Dr. Taimoon Stew­art

Pub­lic con­cern about the MoUs signed by this Gov­ern­ment to build da­ta cen­tres in Trinidad is based on facts, not hal­lu­ci­na­tions, to use an AI-re­lat­ed term. There is a his­to­ry of US com­pa­nies ex­port­ing their pol­lut­ing in­dus­tries to de­vel­op­ing coun­tries. This is no dif­fer­ent, and the ex­ploita­tion of de­vel­op­ing coun­tries con­tin­ue.

In the 1960s, US and Eu­ro­pean firms shift­ed as­bestos pro­cess­ing, pes­ti­cide pro­duc­tion and oth­er haz­ardous man­u­fac­tur­ing to Latin Amer­i­ca, South and South­east Asia. This was in re­sponse to the US and Eu­rope en­act­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal laws to pro­tect the en­vi­ron­ment, re­quir­ing the firms to make changes to their pro­duc­tion sys­tems that were cost­ly. In­stead of in­vest­ing to meet the stan­dards, they sent their pol­lut­ing in­dus­tries to the de­vel­op­ing world. This is the con­text of the 1984 Bhopal dis­as­ter in In­dia, where Union Car­bide op­er­at­ed a pes­ti­cide plant. The peo­ple of Bhopal con­tin­ue to suf­fer se­ri­ous health prob­lems with­out com­pen­sa­tion from the US com­pa­ny.

In­dus­tri­alised na­tions be­gan ship­ping tox­ic waste to de­vel­op­ing coun­tries for dis­pos­al, a trend that grew large enough to prompt the 1989 Basel Con­ven­tion reg­u­lat­ing trans­bound­ary haz­ardous waste move­ment. The gov­ern­ments in the re­ceiv­ing coun­tries ei­ther ex­changed the health of the en­vi­ron­ment and its peo­ples for a mon­e­tary pay­ment, were duped in­to re­ceiv­ing the tox­ic waste, or had no knowl­edge of the dump­ing. In 1986 and 1988, Haiti was the vic­tim of dump­ing of tox­ic wastes from the US. The Hait­ian min­istry is­sued an im­port per­mit for a ship­ment la­beled as top­soil fer­tilis­er. It was, in fact, ash­es from burnt mu­nic­i­pal waste that con­tained tox­ic ma­te­ri­als. Once Green­peace in­formed the gov­ern­ment of the true ori­gins of the prod­uct, the per­mit was re­scind­ed and an or­der is­sued for the prod­uct to be re­loaded, but the ship had al­ready fled.

Niger­ian au­thor­i­ties found over 2,000 drums of tox­ic waste in the small fish­ing vil­lage of Koko, trans­port­ed by a front en­ter­prise owned by Ital­ian en­tre­pre­neur Gi­an­fran­co Raf­fael­li. The waste was dis­guised as build­ing ma­te­ri­als and stored in a lo­cal res­i­dent's yard for US$100 a month. The na­tion­al gov­ern­ment had no knowl­edge. Lo­cals en­gaged in du­plic­i­ty to earn mon­ey. Gov­ern­ments were tempt­ed by of­fers of sub­stan­tial rev­enue for ac­cept­ing wastes but lacked the tech­nol­o­gy or ad­min­is­tra­tive ca­pac­i­ty to dis­pose of them safe­ly; some of this trade was le­gal, but much was not, with waste en­ter­ing coun­tries covert­ly through bribes or mis­la­bel­ing.

Why am I writ­ing about ex­port of pol­lu­tion in­dus­tries and dump­ing of tox­ic waste in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries?

The build­ing of da­ta cen­tres is no dif­fer­ent. All over the Unit­ed States, com­mu­ni­ties are protest­ing the build­ing of da­ta cen­tres and mu­nic­i­pal gov­ern­ments are pass­ing leg­is­la­tion that bars da­ta cen­tres from ac­cess to mu­nic­i­pal wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty. A very re­cent ex­am­ple is in Spar­tan­burg Coun­ty, South Car­oli­na, where lo­cal au­thor­i­ties and the com­pa­ny, Vala­ha Hold­ing, la­belled the project as con­vert­ing the for­mer Kohler kitchen-and-bath man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in­to a US$2.8 to US$3 bil­lion "high-per­for­mance com­put­ing" fa­cil­i­ty. The pub­lic was de­ceived in­to think­ing that it was a com­put­er cen­tre that was be­ing de­vel­oped. On­ly when the project start­ed did the full facts come to light. Mas­sive protest against the air pol­lu­tion from 80-foot chim­neys emit­ting car­bon diox­ide and car­cino­genic fumes and the de­mand for wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty by da­ta cen­tres de­priv­ing res­i­dents of much need­ed util­i­ty sup­plies have led to a one-year mora­to­ri­um on the project.

Any Trini­bag­on­ian who watch­es the US news will have heard of the mas­sive protests tak­ing place all over the US as com­mu­ni­ties refuse to have da­ta cen­tres in their area. At least 75 projects worth more than $130 bil­lion were blocked or de­layed in just the first three months of 2026 — match­ing the scale of op­po­si­tion seen across all of 2025. Ac­tive op­po­si­tion groups grew from 396 at the end of 2025 to 833 by the end of March 2026, span­ning 49 states. And, New York has now passed leg­is­la­tion ban­ning the build­ing of da­ta cen­tres for one year.

Why do you think that US com­pa­nies are now look­ing to de­vel­op­ing coun­tries to ac­cept da­ta cen­tres?

They are run­ning out of op­tions in the US be­cause peo­ple are sen­si­ble enough to protest and dri­ve them out, pro­tect­ing their health and ac­cess to ad­e­quate elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter sup­ply. In the 1960s, pol­lut­ing US com­pa­nies were no longer wel­come at home be­cause of strict en­vi­ron­men­tal laws. Sim­i­lar­ly, da­ta cen­tres in the US are run­ning out of op­tions be­cause peo­ple are re­fus­ing to have them built in their com­mu­ni­ties. These com­pa­nies are se­duc­ing our gov­ern­ment with promis­es of sub­stan­tial rev­enues and em­ploy­ment gen­er­a­tion, while ex­port­ing their pol­lut­ing in­dus­tries. This is no dif­fer­ent from the se­duc­tion of lead­ers in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries with promis­es that nev­er ma­te­ri­alised. Five hun­dred em­ployed is just for con­struc­tion. Once the cen­tre is built, a few dozen may be em­ployed.

Enough is be­ing said on so­cial me­dia and in the press with sta­tis­tics of pol­lu­tion and the de­mands for elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter by da­ta cen­tres. The de­mand for wa­ter for cool­ing the equip­ment is so great that Chi­na is propos­ing build­ing da­ta cen­tres be­neath the sea. A his­tor­i­cal view an­chored in a po­lit­i­cal econ­o­my analy­sis may help us to un­der­stand the un­der­ly­ing log­ic of the modus operan­di of Big Tech in ad­vanc­ing their agen­da of max­imis­ing the pace of AI de­vel­op­ment. Da­ta cen­tres are need­ed to fil­ter the da­ta col­lect­ed from the in­ter­net and plat­forms and pre­pare them for stor­ing on the Cloud, all owned by four Big Tech com­pa­nies: Mi­crosoft, Google, Meta, and Ama­zon.

My point here is to say that once more, we are tar­get­ed for ‘dump­ing’, this time the pol­lut­ing da­ta cen­tres whose car­cino­genic emis­sions can cause can­cer in the pop­u­la­tion and over­all health de­te­ri­o­ra­tion, in­crease our car­bon foot­print ex­po­nen­tial­ly, dam­age the frag­ile en­vi­ron­ment, and leave us poor­er in mul­ti­ple ways.

So, Mr. Min­is­ter, and Madam Prime Min­is­ter, the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go are not be­ing alarmists and naysay­ers. There are se­ri­ous prob­lems with ac­cept­ing da­ta cen­ters to be lo­cat­ed here, and I urge you to ex­am­ine the facts and act in the in­ter­est of the peo­ple of this coun­try and this re­gion.