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Rediff.com  » Business » Stop MNCs from exploiting water, India urged

Stop MNCs from exploiting water, India urged

By George Iype in Plachimada
Last updated on: January 23, 2004 17:57 IST
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Leading global environmental activists say the biggest problem India faces in protecting its water resources is that it does not have effective laws to curb water exploitation by multinational companies and large corporates.

According to noted environmentalists and farmers' leaders attending the World Water Conference at Plachimada village in Kerala's Palakkad district, transnational companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi are taking away the natural resources like water.

"But sadly, countries like India do not have any laws to protect their most important natural resource: water," said Heidi Hautala, an environmentalist and former president of the Green Party in Sweden.

Hautala, whose paper on 'Food and Development' presented during the conference, called upon the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government to enact stringent laws to protect the country's water resources.

The Perumatty Panchayat, under which Plachimada village falls, is hosting the three-day conference, which is discussing the world's dwindling water resources.

The village has been embroiled in a legal dispute with the American soft-drink giant Coca-Cola over groundwater depletion.

The conference is being held in the backdrop of a nearly two-year-long struggle by the farmers and tribals against Coca-Cola plant, set up at Plachimada in1998.

They allege that the Coke plant situated on a 16-acre plot in the lush, green village has been guzzling groundwater, causing wells and farmland to dry up all across the villages.

Hautala said that the fight against mindless globalisation cannot be won without proper laws aimed at curbing exploitation of natural resources.

The Swedish environmentalist said that laws, which strictly enforce the protection of groundwater, are being implemented effectively in many European countries.

"India can make use of the expertise and support of developed countries for bringing in legislation to fight the exploitation of water," Hautala said.

Noted human rights activist Ward Morehouse from the United States lamented that the world is witnessing a tendency wherein the natural resources are being concentrated among a few transnational companies based in rich countries.

He said in 1960, the global wealth held by corporates was just 16 per cent. But it increased to 24 per cent in 1970 and 32 per cent in 1990.

Inger Schorling, a leading environmentalist from Sweden, said that the presence of pesticide residue in food and soft drinks should be made publishable by effective laws.

Though the European Union countries are preparing to enforce such laws, multinational companies, especially those based in the United States, have begun lobbying in the provisions of the proposed law.

Schorling said that such a law should be enacted in a country like India to prevent the use of pesticides beyond a certain level by global food and beverage giants.

She said a recent study had found that every European had 300 chemicals in the body due to consumption of soft drinks and other food items.

Activists like Schorling urged Coca-Cola to explain how toxic materials like cadmium and lead were detected in the sludge distributed by the company to the farmers in Plachimada.

Last year, BBC had come out with an investigative report, which said the sludge produced by the factory at Plachimada contained toxic chemicals that pollute the land, water supplies and food chain. The report said the sludge, which was supplied to local farmers who used it as fertiliser, contained 'dangerous levels of the known carcinogen cadmium.'

"Coca-Cola, in its annual report, had said that it would adhere to the highest environmental standards while manufacturing soft drinks. But that is not happening in India," Schorling said.
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George Iype in Plachimada
 

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