by Vandana Shiva

The Great Thirst*

In the maquiladoras of Mexico, drinking water is so scarce that babies and children drink Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Coca-Cola's products sell in 195 countries, generating a revenue of $16 billion. Water scarcity is clearly a source of corporate profits. In an annual report, Coca-Cola proclaims.

All of us in the Coca-Cola family wake up each morning knowing that every single one of the world's 5.6 billion people will get thirsty that day. If we make it impossible for these 5.6 billion people to escape Coca-Cola, then we assure our future success for many years to come. Doing anything else is not an option.

Companies like Coca-Cola are fully aware that water business. Coca-Cola has launched its international label Bon Aqua (Dasani is the American Version), and Pepsi has introduced Aquafina. In India, Coca-Cola's water line is called Kinly. In addition to Coca-Cola and Pepsi, there are several other well-known brands such as Perrier, Evian, Naya, Poland Spring, Clearly Canadian and Purely Alaskan.

In March 1999, in a study of 103 brands of bottled water the Natural Resources Defense Council found that bottled water was no more safe than tap water. A third of the brands contained arsenic and E. Coli and a fourth merely bottled tap water. In India, a study conducted by the Ahmedabad- based Consumer Education and Research Centre discovered that only three out the 13 known brands confirmed to all bottling specifications. None of the brands was free of bacteria, even though some claimed to be germ-free and 100 percent bacteria-free. Such false and misleading advertising has forced the Indian Government to amend its Prevention of Food Adulteration rules to include bottled water. It now differentiates between mineral water obtained from and packaged close to a natural source and treated drinking water.

The consequences of bottled water extend beyond price hikes and unsafe water. Environment waste is a major cost incurred by the bottling industry. In the 1970s, 300 million gallons of bottled water were sold in nonrenewable plastic water containers.

Global corporations are taking full advantage of the demand for clean water, a demand which has resulted from environmental pollution. Even though the corporations tap clean water resources in non-industrialized, unpolluted regions, they refer to their bottling practice as "manufacture" of water. Nestle has a plants in Samalka in Haryana. In 1000, Pepsi started its Aqafina bottling plant in Roha, Maharashtra, and is setting up new plants in Kosi, Bazpur, Kolkata and Bangalore. Coca-Cola bottles Kinley at its plants in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. The Indian packaged-water market is estimated at $104.4 million, with a growth of 50 to 70 percent per year. In other words, bottled water production is expected to double every two years. Between 1992 and 2000, sales had increased from 95 million liters to 932 million liters.

Total volume of soft drinks sold in India in 2001 was 412000 million liters. Each litre of soft drink requires 3-4 liters of water. Therefore the Cola companies are using nearly 30 billion liters of water per annum or approximately 80 million liters per day.

Coca Cola has 52 manufacturing locations in India, which PepsiCo has 30 plants. On an average each plant is mining 1 million litres of precious and scare ground water.

As quickly as the bottled water is expanding in India, so is the traditional practice of giving water to the thirsty disappearing. For thousands of years, water was offered as gift at piyaos, roadsides, temples and marketplaces. Earthen pots known as ghadas and surais cooled the water during the summer for the thirsty, who would drink form their cupped hands. These pots have been replaced by plastic bottles, and the gift economy has been supplanted by the water market. No longer do all people have a right to quench their thirst; this is a right held exclusively by the rich. Even the president of India laments this misfortune: "The elite guzzle bottles of aerated drinks while the poor have to make do with a handful of muddied water."

Women say “no” to Hydro-piracy in Kerala, India
In a little village of Plachimada, tribal women took on the soft drink giant – Coca Cola and are succeeding in their struggle to shutdown the plant. The Coca Plant in Plachimada was started in to produce Coke, Fanta, Sprite, Limca, Thumps Up, Kinley and Maaja within a year, the water table had started to fall, as 6 of bore wells extracted 1.5 million liters per day according to the local community.

Not only did the water table decline, the water was polluted. Women had to walk miles to get drinking water. They decided to end cokes’ hydro-piracy by starting a protest outside the gates of the plant. To celebrate a year of their resistance, the local movement invited Dr. Vandana Shiva for Earth Day 2003. In April the women’s protest will complete 2 years. Women saying "no" to Coke, and "yes" to "Water, The Only Real Thing" is an expression of our living democracy, a democracy for life a direct and vibrant democracy.

Since then, the movement has spread. The locally elected Panchayat has spearheaded a legal campaign. The local community related that the Panchayat has issued a conditional license for installing a motor for drawing water. However the company started to daily extract illegally lakhs of liters of clean water from more than 6 bore wells installed by it using electric pump in order to manufacture lakhs of liters of soft drink. The company is also pumping wastewater into dry bore wells within the company premises for disposing solid waste. Earlier it was depositing the waste material outside the company premises which during the rainy season spread into paddy fields, canals and wells, causing serious health hazards. As a result of this, 260 bore wells which were provided by public authorities for drinking water and agriculture facilities have become dry. Complaints are also being received from tribals and common people that storage of water and sources of water are being adversely affected by indiscriminate installation of bore wells for tapping ground water leading to serious consequences as regards cultivation in the area on which residents of the panchayat depend on their living – e.g. maintenance of traditional drinking water sources, preservation of ponds and water tanks, maintenance of waterways and canals and shortage of drinking water. When the Panchayat asked for details, the company failed to comply. The Panchayat therefore served a show cause notice and cancelled the license. Coca Cola tried to bribe the Panchayat President A Krishnan with Rs. 300 million, but he refused to be corrupted and coopted.

Members of Perumatty Grama Panchayat are: Girija Devi, Geetha Mohandas, Sheeba Radhakrishnan, Aruchamy K, Sivakam, Subbayyan, MK Arumugham, K Varathara, A Krishnan, President, K Parthan, Presitha Mohandas, M Shanmugham, G Ponnukkuttam, N Chellankutty, C Murughan.

The Perumatty Panchayat also filed a public interest litigation in the Kerala High Court against Coca Cola.

The courts support the women's demands. In an order given on 16th December 2003, Justice Balakrishnana Nair ordered Coca Cola to stop pirating Plachimada's water. As the Honorable Justice stated

“The Public Trust Doctrine primarily rests on the principle that certain resources like air, sea waters and the forests have such a great importance to the people as a whole that it would be wholly unjustified to make them a subject of private ownership. The said resources being a gift of nature, they should be made freely available to everyone irrespective of the status in life. The doctrine enjoins upon the government to protect the resources for the enjoyment of the general public rather than to permit their use for private ownership or commercial purpose………..

Our legal system – based on English common law – includes the public trust doctrine as part of its jurisprudence. The State is the trustee of all natural resources, which are by nature meant for public use and enjoyment. Public at large is the beneficiary of the seashore, running waters, airs, forests and ecologically fragile lands. The State as a trustee is under a legal duty to protect the natural resources. These resources meant for public use cannot be converted into private ownership.......

In view of the above authoritative statement of the Honourable Supreme court, it can be safely concluded that underground water belongs to the public. The State and its instrumentalities should act as trustees of this great wealth. The State has got a duty to protect ground water against excessive exploitation and the inaction of the State in this regard will tantamount to infringement of the right to life of the people guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution of India. The Apex Court has repeatedly held that the right to clean air and unpolluted water forms part of the right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution. So, even in the absence of any law governing ground water, I am of the view that the Panchayat and the State are bound to protect ground water from excessive exploitation. In other words, I am of the view that the Panchayat and the State are bound to protect ground water from excessive exploitation. In other words, the ground water, under the land of the 2nd respondent, does not belong to it.

Even assuming the experts opine that the present level of consumption by the 2nd respondent is harmless, the same should not be permitted for the following reasons:

The underground water belongs to the general public and the 2nd respondent has no right to claim a huge share of it and the Government have no power to allow a private party to extract such a huge quantity of ground water, which is a property, held by it in trust.

If the 2nd respondent is permitted to draw such a huge quantity of ground water, then similar claims of the other landowners will also have to be allowed. The same will result in drying up of the underground aqua-reservoirs.

Accordingly, the following directions are issued:

The 2nd respondent shall stop ground water for its use after one month from today.

The Panchayat and the State shall ensure that the 2nd respondent does not extract any ground water after the said time limit. This time is granted to enable the 2nd respondent to find out alternative sources of water.

Extracted from: K. Balakrishnan Nair, J. W.P.(C) No. 34292 of 2003-G, Judgment

The court judgment is a vindication of the women’s movement against Coke.

From 21st to 23rd January, a World Water Conference was organized in Plachimada to celebrate the legal victory and continue the solidarity for the struggle till the Plachimada Plant is closed.

Plachimada Declaration

Water is the basis of life; it is the gift of nature; it belongs to all living beings on earth.

Water is not a private property. It is a common resource for the sustenance of all.

Water is the fundamental right of man. It has to be conserved. Protected and managed. It is our fundamental obligation to prevent water scarcity and pollution and to preserve it for generations.

Water is not a commodity. We should resist all criminal attempts to marketwise, privatize and corporatise water. Only through these means we can ensure the fundamental and inalienable right to water for the people all over the world.

The Water Policy should be formulated on the basis of this outlook.

The right to conserve, use and manage water is fully vested with the local community. This is the very basis of water democracy. Any attempt to reduce or deny this right is a crime.

The production and marketing of the poisonous products of the Coca Cola, Pepsi Cola corporates lead to total destruction and pollution and it also endangers the very existence of local communities.

The resistance that has come up in Planchimada, Pududdery and in various parts of the world is the symbol of our valiant struggle against the devilish corporate gangs who pirate of our water.

We, who are in the battlefield in full solidarity with the Adivasis who have put up resistance against the tortures of the horrid commercial forces in Plachimada, exhort the people all over the world to boycott the products of Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola.

Coca Cola – Pepsi Cola “Quit India”
The Plachimada conference was chaired by eminent litterateur Sukumar Azhikode and attended by more than 2000 people. The participants also took part in a dharna in front of the Coke Plant which was led by Vandana Shiva of India, Jose Bove of France and Maude Barlow of Canada.

On 4th Feb, the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Soft Drinks upheld the call of the Plachimada movement to stop Coke from mining ground water. The Parliamentary Committee making reference to the Kerala High Court Judgment, said that Coke and Pepsi could not have unregulated access to ground water.

On 17th February 2004, the Kerala Chief Minister, under pressure of the growing movement and the aggravation of the crisis because of a drought, ordered closure of the Coke pant until June 15th.

Coke: Hazardous Even Without Pesticides
Pesticide residues found in the entire range of soft drinks has once again put focus on the Cola giants - Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola. However, while government labs in Kerala and Rajasthan are giving the Cola companies a clean bill of health because no pesticides were found, soft drinks are hazardous even without pesticides. These hazards are intrinsic to the production processes of Coke or Pepsi.

Firstly, the Cola companies mine water for their bottling plants, robbing the poor of their very fundamental right to drinking water.

Secondly, the bottling plants are a source of toxic waste which threatens the environment and public health.

Finally, the soft drinks themselves are a toxic brew known to be hazardous to health. For more than a year, tribal women in Plachimada in Palaghat district have been sitting in protest against Coca Cola because the company has drained their aquifers dry. Wells and tanks have dried up with the water table dropping from 10 ft. o 100 ft. As Virender Kumar of Mathrubhumi has written "People are bringing headloads of potable water from afar, while truck loads of soft drinks are leaving the Coke Plant."

The plant draws more than 1 million litres a day, forcing women to walk 5-6 kms to bring headloads of potable water. 8.5 truck loads leave the plant daily loaded with soft drinks. Each litre of coke wastes 9 litres of potable water (Virendra Kumar, Open letter to Chief Minister 10.8.03)

Agriculture yields have dropped to 1/10th in this rich Kerala ecosystem which nature has endowed with abundant water, but Coke has mined and robbed.

To add insult to injury, Coke distributed the toxic waste from its plant as free fertiliser to the villagers. Tests done on the waste showed that it contains extremely high levels of Cadmium and lead, which leads to cancer, kidney and liver disorders.

The local panchayat has withdrawn the license, but the Kerala government is protecting Coke, and in fact giving it Rs.2 million as aid as part of its industrial policy. Such subsidies have been provided by every government where a Coke or Pepsi Plant exists. For local communities, every bottling plant is a source of the double hazard of creating water scarcity and dumping toxic waste. Rural India is clearly a victim of the environmental and health costs of the soft drinks industry. But middle class urban India is also a victim because what Coke puts into the bottle is as toxic as what it leaves behind. The only difference is that village women of Plachimada are aware of the threat posed to their health and survival, but affluent urban India is totally unaware of the harm soft drinks are causing them. The Rs.6,247 crore spent annually by Indian consumers on soft drinks is spent on buying health hazards, not "fun" as the ads say.

Soft drinks have zero nutrition value compared to our indigenous drinks such as nimbu pani, lassi, panna, sattu. The soft drink giants have succeeded in making the youth of India ashamed of our indigenous food culture in spite of its nutrition and safety through their aggressive-advertising. They have monopolized the market for thirst, buying up indigenous companies like Parle and displacing indigenous cold drinks make at home or in the cottage industry. But what Coke and Pepsi sell is a toxic brew colours, with anti-nutritive values.

The nutrient-composition of soft drinks, per 12 ounce serving in comparison to orange juice and low fat milk.

Contents Coca Cola Pepsi Orange Juice Low-fat milk %
Calories 154 160 168 153
Sugar, g 40 40 40 18
Vit. A, IU 0 0 291 750
Vit C, mg 0 0 146 3
Folic acid, mg 0 0 164 18
Calcium, mg 0 0 33 450
Potassium, mg 0 0 711 352
Magnesium, mg 0 0 36 51
Phosphate, mg 54 55 60 353

Ref: Marion Nestle, Food Politics

The sugar in soft drinks is not natural sugar, sucrose but high fructose corn syrup. Plants for making corn syrup have started to be set up in India, and if strict regulations are not put in place, the Indian diet could go the way of the US diet, with high fructose corn syrup causing insulin resistance. Unlike sucrose, fructose does not go through some of the critical intermediary breakdown steps, but is shunted toward the liver, where it mimics insulins ability to cause the liver to release fatty acids into the bloodstream. Studies have found that fructose diets have 31% more triglycerides than sucrose diets. Fructose also lowers the rate of fatty acid oxidation, P.A. Mayes, a University of London scientist has concluded that,

Long term absorption of fructose causes enzyme adaptions that increase lipogenesis fat formation and VLDL (bad cholestrol) formation leading to triglyceridemea (too many triglycerides in the blood) decreased glucose tolerance, and hyper insulinemia (too much insulin in the blood).

Scientists at the University of California in Berkeley have also confirmed that overuse of fructose was skewing the American diet towards metabolic changes encouraging fat storage.

India cannot afford these high health costs of a fructose diet which also has other nutritional costs as side effects. When corn is used for high fructose syrup, the poor are denied a food staple. Already 30% corn is going for raw material for making industrial cattle feed and fructose, and is diverted from human food. In addition, the displacement of healthier sweeteners derived from sugar cane such as gur and khandsari robs farmers of incomes and livelihoods. The impact of the Colas on the food chain and economy is thus very large and does not stop with the bottle.

But what is within the bottle in any case is not fit for a healthy diet. Consumption of soft drinks is well known to contribute to tooth decay and adolescents who consume soft drinks display a risk of bone fractures 3 to 4 fold higher than those who do not drink soft drinks are becoming the greatest source of caffeine in children's diets, with each 12 ounce can of cola containing about 45 milligrams of caffeine.

And there are other ingredients in the toxic brew, an anti-freeze compound - ethylene glycol for lower freezing, phosphoric acid to give it a bite. People are consuming 4 kg of chemicals a year per person on the basis of 20.6 million tonnes of chemicals in the form of artificial colours, flavourings etc. (Prashant Bhushan "Soft drinks - A toxic - brew). It is therefore not just pesticides we should be concerned about, but the toxic brew our children are being made addicted to by the Cola giants. And while the corporations push toxics in the form of soft drinks they have manipulated the governments' Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) to deny Indian investors voting rights. When Coca Cola reentered India after being thrown out by George Fernandes in 1977, it could only have 51% voting rights under a clause which says "Under any circumstances the voting rights of HCCHC (Coca Cola's Holding Company) shall not exceed 51% in HCCBL ie, the Indian shareholders should get at least 49 per cent voting rights at all times." This clause was deleted recently giving Coca Cola imperial powers, to destroy the health of Indians and rob Indians of their democratic rights

Even in political terms, Coke is a toxic brew.

Water a Human Right
Water has found its way into international law at the most varied of places. The action plans of the major UN conferences of the 1990s (inter alia Cairo, Copenhagen, Beijing, Rome) and numerous declarations focus on the various aspects of the water. In most cases, however, it is a matter of so-called “soft law”. In contrast to agreements under international law, soft law is not binding on individual States.

In the framework of its United Nations activities, the international community is agreed that water is a human right. Yet to date, no binding agreement under international law includes express mention of the human right to water. Rather, it is derived from the right to food or the right to health for example, which are enshrined in various UN agreements (see below). Logically, at the first major UN Water Conference in 1977 in Mar del Plata, Argentina, the international community underscored the following: “All peoples […} have the right to have access to drinking water in quantities and of a quality equal to their basic needs.”

Extracted from: Why we need an international water convention, by Rosmarie Bar, Swiss Coalition of Development Organisations

We declare that

The formal recognition of the Right to Water is a major step towards the implementation of the right to life for all;

The effective implementation of the Right to Water for all is a necessary condition in the fight against poverty and its eradication;

The Right to Water for all (and not only for the half of those people who have not access to water) by 2015, is a realistic economic target. In 1977, UN (namely the UNDP) showed that access to water for all within a period of 15 years was economically feasible. It still is absolutely clear that the main obstacle to its implementation is not the absence or the inadequacy of financial resources, not of competencies of technology rather, what is lacking is a political will and all related economic and social policy choices.

Therefore we consider that

The exclusion of water, 55 years ago, form being explicitly mentioned as a human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, has hampered citizens’ ability to put effective pressure on governments to affirm it. To the contrary, it has contributed, in an international context increasingly influenced by neo-liberal market economy, to the success of those approaches and management choices at national level that consider water an economic good. Hence the growing process of water privatization and commodification.

It is urgent and necessary to recognize water and the ecosystems as a common public good and to manage to exclude them out from the category of “market goods and services”, not only with regard its domestic uses. Being also an essential and unsubstitutable element for other economic activities (agricultural, energetic, industrial) of fundamental importance for the right to life and living together, water must be considered as a public good under these circumstances as well.

Water and water services cannot be the subject of trade talks or of World Trade Organisation negotiations, but have to become the object of world rules and institutions that support and promote a use of water as a common good and a human right.

To this end, we re-state our adhesion to the following principles:

Water is a common public good belonging to humankind and all living species

The access to water is a human and social right, individual and collective right

Financing the costs for guaranteeing access to water for all by the quantity and quality required for life is the responsibility for the public authorities.

Extracted from: Rome Declaration of 10 December 2003 making the right to water a reality

Women’s water rights are human rights
The water crisis embodies a gender equality dimension that should not be underestimated. In developing countries, fetching water is the job of women and children. Women are the world’s water carriers. Walking for hours on foot, they carry home as much as 60 liters of water day after day for their family. Thus, a 65-year-old women in Brazil’s parched northeast has spend roughly a third of her life fetching water. Chronic health problems result from carrying this heavy load. After such an expenditure of energy and time, there is no place left for school and education and, by extension, for development and economic independence. Whereas women are fetchers of water, men are policy makers. It is the men who make up the water authorities and decide about pumps, the location of wells and the distribution of water. Water privatization is further exacerbating social discrimination against women.

Women are not only the world’s carriers of water; they are also its breadwinners. Water and food go together; this has always been so. Women produce more that half the world’s total food supply – 80 per cent in Africa. Their role as the ones responsible for the entire food chain contrasts starkly with their lack of rights when it comes to land acquisition and ownership as well as the provision of loans, seeds and technical assistance. Numerous action plans form UN conferences (e.g. Cairo, Beijing, Copenhagen, Rome) ascribe capital importance to the principle that “women’s rights are human rights”. Besides, gender equality is amongst the international community’s Millennium Goals.

Equal access for women to water and land are key factors in the fight against poverty and hunger. Equal rights for women means a secure nutritional base. An international water convention would give women of all countries a binding powerful instrument with which to enforce and demand fulfillment of their rights – even vis-à-vis their own (passive) government.

Extracted from: Why we need an international water convention, by Rosmarie Bar, Swiss Coalition of Development Organisations

Campaign Actions
Support the movement to declare water as a Human Right. Sign on to the Declaration

Support the movement for local community control on water use.

Support the Plachimada Declarations and boycott Coke.

Engage in shareholder action to stop Cokes Hydropiracy.

Promote water conservation and recycling to prevent ground water mining and ground water famine.
___________________________________________

* This was the theme of the World Water Conference organized in Plachimada from 21st – 23rd Jan 2004.

Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology
A- 60, Hauz Khas
New Delhi India 110016
Ph +91-11-26968077 and 26853772
Fax: +91-11-26856795
Email: rfste@vsnl.com, vshiva@vsnl.com