Pub­lic con­cern about the MoUs signed by this Gov­ern­ment to build da­ta cen­tres in Trinidad is based on facts, not hal­lu­ci­na­tions, to use an AI-re­lat­ed term. There is a his­to­ry of US com­pa­nies ex­port­ing their pol­lut­ing in­dus­tries to de­vel­op­ing coun­tries. This is no dif­fer­ent, and the ex­ploita­tion of de­vel­op­ing coun­tries con­tin­ue.

In the 1960s, US and Eu­ro­pean firms shift­ed as­bestos pro­cess­ing, pes­ti­cide pro­duc­tion and oth­er haz­ardous man­u­fac­tur­ing to Latin Amer­i­ca, South and South­east Asia. This was in re­sponse to the US and Eu­rope en­act­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal laws to pro­tect the en­vi­ron­ment, re­quir­ing the firms to make changes to their pro­duc­tion sys­tems that were cost­ly. In­stead of in­vest­ing to meet the stan­dards, they sent their pol­lut­ing in­dus­tries to the de­vel­op­ing world. This is the con­text of the 1984 Bhopal dis­as­ter in In­dia, where Union Car­bide op­er­at­ed a pes­ti­cide plant. The peo­ple of Bhopal con­tin­ue to suf­fer se­ri­ous health prob­lems with­out com­pen­sa­tion from the US com­pa­ny.

In­dus­tri­alised na­tions be­gan ship­ping tox­ic waste to de­vel­op­ing coun­tries for dis­pos­al, a trend that grew large enough to prompt the 1989 Basel Con­ven­tion reg­u­lat­ing trans­bound­ary haz­ardous waste move­ment. The gov­ern­ments in the re­ceiv­ing coun­tries ei­ther ex­changed the health of the en­vi­ron­ment and its peo­ples for a mon­e­tary pay­ment, were duped in­to re­ceiv­ing the tox­ic waste, or had no knowl­edge of the dump­ing. In 1986 and 1988, Haiti was the vic­tim of dump­ing of tox­ic wastes from the US. The Hait­ian min­istry is­sued an im­port per­mit for a ship­ment la­beled as top­soil fer­tilis­er. It was, in fact, ash­es from burnt mu­nic­i­pal waste that con­tained tox­ic ma­te­ri­als. Once Green­peace in­formed the gov­ern­ment of the true ori­gins of the prod­uct, the per­mit was re­scind­ed and an or­der is­sued for the prod­uct to be re­loaded, but the ship had al­ready fled.