Google owns thirty-seven data centers spread across thirteen countries, where information necessary to run its services is processed and stored.1 Just one of these centers is in Latin America—in Quilicura, Chile.2 Working to expand its reach in the region, in 2017 the company began negotiations with Uruguay’s government about a new data center facility. Google initially rejected the country as a potential location, citing a lack of qualified science, technology, and engineering professionals. 3 But following the 2020 completion of a submarine fiber-optic cable connecting Uruguay to Brazil, Argentina, and Florida,4 Google acquired land in the Parque de las Ciencias, a free trade zone outside the nation’s capital of Montevideo.5 In 2021, the company (through its Uruguayan subsidiary, Eleanor Applications SRL) announced plans to build a new data center on the plot to serve Google service users worldwide.6
Local officials welcomed Google’s project, promising it would spur further development of Uruguay’s tech sector.7 But residents quickly raised concerns regarding the mass amounts of water the data center would likely require.8 The region has subsequently suffered from a years-long drought, which in June 2023 pushed Montevideo to declare a state of emergency. 9 However, the projected environmental impacts of the data center remained unknown due to a confidentiality requirement in the deal between Google and the government—a condition Google insisted upon, supposedly to protect trade secrets. Conveniently, this agreement also obscured any environmental harms from public view.
Daniel Pena is a researcher at the University of the Republic in Montevideo, where he was born and raised. Enol Nieto Jiménez, who is Spanish, is a researcher with BETA (Biodiversidad, Ecología y Tecnología Ambiental y Alimentaria) Tech Center; he and Pena met during their graduate studies Montevideo, becoming close collaborators in local environmental organizing and suing the Ministry of Environment to gain access to the environmental impact projections. After winning the trial, the documents made public that the data center would require 2 million gallons of water a day to cool its servers—equivalent to the domestic daily use of 55,000 people.10
Logic(s) interviewed Pena and Nieto about the trial’s implications and the ongoing fight for water justice in Uruguay. Note that this interview was conducted asynchronously with the support of a translator. All responses are a collaboration between Pena, Nieto, and Noelia Freire, who translated their responses.
Your lawsuit to expose the expected environmental impacts of Google’s data center occurred in the context of a broader social movement in Uruguay against the project. Can you tell us about the history of this movement?
To understand our lawsuit against Google’s data center, we must first look at the past twenty years of environmental activism here in Uruguay that preceded it. During this time, Uruguay’s popular movements centered around one key element: water. In 2004, we became the first country in the world to declare water as a human right in our constitution and guarantee public management of water services.11 Trade unions were directly responsible for this reform, from drafting the article to leading a nationwide campaign for its passage. In the end, more than 60 percent of Uruguayans voted in favor.12 This moment gave rise to the National Commission in Defense of Water and Life (CNDAV), a coalition of grassroots environmental groups, which has remained a key leader in the environmental justice movement ever since.
Over time, other organizations came together to build a coalition with CNDAV, including artist groups, community associations, and labor unions. This coalition has led protests, legal actions, and social media campaigns against various policies and government-backed projects that threatened our water supply, such as the Irrigation Law in 2018 (which legalized damming and privatization of previously public water supplies in rural areas) and the Neptuno Project in 2023 (which privatized de facto the water supply in the metropolitan area of Montevideo). CNDAV succeeded in defeating the Neptuno Project, at least temporarily; a judge recently ruled the project violated the constitutional provision that only the state can provide water services.13
Then, in 2023, we experienced the most devastating drought in decades. Despite the lack of rainfall, the Uruguayan government failed to limit agro-industrial companies’ water use. Instead, they continued approving private projects with high water requirements and shifted emergency water-rationing measures onto everyday people, banning us from watering our gardens or washing our cars.14 Meanwhile, authorities began to rely on salinized water from the nearby Rio de la Plata estuary, resulting in nearly undrinkable tap water for millions of residents.15 The government had essentially failed to uphold our constitutional right to water.
It should be noted that the drought was not borne evenly by all Uruguayans. The media and state have long claimed that racism is not an issue.16 The narrative that Uruguay has no significant Black or Indigenous population is perpetuated by the government and continues to receive a troubling level of popular support.17 But due to ongoing advocacy efforts from these communities, an increasing number of people are asserting their Afro-Uruguayan and Charrúa identity and demanding recognition.18 These communities face the highest rates of extreme poverty and were the most harmed by the drought.19
In response, social movements quickly organized actions against the government and private interests compromising public access to water. The Coordinación por el Agua (Water Coordination) and the CNDAV played a fundamental role, joining together as autoconvocadxs (self-assembled). After three months of daily protests under the slogan “No es sequía, es saqueo” (It’s not drought, it’s pillage), they forced a public discussion about the government’s role in the drought and how the current system had overloaded water supply.20 Their demands received international media attention.21
It is in this context that the government announced its contract with Google to build a data center that we later learned would require enormous amounts of water.22 But decades spent organizing had prepared the water justice movement for this moment—to fight the project.
You were both involved in the lawsuit to expose the expected environmental impacts of Google’s data center. Can you tell us more about the organizing efforts that led to this outcome?
We’re both academics by training and share a vision of the academy as a space connected to and nourished by the social context in which it is situated. At its best, the academy can become a space for political transformation.
After meeting in our graduate program at the University of the Republic23, we continued to run into one another in different organizing spaces. Slowly, between the academy and the streets, a friendship emerged. In 2021, we spent time in Daniel’s home in the rural west of Montevideo, where we talked about how to best support struggles for water justice in Uruguay and Spain (where Enol now lives). We also discussed how the data center agreement between Google and the Uruguay government was entirely classified, which the government claimed was necessary to protect Google’s confidential commercial information. But these confidentiality requirements only served to hide the project’s environmental impact from the public.
We began to look into similar data center projects around the world and realized that they often lead to widespread pushback from the public—like in Chile, the Netherlands, Singapore, and Ireland. Just like in Uruguay, the Chilean government also concealed the environmental impact projections for Google’s proposed data center. But following a social media campaign and series of legal action led by MOSACAT (Movimiento Socioambiental Comunitario por el Agua y el Territorio [Community socio-environmental movement for water and land]), the government announced the project would be paused indefinitely.24
The knowledge that a similar campaign achieved success in Chile made us feel like it was possible to win against Google in Uruguay, particularly given our long history of water activism. So we decided to file a lawsuit against the Ministry of Environment, demanding they publish the environmental projections.25 Relying on Article 47 of the Constitution, which requires the participation of civil society in water-resource management, we challenged the right of the company to keep certain parts of the project confidential. Both CNDAV and the Coordinación por el Agua quickly joined the lawsuit and began to build a campaign to garner public support.
On World Water Day, March 22, 2023, more than forty organizations and over 3,000 people marched through central Montevideo demanding an end to Google’s data center and other projects that further privatized our water. The disproportionate impact of Uruguay’s water crisis on vulnerable populations resulted in a broad coalition involved in the action, including environmental groups, trade unions, and feminist groups. Afro-Uruguayan and Charrúa collectives, such as Clan Chonik, Casa de la Cultura Afro Uruguaya, Consejo de la Nación Charrúa, and Hum pampa also joined the coalition. These groups pushed the coalition to broaden our demands from simply a rejection of Google’s data center and other water-privatization efforts to a full reimagining of our relationship to water.
A few days after we filed the lawsuit (with the support of our lawyer, Carolina Neme), the courts publicly mandated the Ministry of Environment to release the projected environmental impacts to the public.26 It was then that we learned Google planned to use 7.6 million liters of water per day to keep its data center cool. To put this in perspective, that amount of water is equivalent to the average daily consumption of 55,000 people.27
The announcement was met with extensive media attention and public outcry. Both the leading government party (the National Party) and the main opposition party (Frente Amplio) quickly moved to defend the project, anxious to maintain Uruguay’s reputation as friendly to international business interests.28 But a few weeks later, at the hardest moment of the drought, protests broke out once again, and public pressure on the government reached a boiling point. Finally, Google announced that they had decided to modify their project: the proposed data center would be three times smaller and would instead use an air cooling system, rather than a water one.
Even this reduced plan ensured significant environmental harm. While this revision would decrease the reliance on water, it greatly expanded energy requirements and associated carbon emissions29. The Movimiento por un Uruguay Sustentable (Movement for a sustainable Uruguay) and Amnesty International quickly mobilized a campaign encouraging public comments on the plan to the Ministry of the Environment. In total, the campaign generated over 400 public comments pointing out the new environmental risks and demanding additional studies on the projected energy usage, emissions, and other pollution.30
Our fight is still ongoing; the project is moving forward, even though the data center will now be smaller. The government’s refusal to cancel the project is indicative of their commitment to protecting multinational corporations’ interests. However, the legal battle was a major victory because the release of those documents helped to mobilize the public. And we should celebrate that.
How do you understand this data center within Uruguay’s struggle for independence and contemporary turn toward economic liberalization?
This project will further degrade Uruguay’s democracy and economic sovereignty. If finalized, the data center would exist in a free trade zone where companies are exempt from taxes—one of the many free trade zones the government has approved in recent years to attract international capital. The government has justified the tax breaks by claiming the project will generate jobs for us—but once built, the data center will only employ fifty people.31
The magnitude of its projected environmental harms mirrors the scale of challenges it poses to data sovereignty, leading us to ask: Who should get to own data centers? Should the use and storage of our data be private? Or, perhaps, should decisions regarding our information (and any environmental impacts resulting from these decisions) belong to the public sphere? We are at a key moment in the development of technology and so-called AI. If we don’t grapple with these questions now, we might be too late.
Who does Google’s data center benefit, anyway? The government claims the project will “improve the business climate” so other American, European, and Chinese companies will want to invest in Uruguay. Supposedly, these investments will eventually benefit the public. But years of similar projects here in Latin America show that these investments will just benefit the companies themselves.32
The profit from this data center will be exported out of Uruguay while we are left to deal with the environmental impacts. Our natural resources are exploited for the benefit of the global North. This fact has not changed with the rise of the digital sector. Although tech companies would like us to think otherwise, developing their products requires massive environmental costs. And these costs are often borne by people living in the global South—like in Uruguay.
Our natural resources are exploited for the benefit of the global North. This fact has not changed with the rise of the digital sector.
As you’ve mentioned, Uruguay’s movement against this data center is not a standalone case—similar organizing has occurred in Chile, the Netherlands, and here in the United States. How do you understand your fight in Uruguay within this broader struggle?
Since supply chains are progressively global, complex, and fragmented, socio-environmental struggles have become increasingly organized at the international level; we can share information, strategies, contacts, and so on. The growth of the tech sector raises new challenges for our movement, including the environmental harms this sector generates (which are often invisible to consumers). The products the tech sector creates aren’t designed to serve the needs of the public. Rather, they are designed to generate mass quantities of profit for a small handful of companies, like Alphabet, Microsoft, Apple, Meta, and X (formerly Twitter). But while their products don’t serve our needs, we can still use them to build a stronger, more connected, and more informed global movement.
For example, it was Chilean activists’ fight against a similar Google-owned data center that initially compelled us to investigate the water impacts of the proposed data center here in Montevideo.33 Similarly, Greenpeace reports on the energy impacts of data centers in Virginia inspired us to demand that our government conduct similar studies.34 Every local struggle can generate learnings that benefit other local struggles. It is through the culmination of these struggles that we will begin to crack the hegemony of multinational corporations.
We hope that our mobilization will inspire others to fight for their communities using the tools they have at their disposal, whether through legal actions, street protests, brand boycotts, digital campaigns, or critical research reports.
For us, it is important to understand that all these cases (in Uruguay, Chile, the Netherlands, and the US) make visible the hidden costs of tech development. Behind things like algorithmic systems, data processing, and digital platforms, there is the material reality that makes their development possible. They require resources like energy, rare minerals, and water. The so-called digital cloud is not in the sky but here on Earth, in places like Montevideo. We must build social movements that consider the entire production chain of technology, including environmental impacts. It is through this perspective that connections between tech products sold to consumers in the global North and social and environmental crises in the global South can become visible.
The so-called digital cloud is not in the sky but here on Earth, in places like Montevideo.
1. “Discover Our Data Center Locations,” Google, accessed September 9, 2024, google.com/about
2. “Quilicura, Chile – Data Centers – Google,” Google, accessed September 9, 2024, google.com/about.
3. “Google huyó de Uruguay por falta de mano de obra calificada,” El Observador, October 23, 2013, elobservador.com.uy.
4. Note that this cable is co-owned by Google and the Uruguayan state-run company Antel; Lachlan Williams, “Uruguay/Google Tannat Cable System Links with Brazil and Argentina,” Rio Times, December 4, 2020,riotimesonline.com.
5. “In Brief: Google to Expand Data Centres in Uruguay,” Latin News, May 17, 2021, latinnews.com.
6. Grace Livingstone, “It’s Pillage’: Thirsty Uruguayans Decry Google’s Plan to Exploit Water Supply,” Guardian, July 11, 2023, theguardian.com.
7. Georgia Butler, “Google Confirms Construction of Data Center in Uruguay,” Data Center Dynamics, November 7, 2023, datacenterdynamics.com.
8. Butler, “Data Center in Uruguay.”
9. “Alert: Water Crisis Declared by Uruguayan Government,” US Embassy in Uruguay, June 26, 2023, uy.usembassy.gov.
10. Livingstone, “It’s Pillage.”
11. Eduardo Galeano, “Aguas de octubre. Al sur de América hubo elecciones y hubo plebiscito,” Revista Rebelión, November 1, 2004, rebelion.org.
12. Diego Castro, Mandato y autodeterminación. Pistas para desarmar la trampa estadocéntrica (México: Bajo Tierra, 2022).
13. “Ruling against US$295mn Project Reignites Uruguay Water Debate,” bnamericas, June 26, 2024, bnamericas.com.
14. “Uruguay prohíbe utilizar agua para fines no prioritarios,” Deutsche Welle, November 2, 2023, dw.com.
15. Alejandro Obaldia and Brendan O’Boyle, “In Parched Uruguay, Tensions Rise as Water Levels Fall,” Reuters, June 30, 2023, reuters.com.
16. Marisa Bucheli, Maximo Rossi, and Florencia Amábile, “Inequality and Fiscal Policies in Uruguay by Race,” Journal of Economic Inequality 16 (2018): 389–411.
17. Uruguay is one of the only countries in Latin America that has not ratified the International Labour Organization’s Convention 169, the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention—the only international law protecting Indigenous peoples’ right to land. See “Uruguay Does Not Ratify the Convention on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” Rio Times, November 10, 2022, riotimesonline.com.
18. The Charrúa are an ethnic group Indigenous to Uruguay. See Pablo Albarenga, “Where Did Uruguay’s Indigenous Population Go?,” El País, November 10, 2017, english.elpais.com; Jesús Chucho Garcia, “Afro Uruguayans––between ‘Camdombe’ and Self-Recognition,” trans. Karen Juanita Carrillo, Amsterdam News, July 18, 2024, amsterdamnews.com.
19. Marisa Bucheli, Maximo Rossi, and Florencia Amábile, “Inequality and Fiscal Policies in Uruguay by Race,” Journal of Economic Inequality 16 (2018): 389–411.
20. Enol Nieto, “Uruguay: La gota (salada) que colmó el vaso,” Climática, La Marea, June 22, 2023, climatica.coop.
21. Daniel Pena, “Agua en Uruguay: ¿Por qué es saqueo y no solo sequía?,” Zur, July 14, 2023, zur.uy.
22. Every mention of Google in this conversation refers also to their subsidiary in Uruguay, Eleanor Applications SRL.
23. The University of the Republic, which is public, autonomous, and cogoverned, has ongoing involvement in the water justice movement.
24. Duna, “Duna FM,” Facebook page, facebook.com/RadioDuna; Israel Durán, “Tribunal ambiental frena proyecto ‘Cerrillos Data Center’ de Google y pide analizar sus posibles efectos en el medio ambiente,” Duna, February 27, 2024, duna.cl.
25. Neme represented Pena and Jimenez on a pro bono basis.
26. Mariana Abreu,“Una nube se hace con agua. La opacidad de la información ambiental en el sector tecnológico,” Brecha, March 24, 2023,brecha.com.uy.
27. Livingstone, “It’s Pillage.”
28. “Las claves del datacenter de Google: El proyecto ‘estratégico’ que implicará una inversión de US$ 850 millones,” El País, August 30, 2024,elpais.com.uy.
29. Daniel Pena, “Una aprobación a ciegas,” August 2, 2024, brecha.com.uy.
30. Enol Nieto and Daniel Pena, “Google y la Campaña Ciudadana frente a su nuevo proyecto de Datacenter en Uruguay,” Zur, April 1, 2024, zur.uy.
31. Informe final área de evaluación de impacto ambiental, Ministry of the Environment (Uruguay), April 20, 2024, ambiente.gub.uy.
32. For example, the government allowed a Finish forestry company to build multiple pulp mills, promising the project would raise Uruguay’s annual GDP by 2 percent. “Finnish Forestry Firm to Transform Uruguay with $2.7bn Pulp Mill,” KPMG, n.d., subcontractors.uy. In reality, the project has displaced rural populations and degraded soil and water quality in the neighboring regions. “Uruguay: The Fraudulent Campaign of the Finnish Multinational UPM Is Unmasked,” World Rainforest Movement, March 5, 2020, wrm.org.uy.
33. Fabian Cambero, “Chile Partially Pulls Google Data Center Permit, Seeks Tougher Environmental Checks,” Reuters, February 28, 2024, reuters.com.
34. Gary Cook, “Clicking Clean: Who Is Winning the Race to Build a Green Internet?,” Greenpeace, 2017, 31–32, greenpeace.org.