water for local populations pushes households to prioritise drinking and cooking over washing hands, food or bathing. Naturally, this also leaves less water available for cleaning living spaces.

The World Health Organization recognises that unsafe drinking water and poor sanitation and hygiene are conducive to the spread of diseases such as cholera and other diarrhoeal illnesses, along with a range of other pathogens. To make matters worse, several diseases associated with water scarcity can pass from person to person, raising the risk of sustained local transmission.

The health burden on children is particularly alarming, as infections and deaths are more common than among adults. In fact, 84 percent of the global burden of diarrhoeal disease is borne by children under five, and infections with diarrhoeal pathogens have been linked to cognitive impacts later in childhood.

Although it is too early to draw direct causal links between AI data centres and water-related diseases, the known facts make this a significant concern. It is established that AI data centres can significantly deplete local water supplies. It is also established that communities with poor water access face heightened risks of gastrointestinal disease and other illnesses.

To claim that AI data centres are directly causing gastrointestinal disease would be poorly supported. However, the warning signs are increasingly difficult to ignore. When risks are foreseeable and severe, governments should not wait for people to start dying before putting preventative policies in place.

Marginalised communities are already reporting polluted water

In Newton County, Georgia, in the United States, Meta has built an AI data centre, and residents have reported discoloured, sediment-filled water coming out of their taps, which they attribute to the facility. Similarly, in Fayette County, residents have reported sediment in their water, which they believe coincided with nearby data centre construction. Another report from California suggests that a data centre planned along the San Francisco Bay in Bayview-Hunters Point has raised concerns about compounding environmental burdens in an already polluted community. In all these cases, the local population includes a significant Black and African American presence, a pattern that has raised environmental justice concerns.

Accumulated residues can result in effects ranging from acute gastrointestinal illness to chronic conditions such as cancer. Microbial contamination can cause poisoning and acute disease, while chemical residues are associated with long-term harm, often acting as a slow, invisible threat.

With plans for data centres in African countries such as Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa, further questions arise about who will bear the brunt of their environmental impacts and whether affected communities will receive sufficient protection or support. Weak regulatory oversight in some of these countries makes this uncertain. In many cases, serious community effects may go unreported altogether.

Why corporate water promises and regulation matter

Only 0.5 percent of the planet’s water is fresh water, and water is not only needed for data centres. It is also required for the power plants that generate electricity for them. The manufacture of chips and wiring similarly demands water, making water use an AI supply-chain issue rather than merely a data-centre problem.

Many companies are promising sustainability, with some even claiming they aim to be “net water producers” or “water positive”. Even if such targets are achieved, which remains questionable, they must deliver benefits to the communities from which water is extracted. Providing more water for affluent areas while depleting supplies in places such as Newton County may satisfy corporate accounting standards, but local residents will still suffer the consequences.

To meet their ethical obligations to the public, governments must rapidly catch up with the pace of AI expansion and data-centre construction. A healthy population is a productive one, and a lower public-health burden can reduce government spending while supporting development. More fundamentally, there is a collective moral obligation to build a sustainable future for coming generations by safeguarding water security and averting environmental catastrophe. This begins with legislation mandating transparent corporate reporting on water use and enforcing meaningful standards for sustainable management. Regulation must prioritise human wellbeing over short-term, extractive technological growth. As with climate change, unrestrained innovation risks further harm to both people and the planet.

Shinzo Abe was killed by him during a political campaign event in 2022, according to the man who received the sentence. The court decision has divided public opinion, according to Al Jazeera’s Patrick Fok.

President Donald Trump’s threats to overtake Greenland on Tuesday caused US allies to react by saying it was time to consider a future without US leadership. Davos saw the announcement of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Territorial gains in northeast Syria, where government forces took the cities of Raqqa and Deir Az Zor from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), have been a boon to Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa.

Negotiations with the SDF have been ongoing since the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in December 2024 over the main Kurdish representative in Syria’s integration into the Syrian armed forces. Al-Sharaa has used varying tactics against the group, recently announcing a decree for Kurdish rights while also confronting the group militarily.

The SDF’s loss is al-Sharaa and his government’s gain. But the most significant sign of Syria’s improved standing may come from the fact that US officials, who have long backed the SDF as a partner in fighting ISIL (ISIS), have given their backing to al-Sharaa and Syrian forces after these latest developments.

“This is a big win for al-Sharaa internally for al-Sharaa,” Rob Geist Pinfold, a lecturer at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera. “Even if the Americans and others are uneasy about this offensive against the Kurds and want him to come to a deal as soon as possible, it certainly sures up his legitimacy in Syria, particularly among Sunni Arabs.”

Ceasefire and agreements

These recent advancements by the Syrian government have stripped away much of the SDF’s leverage.

“This was about [the Syrian government forces] taking control of the most resource-rich parts of SDF territory that had the demographically highest number of Arabs, so they managed to play this very well by having a limited offensive but, at the same time, getting the tribal networks to rise up against SDF rule; and once they did that, it was basically game over for the SDF,” Geist Pinfold, said.

When the Assad regime fell in December 2024, the SDF was hesitant to throw its hat into the ring with the new forces in Damascus. Negotiations between Mazloum Abdi, the SDF’s leader, also known as Mazloum Kobani, and al-Sharaa culminated in an agreement on March 10, 2025 to integrate the Kurdish-led forces into the Syrian government forces.

However, details of the agreement were still to be ironed out. The SDF did not want to give up the hard-fought gains it had made during the last 14 years of conflict. It has previously called for autonomous control or decentralised rule in the northeast.

Tension had simmered between the two sides, manifesting in recent clashes in Aleppo and an SDF withdrawal from the city across the Euphrates River. Syrian government forces advanced towards the northeast and have now taken territory, including the cities of Raqqa and Deir Az Zor.

A ceasefire was agreed on Monday, but clashes continued on Tuesday in the Hasakah region of northeast Syria, as Kurds there and in the diaspora feared incursions by government forces.

Recent discussions seemed to have settled on a formula where the SDF leadership would maintain control over three Kurdish-led divisions in Syrian forces, while the rest of the fighters would integrate as individuals. Analysts said it now looks as though individual integration is more likely to go ahead.

“They [the Syrian government] have achieved a very big milestone by forcing the SDF to integrate as individuals,” Labib Nahhas, a Syrian analyst, told Al Jazeera. “But vetting will be a huge challenge because we are talking about 50 to 70 or 80,000 soldiers, so this is a massive infiltration from a security point of view.”

Kurdish rights

Before this significant development, the SDF had been negotiating with Damascus over a few key points. In addition to discussions about integration, it wanted some form of autonomy or political decentralisation and the recognition of Kurdish rights.

On January 16, on the back of fierce fighting between government forces and the SDF in Aleppo, al-Sharaa issued a decree formally recognising Kurdish as a “national language” and restoring citizenship to all Kurdish Syrians.

The decree, which declared Newroz, the spring and new year festival celebrated by Kurds, a national holiday and banned ethnic or linguistic discrimination, addressed one key SDF demand.

Under the Assad regime, Kurds were an oppressed minority in Syria. Their language and identity were not officially recognised and often suppressed by the state.

The move was described by Obayda Ghadban, a researcher with Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, as historic.

“It has recognised the cultural, linguistic rights of Kurdish Syrians, which is a grievance that has been accumulating for decades,” he told Al Jazeera. “This was seen as a gesture of goodwill by the SDF and regained the momentum of negotiations that have been going [on] for more than a year now.”

Al-Sharaa announced a four-day ceasefire with the SDF on Tuesday and said if a deal could be reached, government forces would leave Kurdish-majority cities like Hasakah and Qamishli to handle their security themselves.

Despite the carrot-and-stick approach, some analysts felt al-Sharaa’s recognition of Kurdish rights was likely a political tactic.

“Had a similar decree been issued six months ago in the context of relative peace between the two sides, I believe the situation would have been very different,” Thomas McGee, Max Weber fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, told Al Jazeera.

“The fact that no recognition of Kurdish rights came for the full first year after the fall of al-Assad is indeed significant. With this decree suddenly coming out within the context of large military developments shows that the Syrian government considers recognition of Kurdish rights as a tactical issue rather than such rights being considered innate and unconditional.”

Shortly after the announcement, al-Sharaa announced a military operation in Deir Hafir, a town in the north, 50km (31 miles) east of Aleppo, where SDF forces had retreated after evacuating the neighbourhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh in Aleppo. Some Syrians and analysts told Al Jazeera that the SDF’s reputation had suffered amid the fighting in Aleppo, even among some Kurds, but it did not mean Kurds would throw their weight behind the government.

“[Al-Sharaa] wanted to do this before the military operation,” Wladimir van Wilgenburg, an analyst of Kurdish politics based in Erbil, Iraq, told Al Jazeera.

“The Kurdish sentiment will not change much towards the government because it doesn’t recognise any form of local autonomy, and both the main Kurdish parties want some form of autonomy or decentralisation.”

US and Turkiye

International actors will also have their eyes on the developments in northeast Syria.

Turkiye appears to be a big winner in the latest developments. The country warned the SDF in early January that its “patience is running out” with the group.

“Ankara has welcomed the ceasefire and Full Integration Agreement, and it is certainly in Turkish interests,” McGee said. “Ultimately, on the SDF/self-administration integration, Turkiye and Damascus have long shared the same general red lines.”

There has also been a discussion about foreign fighters in SDF-controlled areas, which, under the ceasefire agreement, Nahhas said, the SDF was required to expel any “PKK-linked or affiliated individuals or operatives”.

Then there is the United States, which helped broker the ceasefire due to its close relationship with the SDF and Damascus. The US currently has about 900 soldiers in the SDF-controlled parts of Syria for countering ISIL, and analysts said it was unlikely those troops would withdraw.

But under the Trump administration, relations between Washington and Damascus have warmed considerably.

Al-Sharaa, who had been considered a “terrorist” by the US when the Assad regime fell in 2024, visited the White House in November 2025, marking a remarkable turnaround in barely a year. Shortly after that visit, Syria joined the anti-ISIL coalition.

After a phone call with al-Sharaa, US President Donald Trump released a statement on Monday supporting Syria’s unity and “fight against terrorism”.

Not every US official was pleased with the recent events. US Senator Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally, posted on X on Tuesday his support for the SDF.

“You cannot unite Syria by the use of military force as Syrian government leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa is trying to do,” he wrote. “This move by Syrian government forces against SDF members is fraught with peril.”

Graham and others may be concerned about reports of 39 escaped ISIL detainees from prisons previously held by the SDF, or, on the other side, SDF claims that government forces killed female Kurdish fighters.

But the sentiment in the US seems to be shifting heavily in favour of Damascus. On Tuesday afternoon, US Special Envoy for Syria Tom Barrack posted on X that the US was throwing its support behind al-Sharaa and choosing Damascus over the SDF.