- Leaders from 10 Mississippi River states are preparing to introduce legislation that protects the waterway from AI infrastructure development.
- Illegal bauxite mining in a protected forest in Ghana threatens the drinking water of an estimated 5 million people, local conservation groups warn.
- Amid ongoing drought, Ethiopia has cut the electricity supply to its cryptocurrency mines by 75 percent.
- Last year, 124 environmental defenders were killed globally; Columbia was the deadliest country, with 39 killings.
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Mayors representing 10 states along the Mississippi River have announced a new plan to establish regulatory policies that safeguard America’s biggest waterway by volume from the “fast-growing AI data center economy,” Mississippi Today reports.
The goal, officials say, is to create a series of freshwater protections mirroring the Great Lakes Compact, which prohibits Great Lakes water from being taken out of the basin and used for unregulated purposes. The goal of the compact is to conserve the overall supply of Great Lakes water and protect the habitat, economies, shipping routes, and drinking water it provides.
The indirect water usage from hyperscale data centers — which require large amounts of electricity generated most often from power plants that consume large amounts of water — has been well documented.
“The freshwater, water-intensive activities around industrial power operations, fisheries, and waterborne commerce all account for almost 80 percent of my state’s economy,” Louisiana state Rep. C. Travis Johnson says in a statement. “This unique aquatic ecology creates tremendous but fragile environmental services my state depends on for most of its jobs and economy. If we were to suddenly begin conveying billions of gallons of our water to another part of the continent, the impacts would be devastating to us.”
Last year, Missouri became the first state along the Mississippi River to pass strict out-of-state water export regulations. Minnesota, Mississippi, and Louisiana have since agreed to move similar legislation forward. Once three more states commit to do the same, a so-called Mississippi River Compact can be taken to Congress for drafting and approval.
“The Mississippi River doesn’t have such protections [as the Great Lakes], yet the resources of our corridor are more fragile and have a larger global impact, since the Mississippi River Basin supports nearly 40 percent of the world’s food supply,” Mississippi state Sen. Derrick Simmons says in a statement. “As droughts persist and intense heat expands, the need to secure our water resources will only become more acute.”
Ethiopia has cut its power supply to Bitcoin miners — who collectively use more than one-third of the state-run grid’s total electricity — by 75 percent amid ongoing drought.
In a country that generates more than 90 percent of its electricity from hydropower, dry conditions this year attributed to El Niño weather patterns have necessitated significant shifts in electricity allocation, Business Insider Africa reports. Within the past month, inflows to Ethiopia’s reservoirs, including its year-old Grand Renaissance Dam — the largest hydropower plant in Africa — have reduced by roughly 20 percent, straining power supplies.
Officials’ decision to ration scarce electricity at the expense of cryptocurrency mining disrupts one of the industry’s major hubs. The Horn of Africa, and Ethiopia specifically, has emerged in recent years as a leading location for companies, many from China, to install energy-intensive supercomputers. Cheap, available electricity was Ethiopia’s main draw.
The crypto economy’s share of Ethiopia’s overall grid has been widely criticized, as half of the country’s 140 million population still lack basic electricity access.
“Mining a single Bitcoin in Ethiopia uses as much electricity as nearly 15,000 local households consume in a year,” Business Insider Africa reports.
According to a new report from Global Witness, an international human rights organization, 124 environmental defenders were killed globally in 2025.
For the third year in a row, per the organization’s verifications, this marked a decrease in deaths. “But the reality is that these figures are likely a significant underestimate, as many cases go unreported,” the report reads.
A vast majority of the killings, 105, occurred in Latin America. Colombia led with 39, followed by Brazil (26), and Honduras (12).
Conservation groups in Ghana are speaking out against illegal bauxite mines in a protected forest that have turned clear rivers and streams brown, threatening the drinking water for an estimated five million people, Mongabay reports.
The main area of concern is the Atewa Forest, which spans some 26,300 hectares in eastern Ghana. The headwaters of three major rivers and 99 streams converge under its canopies before flowing out as the main source of water for some 52 surrounding communities.
According to a press release from several local environmental organizations, the Atewa “is among just 2 percent of the world’s protected areas assessed to be resilient to higher levels of climate change impacts.” As a result, clamping down on illegal deforestation and mining operations, they say, is of critical importance.
In a statement released last week, Ghana’s National Anti-Illegal Mining Operations Secretariat said that “all reports in connection with the Atewa Range Forest Reserve are receiving necessary and urgent attention.”
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