Student Blogs | Water and Environmental Justice in India
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Coca-Cola in India. Artwork by Carlos Latuff for the |
Moderator’s Note: Here is the first in a
series of blog essays prepared by students in my environmental anthropology
undergraduate class at the University of Washington taught earlier this 2014-15
academic year. The first in this new series of student authored blogs focuses
on water and environmental justice with a specific concern for the impact of
the Coca-Cola Company on the “commodification” of thirst in India.
The
Indian subcontinent hosts some of Coca-Cola’s largest bottling and beverage
manufacturing operations in the world. The plants are notoriously wasteful and
consume more than 3 liters of water for each one liter of beverage produced.
Most of the liquid exploited is groundwater and the bottling operations have severely
impacted farmers and villages in the areas affected by the activities of the
transnational corporation.
However,
the authors of today’s blog note that the people have organized to successfully
fight against this unsustainable industry, resulting in multiple lawsuits and
the closure of several Coca-Cola plants.
This
essay was edited by Tatiana Kalani Young and Devon G. Peña.
Coca-Cola and the Commodification
of Thirst
INDIA
STRUGGLES AGAINST CORPORATE ABUSE & EXPLOITATION OF WATER RESOURCES
Zhicheng Liang and Kate Browning with Devon G. Peña | Seattle, WA | June 7, 2015
The Human Body consists of sixty percent water and that same
life-force covers at least seventy-one percent of the Earth’s surface (The USGS
Water Science School). Water is the essence of life. Yet, so many people in so
many countries are squandering this precious resource.
According to Merlin Hearn (2013) “fifty percent of worldwide
groundwater is unsuitable for drinking because of pollution…Only about .007% of
the water on Earth is accessible for human use”. Hearn continues that because
of this high level of polluted water reserves, there are over 250 million cases
of water-borne diseases each year, five to ten million of these result in
death. By 2025, according to the United Nations campaign, “Water for Life
Decade” by 2025, it is estimated that around 1.8 billion people, “will be
living…with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world’s population
could be living under water stressed conditions” (UN Water for Life Decade).
Who is responsible for these worsening conditions? How can
the world community of nations address the water crisis? Can we trust
corporations to change their policies to embrace water as a basic human and
environmental right?
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Artwork by Carlos Latuff | Courtesy of killercoke.org |
While, certainly every individual can play a part in conserving
water and following appropriate waste management, it is important that large
corporations, such as Coca-Cola and other transnational companies involved in
the privatization of water and sanitation delivery systems, also understand
their role and respect the environment in organizing production.
In northern India, a Coca-Cola bottling plant has been shut
down for using too much water, while also releasing damaging waste into the
ground water supply, considerably contributing to the water scarcity level in
the nation. It is important that situations like the Coca-Cola case in India are
brought to light, because the matter of depleted water resources is already
affecting billions worldwide and climate change will only make things worse.
Coke
drinks up India
In 1999, the Coca-Cola Company opened a bottling plant in
Mehdiganj, India, a village in the state of Uttar Pradesh near the city of
Varanas. Since its opening, evidence, compiled by various research groups,
including the Central Ground Water Board collaborating with the India Resource
Center, shows that the plant’s operations have caused significant pollution of
the groundwater and region’s soil and resulted in the over-exploitation of the local
water reserves (see graph below).
According to the Central Ground Water Board’s research, in
1993, just six years before the plant opened, the ground water level in
Mehdiganj was at around 13 meters below ground level. By 1999, the year the
plant opened, it had plummeted to just over 4 meters below ground level (India
Resource Center 2014). The study showed that almost immediately after
operations began, “wells in the villages started to run dry, water hand pumps
stopped working and ponds in the area also dried up,” (IRC 2014). The Coca-Cola
plant has been known to extract, “nearly a million liters of water on a single
day,” through mining practices (IRC 2014).
Mehdiganj is a rural area, populated mainly by farmers who follow
relatively sustainable subsistence practices. The region’s greatest source of
income, aside from the jobs at plants like the Coca-Cola facility, is largely
dependent on smallholder farming. Severe exhaustion of the water resources by
the plant means significant hardship for the farming communities and less
income for the hard working families since, without sufficient water
originating in springs fed by the aquifer, it is very difficult to maintain the
growth of crops.
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Coca-Cola Bottling Plant in Mehdiganj. Image Credit: Hummingbird Project | India Resource Center |
The damage caused by the Coca-Cola plant to the Mehdiganj farmers
is not solely due to the depletion of the water table. The plant also releases
an exorbitant amount of wastewater into the region’s streams and watershed,
raising pollution levels and affecting public health. In one month, the plant
can create up to 15 million liters of wastewater. That wastewater, riddled with
various chemicals, is “directed into a drainage which feeds directly into the
river Ganges, a river considered sacred by Hindus,” (IRC 2014).
According to the Central Pollution Control Board of India,
extreme levels of cadmium, chromium and lead were found in samples of the wastewater
released from the Mehdiganj plant (as cited in St.
Joseph’s University Students for Workers’ Rights 2006 ).
Furthermore, Coca-Cola had been ‘donating’ its solid waste, which
is extremely toxic in nature, to farmers for use as fertilizer, continuing the
spread of its pollution directly into soils, plants, and animals as well as
farmers and their families.
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Coca-Cola’s Broken Rainwater Harvesting in Mehdiganj Image Credit: Lok Samiti |
Finally, after 15 years of causing damage to the bioregion,
Indian Authorities recently forced Coca-Cola to shit down the plant. Cases
similar to this are happening right throughout the world. Transnational
corporations, Coca-Cola, are causing pollution and depleting precious water resources.
Coke
and the bitter taste of imperialism
Coca-Cola is just one of many corporations over-exploiting
and polluting water supplies in the Global South, but it is one of the most
powerful ones. Hopefully, the company’s experience in India will result in a
shift in corporate social and environmental policies and then other
corporations will start listening to the people affected and respond with
sustainable and socially just alternatives. Don’t hold that rum, waiting for this to
happen!
Coca-Cola is arguably one of the most influential
corporations in the world and certainly is one of the most profitable, earning
almost $5 billion in profits in one year alone (St. Joseph’s University Students
for Workers’ Rights 2006). The Coke brand is a widely known global product and
its history is tied directly to colonial exploits and militarism in Latin
America and other countries where it has carved out “Coke Republics” so it
should not shock people to learn of the corporation’s egregious misconduct
concerning environmental practices.
The association between Coca-Cola and imperialism is so
evident to people in the Global South that critics have even coined a term for
the phenomenon – Cocacolonization
or alternatively coca-colonization – which is a pattern involving U.S.-led
military interventions followed by explosive growth in the marketing and sales
of Coke and other Western products, most of which are laden with high fructose
corn syrup, sugar and empty calories.
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Weapons of Mass Destruction. Chaz Maviyane-Davies |
Right now, the availability of healthy water throughout the
world is dwindling and it is imperative that all corporations like Coca-Cola
make concerted efforts to rectify previous blunders and promote truly
environmentally safe operations. With so many people and animals relying on
fresh water resources, even the smallest pollution or the smallest abuse and
exploitation have deleterious and enduring effects.
The
Case of India
In India, Coca-Cola’s excessive extraction of groundwater has
contributed to serious water shortages. In the village of Mehdiganj, the wells
went dry and the hand water pumps stopped working. The water shortage is
undermining the self-sufficiency of the subsistence producers and endangering
pubic health by compromising routine hygiene practices.
Coca-Cola’s unsustainable and inefficient mining of groundwater,
its indifference to local needs and planning for conservation of the water
resources of the bioregion, and poorly-managed and underfunded Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR) projects in India are compelling evidence that Coca-Cola,
as one of the world’s largest beverage companies, is destroying India’s
environment and harming its people.
1. Unsustainable mining methods
Coca-Cola’s unsustainable and excessive mining of
groundwater has directly led to severe water shortages in more than 50 villages
in India. This further limits access to uncontaminated water resources to the
native population. Until recently, its plants had been using many local bore
wells of depths above 100m, extracting 1.5 million liters of groundwater every
day and consuming 9 liters of those millions in clean water to manufacture just
one liter of Coke.
The groundwater aquifers and wells are drying out wherever
the company operates. This is an act of environmental violence since about more
than half of the Indian population still relies on wells for drinking,
domestic, and irrigating water supplies. The residents of Mehdiganj had already
been suffering from the dry climate for a long time due to late and less ‘wet’ monsoon
seasons. Coca-Cola has accelerated the effects of what is presumably a shift
related to climate change.
The figure above depicts fluctuating groundwater levels in
Mehdiganj before and after Coca-Cola began operations in 1999, and as confirmed
by government and independent organizations. Before 1999, farmers were aware of
the limits imposed by geological and climate conditions in Mehdiganj and so
were striving for more sustainable water usage.
However, ground water levels dropped immediately after Coca-Cola
built the plant and started operations. The water table has declined between 25
and 40 feet in the last four years (IRC 2014). The Coca-Cola plant is the largest
user of groundwater in the area to manufacture a product that in effect
transports the local water (in the form of bottled products) away from the
local areas for profits fed into transnational coffers.
There is also a crucial difference in the uses of
groundwater by Coca-Cola and the farmers. Farmers use groundwater locally and their
agroecological and farming practices return the water back to the local
aquifers through natural seepage and infiltration as well as direct return of
tail water to streams. Until recently, the plant had been using two bore wells
at depths of 103 and 137 meters respectively, extracting 290 cubic meters/month
of water during peak season during the summer season (Agarwal and Pandey 2013)
2. Inefficient water usage in beverage manufacturing
Coca-Cola not only extracts too much groundwater but also
uses water unsustainably in its production processes. As we came to understand
it, the company relies on vast supplies of groundwater since takes three liters
of water to make one liter of Coca-Cola. Ironically, most of the water is used
not for making beverage but washing the bottles and machines. Of the 2.5 million
liters of groundwater the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Nemam, Tamil Nadu extracts
each day, more than 70 percent is used for washing bottles, equipment and
floors. (Stalker n.d.)
Governmental and non-governmental organizations could not predict
the consequences at the time these plants were first proposed. In Plachimada,
where the largest Coca-Cola plant in India has operated since 2000, the Kerala
State Pollution Control Board granted the Coca-Cola Co. a permit to produce
561,000 liters of beverage per day through an average requirement of 3.8 liters
of water for each liter of beverage. This means about 2 million liters of water
are extracted per day (Mathews 2011). After six months, local residents
complained that their wells had gone almost dry and the available groundwater had
been contaminated.
3. Food security and poor hygienic practice
The water shortages forced villagers to walk miles to access
drinking water while Coca-Cola can access water anytime through pipelines. Local
residents’ hygienic practices are also affected due to the contamination
resulting from Coca-Cola’s excessive water extraction and contamination alike.
In July 2010, the United Nations
passed a resolution declaring the “Right to Water” as a fundamental human right
with India as one of its signatories. The resolution “affirms that the human
right to safe drinking water and sanitation is derived from the right to an
adequate standard of living and inextricably related to the right to the
highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, as well as the right
to life and human dignity.”(UN as quoted in Agarwal and Pandey; also see UN
2014)
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Protest in Mehdiganj to Shut Down Coca-Cola Image Credit: India Resource Center |
4. First victory against Coca-Cola in India
The first victory against Coca-Cola in India happened in
December 2003 in Plachimada where the single largest Coca Cola bottling plant
was built. Around 80 percent of the villagers make their livelihoods in
agriculture (Mathews 2011). The plant
started operations in 2000.
Suffering from the water shortages and other environmental
and social problems, on April 22, 2002, the Coca-Cola
Virudha Janakeeya Samara Samithy (trans.:
Anti-Coca-Cola Peoples’ Struggle Committee) launched its protest against the
plant, with over 1500 people participating to demand the immediate shutdown of
the plant (Davis).
Coca-Cola was blamed for using more wells than permitted
under the terms of the license. As a consequence, the groundwater level dropped
from 45 to 100m below the surface. The company was also charged with
unauthorized and excessive discharging of polluted waste back into the ground
and surface water supplies. After a year of investigations by local government
and NGOs, the local government cancelled Coca-Cola’s license to operate in
April 2003.
International attention placed pressure on Coca-Cola and
affected this battle as well. However, the protesting did not end as the local
farmers and other concerned residents continued to demand that the government
not renew the license. Coca-Cola spent 3 years appealing to the Indian Supreme
Court, but the Plachimada bottling plant has remained shuttered since 2004.
5. Coca-Cola’s CSR not functioning well
The Coca-Cola Company wants to regard the “India problem” as
a public relations issue rather than a case of environmental injustice.
Therefore Coca-Cola decided to work more on its Corporate Social Responsibility
(CSR) program in India to transform the negative perception the public has of
the corporation in India. However, the solutions are rarely functioning well,
and not even as ‘green-washing’.
Coca-Cola claims that its corporate water efficiency initiatives
reduced water waste by 4 percent, whereas the production of water waste in
Indian averages 40 percent. Seen in this light, the 4 percent does not seem
like much of an achievement.
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Weapons of Mass Destruction. Chaz Maviyane-Davies |
In its CSR reports, Coca-Cola highlights how the company has
built rainwater harvesting structures in India as part of a strategy to
recharge the groundwater aquifers. This is a bit ironic since we have
previously reported on the ancient history of such water harvesting
technologies as native innovations by Indian farmers (see our blog post of October
23, 2014). However, most of these rainwater harvesting structures are not
maintained very well and some were installed on government buildings more than
20 km away from the affected villages. There is no evidence cited by Coca-Cola demonstrating
that these structures have been effective in recharging ground water at all.
In fact, this is not a public relations problem but an
environmental justice problem that requires Coca-Cola to take moral and social
responsibility for the environment and people in India.
Recent news that Indian officials banned Coca-Cola’s plant
in northern areas is a big victory for environmental justice. In an article
appearing in The
Guardian in June 2014, a local government secretary, J.S. Yadav,
explained, “they have also been asked to take suitable measures to recharge
ground water level by twice the amount they have extracted.” Coca-Cola appealed
to India’s environment court, the National Green Tribunal. An interesting aspect
is that Coca-Cola faced only a $2000 fine over the land issue. The legal
penalty, given the severe consequences in terms of environmental and social
issues, remains controversial and critics charge that the lack of severity of
punishment will do little to prevent Coca-Cola and other corporations from threatening
and harming water resources and farming villagers in India again.
This suggest that the struggle for environmental justice and
water in India, like much of the rest of the Global South, requires that
citizens and civil society organizations must work diligently to challenge the
neoliberal policies that are followed by governmental organizations charged
with protecting water, farmers, and public health.
Works
Cited and Consulted
Agarwal, Surabhi and Sandeep Pandey. 2013. Water for People
or Profit? – Coca-Cola Sucks India Dry. The
Hummingbird Project. Web 7 June 2015.
Hearn, Merlin. 2006.
20 Water Pollution Facts For the United States and Throughout the World.
Water Benefits Health, 2013. Web. 21
Oct. 2014. http://www.waterbenefitshealth.com/water-pollution-facts.html.
Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Pct. Ltd. n.d. Water
Stewardship. Web. 7 June 2015. https://www.hindustancoca-cola.com/water_stewardship.aspx.
“How Much Water Is There On, In, and above the Earth?” USGS
Water Science School. 19 Mar. 2014. Web. 21 Oct. 2014. http://water.usgs.gov/edu/earthhowmuch.html.
“Indian Officials Order Coca-Cola Plant to Close for Using
Too Much Water.” The Guardian /
Environment. 18 June 2014. Web. 21 Oct. 2014. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/18/indian-officals-coca-cola-plant-water-mehdiganj.
Mathews, Rohan D. 2011. Dossier: The Plachimada Struggle
against Coca Cola in Southern India. Intercultural
Resources/Ritmo. Web 23 Oct. 2014. http://www.ritimo.org/article884.html.
Pepsico
India Holdings Pvt. Ltd vs State Of Kerala. 2006. Indian
Kanoon, Published 22 Sept. 2006. Web. 21 Oct. 2014. http://indiankanoon.org/doc/660425/.
Saint Joseph’s University Students for Workers’ Rights.
2006. Information Packet: Evidence of the
Coca Cola Company's Human Rights Abuses and Environmental Violations. A Campus
Campaign. Web. 21 Oct. 2014. http://org.ntnu.no/attac/dokumentene/cocacola/cokeinfopacket.pdf.
.
Stalker, Victoria.
n.d. Coca Cola and Water. Water Resources
Blog. Web 20 Oct. 2014. http://sgu05vls.wordpress.com/essay-1-coca-cola/.
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs
(UNDESA). 2006. Water Scarcity - International Decade for Action ‘Water for
Life’ 2005 - 2015. UN News Center. Web. 19 Oct. 2014. http://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/scarcity.shtml.
United Nations. 2014. The human right to water and
sanitation. International Decade for
Action ‘Water for Life’. Web 7 June 2015. http://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/human_right_to_water.shtml.
United States Geological Survey. 2014. “The Water in You.”
Water Properties: (Water Science for Schools). USGS Water Science School, 17
Mar. 2014. Web. 21 Oct. 2014. http://water.usgs.gov/edu/propertyyou.html.
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