Climate Justice Coalition submission on the rapid expansion of data centres and digital infrastructure

10 August 2026

The Climate Justice Coalition, together with supporting organisations, has made a submission to the South African Human Rights Commission raising concerns about the rapid expansion of data centres and digital infrastructure in South Africa. The submission looks at the significant demands these developments place on water, electricity and land. It also looks at their potential environmental, public health, labour and human rights impacts.

The submission focuses on the concern about the lack of transparency and meaningful public participation surrounding these developments. We call for data centre expansion to be subject to robust environmental and social safeguards, transparent resource planning and democratic decision-making. Public resources and constitutional rights must be protected ahead of private profit. The Coalition’s demands are detailed below.

We call on the SAHRC and the South African government to:

1. Protect our constitutional right to water, clean air, energy, a safe and healthy environment.
2. Halt development of data centres to uphold transparent, inclusive development planning processes. This should disallow the usage of NDAs to avoid accountability or transparency around planned data centre developments.
3. Ensure land-use planning and zoning of land earmarked for data centres is sufficiently away from people, does not threaten protected ecosystems, food security etc.
4. Develop environmental and social safeguards to prevent steamrolling of decision-making.
5. Require comprehensive resource plans on projected water and electricity use and possible use of groundwater to be made publicly available prior to development decisions going forward. Decisions should be informed based on an assessment of availability of resources to accommodate the demands, in the context of the increasing climate crisis and poor functioning of local government infrastructure.
6. Mandate government departments, municipalities and companies to make publicly available the relevant environmental and social impact assessments, ahead of development decisions going forward. 
7. Mandate companies to shoulder the burden of the full social and environmental  costs for their operations, including any necessary upgrades to necessary municipal water and electricity infrastructure required.
8. Develop binding plans for processing and disposal of e-waste and of contaminated water.
9. We recommend that data centres are required to be transparent regarding what they are used for and a principled stance against the use of centres for surveillance. 
10. Commitments to putting people first ahead of profit, public resources like land and water and electricity must be developed in public interest.

Read the full submission here.