Coca-Cola:
Sucking Communities Dry
By Joe Zacune
04 April, 2006
Countercurrents.org
Coca-Cola is one of the most
recognizable brands in the world. The company claims to adhere to the
“highest ethical standards” and to be “an outstanding
corporate citizen in every community we serve”. Yet Coca-Cola’s
activities around the world tell a different story. Coca-Cola has been
accused of dehydrating communities in its pursuit of water resources
to feed its own plants, drying up farmers’ wells and destroying
local agriculture. The company has also violated workers’ rights
in countries such as Colombia, Turkey, Guatemala and Russia. Only through
its multi-million dollar marketing campaigns can Coca-Cola sustain the
clean image it craves.
The company admits that
without water it would have no business at all. Coca-Cola’s operations
rely on access to vast supplies of water, as it takes almost three litres
of water to make one litre of Coca-Cola. In order to satisfy this need,
Coca-Cola is increasingly taking over control of aquifers in communities
around the world. These vast subterranean chambers hold water resources
collected over many hundreds of years. As such they the represent the
heritage of entire communities.
Coca-Cola’s operations
have particularly been blamed for exacerbating water shortages in regions
that suffer from a lack of water resources and rainfall. Nowhere has
this been better documented than in India, where there are now community
campaigns against the company in several states. New research carried
out by War on Want in the Indian states of Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh
affirms the findings from Kerala and Maharastra that Coca-Cola’s
activities are having a serious negative impact on farmers and local
communities.
Coca-Cola established a bottling
plant in the village of Kaladera in Rajasthan at the end of 1999. Rajasthan
is well known as a desert state, and Kaladera is a small, impoverished
village characterised by semi-arid conditions. Farmers rely on access
to groundwater for the cultivation of their crops, but since Coca-Cola’s
arrival they have been confronted with a serious decline in water levels.
Locals are increasingly unable to irrigate their lands and sustain their
crops, putting whole families at risk of losing their livelihoods.
Local villagers testify that
Coca-Cola’s arrival exacerbated an already precarious situation.
Official documents from the Government’s water ministry show that
water levels remained stable from 1995 until 2000, when the Coca-Cola
plant became operational. Water levels then dropped by almost 10 metres
over the following five years. Locals now fear that Kaladera could become
a ‘dark zone’, the term used to describe areas that are
abandoned due to depleted water resources.
Other communities in India
that live and work around Coca-Cola’s bottling plants are experiencing
severe water shortages as well as environmental damage. Local villagers
near the holy city of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh complain that the company’s
over-exploitation of water resources has taken a heavy toll on their
harvests and led to the drying up of wells. As in Rajasthan and Kerala,
villagers have been holding protests against the local Coca-Cola plant
for its appropriation of valuable water resources.
In the now infamous case
of Plachimada in the southern state of Kerala, Coca-Cola’s plant
was forced to close down in March 2004 after the village council refused
to renew the company’s licence, on the grounds that it had over-used
and contaminated local water resources. Four months earlier, the Kerala
High Court had ruled that Coca-Cola's heavy extraction from the common
groundwater resource was illegal, and ordered it to seek alternative
sources for its production.
In 2003 the independent Centre
for Science and Environment (CSE) tested Coca-Cola beverages and found
levels of pesticides around 30 times higher than European Union standards.
Levels of DDT, which is banned in agriculture in India, were nine times
higher than the EU limit. In February 2004 Indian MPs who investigated
CSE’s studies upheld these findings and the Parliament went on
to ban Coca-Cola from its cafeterias.
War on Want’s ‘alternative
report’ also details how Coca-Cola is having a devastating impact
of water resources elsewhere. In El Salvador, the company has been accused
of exhausting water resources over a 25-year period. In Chiapas, Coca-Cola
is positioning itself to take control of the water resources. The Mexican
government under Vicente Fox – himself a former President of Coca-Cola
Mexico – has given the company concessions to exploit community
water resources.
Coca-Cola’s own workers
have also suffered and the company is being increasingly associated
with anti-union activities. The most notable case is in Colombia where
paramilitaries have killed eight Coca-Cola workers since 1990. The main
Coca-Cola trade union Sinaltrainal is seeking to hold Coca-Cola liable
for using paramilitaries to engage in anti-union violence.
Coca-Cola is being sued on
behalf of transport workers and their families for its part in the alleged
intimidation and torture of trade unionists and their families by special
branch police in Turkey. In Nicaragua, workers of the main Coca-Cola
union SUTEC have been denied the right to organise and the General Secretary
of SUTEC, Daniel Reyes believes that the objective of this ongoing and
escalating campaign is to crush the union.
Guatemalan workers have been
struggling against Coca-Cola since the 1970s. In the years between 1976
and 1985, three general secretaries of the main union were assassinated
and members of their families, friends and legal advisers were threatened,
arrested, kidnapped, shot, tortured and forced into exile. The violations
of workers’ rights continue and Coca-Cola workers and their family
members with ties to unions have reportedly been subjected to death
threats. Elsewhere in countries such as Peru, Russia and Chile, Coca-Cola
workers have been protesting against the company’s anti-union
policies.
Coca-Cola claims to exist “to benefit and refresh everyone it
touches” and to try to sustain this positive image, the company
spends $2 billion a year on advertising alone. Yet there are signs that
the image is beginning to crumble. The relay carrying the Olympic flame
was repeatedly disrupted by protests at Coca-Cola’s role as the
principal sponsor, with the Turin council actually declaring the city
a no-go zone for the company (a decision subsequently overruled by the
mayor).
University campuses throughout
the USA and Europe have now voted to cancel contracts with Coca-Cola
in protest at its operations, and in solidarity with the community resistance
which has escalated in many countries across the world. It is up to
us to keep up the pressure on Coca-Cola and also send a strong message
to our elected leaders to rein in irresponsible business practises.
For more information and
to join War on Want's campaign to rein in global corporations go to:
www.waronwant.org/challengecorporates
or to order a printed copy of the report, e-mail [email protected]