Global Rundown
- A new 900-mile-long oil pipeline is weeks away from inaugurating two oil fields in Uganda, where concerns about the impacts on Africa’s largest lakes abound.
- Hundreds of massive sinkholes have opened across Turkey’s farming regions as a result of depleted groundwater reserves.
- Human rights abuses stemming from the large-scale mining of transition minerals increased in every region in the world last year, a new report reveals.
- Data centers in Texas, when asked to complete surveys about their water consumption and energy use, are ghosting state officials.
HotSpots H2O: Lake Albert, Uganda and DR Congo
A 900-mile-long crude oil pipeline through East Africa is just weeks away from beginning operations, Yale Environment 360 reports, as opponents ignite one final wave of legal opposition to the project.
Stretching from the shores of Lake Albert — the continent’s seventh-largest lake and which straddles the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo — the pipeline runs south to Lake Victoria — the world’s second-largest fresh water lake — before curving through Tanzania and extending to the Indian Ocean. When it is completed, the project will be the world’s longest heated oil pipeline.
Experts who have reviewed the pipeline’s construction plans say that best practices were not followed in order to minimize its impact on water resources, wetlands, and wildlife.
Environmental advocates are especially concerned about where oil will be produced: in two fields on either side of Lake Albert, beneath which an estimated 6.5 billion barrels of the resource exist. Within the vicinity of this production is Uganda’s Murchison Falls National Park, a haven for endangered wildlife and through which the Nile River flows. Fish die-offs nearby have already been reported in the aftermath of alleged waste dumping during construction.
Further south, the pipeline’s passage underneath a wetland fed by two key rivers, the Kibale and Bukoora, which connect directly to Lake Victoria, is another significant concern. Some 200 acres of mangroves at the end of its route were additionally filled to “make way for an export terminal,” the outlet reports.
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This Week’s Top Water Stories, Told In Numbers
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The number of massive sinkholes that have opened up in agricultural fields across Turkey’s Konya province, known as the country’s “breadbasket” for its significant production of wheat. The largest of these holes, BBC reports, is over 750 feet in diameter and some 560 feet deep.
These gaping craters are forming as a result of depleting groundwater reserves in the agricultural hub. The problem stems largely from farmers’ inefficient and illegal irrigation techniques — a 2014 investigation found that of 100,000 wells dug for irrigation, 66,000 did not follow proper procedures.
“The water capacity is decreasing there because of the wrong excess irrigation policies; these underground rivers have virtually dried out,” Güven Eken, founder of a Turkey-based environmental agency, tells the outlet. “So the water which once flowed underneath the Konya basin is no longer there. The whole system has dried out.”
A 2025 report published by the United Nations warned that water scarcity will continue to be a major concern in the semi-arid country. Roughly 88 percent of its land is at risk of desertification, and precipitation by century’s end is expected to decrease by 30 percent. Much sooner, by 2030, Turkey expects to be downgraded from its current “water-stressed” classification to “water-poor.”
Mining Minute
A new report released this month by the Business and Human Rights Centre, an international non-governmental organization, reveals that allegations of human rights abuses stemming from the large-scale mining of transition minerals increased in every region of the world last year.
A total of 329 allegations “tied to air and water pollution, public health problems, and labor abuse like poor working conditions and union suppression” were tallied, Mongabay reports — a 173-case increase from the year prior. Since 2010, more than 1,200 attacks on people, communities, and the environment have been counted, a majority of which have occurred in South America.
This year’s report shows that Indigenous communities continue to be disproportionately affected by mining systems. Despite “the fact that more than half of global transition mineral reserves lie on or near their lands, decisions on where and how mining occurs continue to be made without their full and effective participation and consent,” the report reads.
Water is another point of concern. Last year, 69 allegations directly involved the pollution of water, and another 44 were made over the threatening of water access. Roughly 52 percent of the world’s copper mines operate in high water-stress areas, according to the report.
Infrastructure Insight
With more than 248 proposed data centers, Texas is quickly becoming America’s hottest market for the industry. As questions over these buildings’ water and energy use proliferate, Lone Star state officials have sent data center companies a survey to better understand their environmental footprint. So far, they have heard mostly crickets back.
Less than a third of companies with data centers in some stage of development in Texas — 28 companies, representing 92 facilities in the state— have responded, the Texas Tribune reports. Experts warn that this data is not sufficient to form the basis for any sort of policymaking.
This isn’t the first time data center companies have kept mum in response to surveys. The state’s Water Development Board has been sending water consumption surveys to data centers since 2024. That year, 33 percent responded. Last year, that share fell to 17 percent. All companies who didn’t respond presumably paid the maximum fine for non-compliance: $500.
