Visakhapatnam civil society calls for moratorium on AI data centre approvals

More than 650 delegates, including activists, researchers, legal experts and community leaders, gathered on Sunday at a People’s Convention on AI Data Centres, organised by the Society for Green Visakha at the Alluri Sitaramaraju Vignana Kendram in the city, to press for a moratorium on new hyperscale data centre approvals in Andhra Pradesh, pending an independent, cumulative environmental and social impact study.

In his welcome address, Raja Rama Mohan Roy, president, Green Visakha, said that the group sought to place “environmental justice, social justice and human dignity” at the centre of the debate, and that it was not opposed to technology but wanted “technological progress to be accompanied by equity, responsibility and sustainability.”

Delivering the keynote, E.A.S. Sarma, retired IAS officer and former Union Secretary in the Ministries of Power and Finance, questioned the allocation of resources to a proposed 6,500 MW Google data centre in a city that he described as water-stressed, citing large per-gigawatt State incentives extended to the project.

He linked the facility to the displacement of tribal families under the Polavaram irrigation project, calling inadequate compensation to Adivasi communities an indirect subsidy to the data centre, and a human rights concern under Article 21 of the Constitution. On claims of air-cooling technology, he said air-conditioning systems were highly electricity-intensive, and disputed their technical viability for such facilities.

Human Rights Forum representative V.S. Krishna said the pump-storage power projects in Chintapalli and Anakapalli mandals and the proposed thermal plant in Srikakulam district were being driven by the data centre’s energy needs. Referring to the displacement of tribals and opposition, he said that development “cannot mean displacement or the erosion of legally protected rights.”

D. Nagasaila, advocate, Madras High Court, said: “The National Green Tribunal had admitted petitions challenging all three environmental clearances granted for the project. “ He alleged that the clearances were processed within days without adequate scrutiny.

Sohan Hatangadi, an environmental conservationist, said that local communities bore the heaviest costs of such projects. “Though they give up their farms, land and ancestral property when development takes place, they are given very little in return,” he said, adding that even a one-gigawatt facility created only about 500 jobs, mostly highly skilled positions unavailable to the local workforce. “Nothing really gets better for the local community,” he said.

Heritage narrator Jayshree Hatangadi said: ”Protecting the city’s natural resources and heritage remains a concern whatever the threat and whoever brings it, often in the name of development,” adding that what was protected today was “owed to the generations after us.”

N. Chandrashekhar, general secretary, Green Visakha, released the “Visakhapatnam Declaration,” seeking a moratorium on fresh approvals, disclosure of project agreements, revocation of clearances granted without due process, an independent energy and water audit, restored land rights for affected communities, and an end to surveillance of protest.