Understanding and resisting Data centers: lessons from Spain

Data centres are multiplying across the globe and increasingly, they are reshaping rural and semi-rural landscapes far from the cities whose data they process. Behind the promise of jobs and digital progress lie enormous demands on electricity grids, water supplies, and land, often decided far from the communities that will live with the consequences.

Aotearoa New Zealand is no exception: proposals for new data centres and the energy infrastructure to power them are raising similar questions here about who benefits, who decides, and who bears the environmental cost, questions that echo longstanding debates over land, water, and indigenous sovereignty.