As Thailand races to become Southeast Asia's AI hub, communities in the Eastern Economic Corridor are asking a question no one in government has yet answered: who is responsible for the water?

 

The Boom Nobody Planned For: Thailand's Data Center Gold Rush

On May 6, 2026, Thailand's Board of Investment (BOI) approved six new projects worth a combined 958 billion baht (approximately USD 29 billion) led by a massive data infrastructure expansion by TikTok System (Thailand) Co., Ltd. This single batch of approvals is nearly as large as the country's entire annual public health budget. It came less than a week after the BOI had already confirmed over 43 data center projects across the country, with more than two-thirds of them clustered in the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC): the industrial zone spanning Chonburi, Rayong, and Chachoengsao provinces east of Bangkok.

The scale is staggering. In 2025 alone, Thailand attracted USD 23 billion in data center investment across 36 BOI-approved projects — a volume that surpassed the country's total data center investment of the previous decade combined. Thailand's target of reaching 1 gigawatt (GW) of national data center IT load capacity by 2027, up from roughly 0.35 GW in 2024, is now well within reach. Companies building or planning to build facilities in the EEC include Google, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, TikTok, Bridge Data Centres, Galaxy Data Center, Haoyang Data, and a growing cohort of Chinese and Southeast Asian operators.

The government's enthusiasm is understandable. Data centers bring high-value investment, foreign exchange, and digital infrastructure that positions Thailand as a regional AI hub. But the speed of this expansion; driven by BOI tax incentives including 8-year corporate income tax exemptions, import duty waivers, and expedited EIA approvals, has outpaced both the regulatory framework and the environmental carrying capacity of the regions where these facilities are being built.

This article examines the environmental dimensions of Thailand's data center boom that the investment promotion narrative has largely left unaddressed: the competition for water in an already water-stressed zone, the risk of wastewater pollution in communities already bearing the burden of decades of industrial discharge, the carbon footprint of facilities powered by an 85% fossil-fuel grid, and the structural governance gaps that leave communities with no formal voice in decisions that will shape their water, land, and livelihoods for decades.