Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Company Must Follow Recommendations of Company Funded Study: Shut Down Kala Dera Bottling Plant
By Amit Srivastava India Resource Center September 12, 2008
San Francisco: It is said that those who don't learn from the mistakes of the past are destined to repeat them. It seems that the Coca-Cola has not learnt any lessons from Plachimada - a village in the state of Kerala in India where the community-led campaign has shut down its plant since March 2004. The manner is which the Coca-Cola company has decided to deal with another community-led campaign in India - in the village of Kala Dera in the state of Rajasthan - is indicative of the arrogance and impunity of the company that has landed it in trouble before. And Coca-Cola in India is in for a rude awakening, again.
The community of Kala Dera, as well as the villages of Plachimada and Mehdiganj in India that are opposing Coca-Cola bottling plants, have enjoyed significant international support. And most notable in lending support have been college and university students across the globe, and in particular, the US, UK and Canada - some of Coca-Cola's larger markets. One of the successful campaigns was at the prestigious University of Michigan in the US, which, after a sustained student-led campaign in which the India Resource Center represented the India issues, placed the Coca-Cola company on probationon January 1, 2006. The university also mandated that Coca-Cola agree to an independent assessment of its operations in India if it ever wanted to do business with the university. The assessment, paid for by Coca-Cola and conducted by the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), only looked at six bottling plants in India and was released in January 2008. The assessment was a scathing indictment of Coca-Cola's operations in India. Validating the concerns of the communities campaigning against Coca-Cola, the assessment noted that Coca-Cola approached its operations in India from a "business continuity" perspective that ignored the impacts on the community.
1.
The community in Kala Dera, needless to say, welcomed the recommendations. Unfortunately, they still wait for Coca-Cola to make good on the recommendations made by the assessment that Coca-Cola itself paid for.
At the very least, the Coca-Cola company could have stopped extraction of water this summer, knowing very well the conclusions of the assessment. With facts in hand, the Coca-Cola company has chosen to continue its operations, knowingly contributing to the misery of thousands of people. On the one hand, CocaCola talks a good talk about being a good corporate citizen. Yet, it continues to deplete groundwater causing undue hardships to the community even after it has been told to stop doing so, that too by a study funded by the company itself.
Prior to locating a bottling Groundwater plant in Kala Dera, Coca-Cola is supposed to have conducted an Environmental Impact Assessment that looks at a variety of current conditions and potential impacts if the plant is built and operated. The Coca-Cola company has refused to share the environmental impact assessment it conducted for Kala Dera (or any other plants in India), citing "legal and strategic confidentiality" reasons. However, the Central Ground Water Board of India had already assessed the groundwater in and around Kala Dera to be "overexploited" in 1998. The Coca-Cola company started operations in 2000 - two years after the Indian government agency had already found it to be "overexploited". Did the Coca-Cola company know that the groundwater was overexploited and still built and operated its plant? If the company knew that the Kala Dera groundwater area was overexploited, then starting a water intensive plant borders on criminal negligence, if not criminal negligence itself. And how could the company, which describes itself as a "hydration" company, not know that the Central Ground Water Board of India had already assessed the groundwater as overexploited?
Misrepresenting Facts
In reaching out to the media and the public regarding the scathing TERI assessment, the Coca-Cola company has misrepresented the facts on several occasions.
The Coca-Cola company says that it "voluntarily participated" in the assessment even though the University of Michigan insisted that Coca-Cola agree to an assessment if it wanted to do business with the University of Michigan. The company goes on further to state that "our voluntary participation in the TERI assessment reflects our commitment to transparency and continuous improvement." If Coca-Cola were committed to transparency, we would suggest they make a good start by sharing the Environmental Impact Assessment that they conducted for Kala Dera and rest of the bottling plants in India. And as for their commitment to "continuous improvement", Coca-Cola should start with implementing one of the four recommendations made by the assessment in regards to the Coca-Cola bottling plant at Kala Dera.
In Kala Dera, the company has announced that it has recharged five times the amount of water it has used. When asked to back it up with numbers, Coca-Cola does not Coca-Cola Sign - "Kala Dera - A Dream" Next to Dilapidated Rainwater Recharge Shafts provide any. In fact, in the letter to the University of Michigan, Coca-Cola states that they "will install measuring devices that will verify the amount of water recharged." If they do not have measuring devices installed to verify the amount of water recharged, how can they make a claim of recharging five times the water that they have extracted? People across Rajasthan are well versed in rainwater harvesting, and many communities have been harvesting rainwater long before Coca-Cola started. In fact, the Coca-Cola company started rainwater harvesting initiatives in India as a response to the growing campaigns against its water mismanagement. The community in Kala Dera has long maintained that Coca-Cola's rainwater harvesting structures do not work. Even the TERI assessment, which looked at Coca-Cola's CSR initiatives in Kala Dera, notes that "all the recharge shafts that were randomly visited were found to be in dilapidated conditions." "Coca-Cola is bluffing people with its rainwater harvesting. The problem is that the rainfall in the area is too low, and the amount of rainfalls fluctuates a lot from year to year and within every year. We get a maximum of 30 days of rains every year, and eighty percent of those rains come in just two or three days. Rainwater harvesting is simply not efficient," says Dr. M.S. Rathore, a prominent natural resource expert with the Institute for Development Studies in Jaipur whose work was also referenced by the assessment. Finding dilapidated water recharge shafts, an intermittent, low and unpredictable rainfall pattern, a prominent hydrologist from the area saying it won't work, and Coca-Cola not even having installed water recharge meters yet claiming that they have recharged five times the water they use - surely something is out of order. And it is based on their rainwater harvesting initiatives that the Coca-Cola company has announced that they will become water neutral in India by 2009- that they will recharge more water than they use from the groundwater resource. Thanks, but no thanks. Coca-Cola's rainwater harvesting systems are shoddy, their intentions even more suspect, and their claims preposterous. Indeed, if they are so confident about their rainwater harvesting initiatives, let them use just the rainwater to meet all their production needs in India. Coca-Cola must follow the recommendations made by the TERI assessment with regard to Kala Dera and immediately cease tapping any further into the groundwater resource. Until then, the community of Kala Dera and the International Campaign to Hold Coca-Cola Accountable will continue to increase the pressure on the Coca-Cola company. Amit Srivastava is the Director of India Resource Center, an international campaigning organization based in San Francisco, USA.