At the holistic level, their impact on the ecology is still to be known though.
You can't go to a [settlement] (https://sfo2.digitaloceanspaces.com/elpaiscr/2019/09/Asentam...) and tell them not to use certain tools because they might not be ecological.
I'm not discarding your concern though, I understand its impact is not known, I just wanted to say it likely won't be a factor in the decision-making of those that use this tech.
When people are struggling, they use whatever they can to survive. They'll burn wood indoors, and strip the wooded areas of all trees, use up as much groundwater through wells as possible, and so on...
Get rid of the do-or-die hard scrabble for survival and people can start being better stewards. It's the largely invisible, widespread, and long term effects, like leaded gas and co2 impacts on climate that require nation state intervention through science based policy.
For highly empowering things like this, the upshot is likely that even though the tech is not likely to be as clean and efficient as we'd want, it will enable individuals and communities to thrive and better their lives to the point that they can start affording long term ecological preservation.
The correlation I see is the longer civilization has been in some place, the more arid that place becomes.
Applies to Africa, Middle East, Brazil, and so on.