<incom> FW: A Drop In The Bucket

[Michael Gurstein]

-----Original Message-----
From: moderator at PORTSIDE.ORG [mailto:moderator at PORTSIDE.ORG] 
Sent: March 22, 2007 5:17 PM
To: PORTSIDE at LISTS.PORTSIDE.ORG
Subject: A Drop In The Bucket


A Drop In The Bucket  

By Scott Klinger  

March 22, 2007, CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0322-30.htm

Today is World Water Day, an annual observance established by the United
Nations to draw attention to the world's growing water crisis. Currently
1.2 billion citizens of the planet lack access to safe water for
drinking, cooking and bathing. By 2025, the United Nations estimates
this number could swell to more than five billion unless we change the
rules by which water is distributed.

The unquenched thirst of corporations for water is one of the reasons
for the water crisis. Agriculture, much of it fueled by profit-driven,
industrialized food systems around the world, uses about 70% of the
world's available water. Industry uses another 20%, leaving just 10% for
people and their communities. As corporations have claimed a growing
share of water in recent decades, the water remaining available to
people has rapidly diminished.

And yet this World Water Day, a growing number of
corporations, including Coke, Nestlé and Starbucks ask us to believe
that they offer the solution to the world's water woes, in a public
relations effort that seeks to draw attention away from corporation's
role in helping to create the problem.

Coke, Nestlé and Starbucks are each part of the new water-
industrial-complex, buying water cheaply, then bottling it and selling
it as a high profit-margin consumer product. Bottled water is the
fastest growing - and one of the most profitable
- segments of the beverage market.

Coke has undertaken a public relations campaign that boasts of the $35
million it will spend this year on water development projects around the
world. That sounds like a lot of money, until you consider that Coke
spends more than $1.7 billion a year on advertising.

Coke's $35 million on water development translates into 2.9 cents this
year for each of the 1.2 billion people who lack water. By contrast,
Coke spent 26.8 cents last year on advertising for every man, woman and
child on earth. Coke paid its CEO Neville Isdell $32.3 million in
compensation last year, almost as much as it will spend to solve the
world's water problems this year.

Nestlé has responded to critics of its water practices with the
argument that the corporation doesn't really use that much. In reality,
Nestlé is the world's leading bottler of water, using 1.86 liters of
water for each 1 liter bottle it sells. This extra .86 liters of
wastage, multiplied by the 22 billion liters of water that Nestlé
bottles annually, would provide enough water to meet the annual needs of
more than one million desperately thirsty people around the world.

Starbucks has undertaken an aggressive advertising campaign promoting
the $10 million it expects to donate to water development projects over
five years. This will be funded by a nickel for each $1.80 bottle of
Ethos water it sells at its stores. But when we do the math, it turns
out that Starbucks' seemingly generous gift amounts to 58 cents per day
for each of Starbuck's 9,446 U.S. stores.

Corporate philanthropy does help a few people gain access to water, but
it also creates the false sense that corporation's are solving the
world's water problems. This is far from the truth. The water
acquisition practices of bottled water corporations like Coke and
Nestlé, and an unslakeable thirst for profits by firms like Starbucks,
not only don't solve the world's water crisis, they make it worse.

Village residents in India have repeatedly said 'no' when Coke has
drilled wells for bottling plants. Likewise, citizens of Michigan,
California, Florida, Pennsylvania and Maine have said 'no' to Nestlé's
plans to capture their community's water in bottles and send it hundreds
of miles away to be sold at a profit. When water privatizing
corporations don't listen and instead put corporate profits ahead of
human health, long-term water security for people and their communities
is jeopardized.

With water, as with most things, there's a yawning difference between
charity and justice. This World Water Day, let's not buy the corporate
hype and instead stick to the truth that has guided humanity for
millennia: Water is a gift to be shared by all, not a commodity to be
packaged, traded and sold, with profits streaming to the bottom line.

[Scott Klinger(sklinger at stopcorporateabuse.org) is the Research Director
for Corporate Accountability International-formerly Infact-a nonpartisan
membership organization that protects people by waging and winning
campaigns challenging irresponsible and dangerous corporate actions
around the world. For more information visit
www.stopcorporateabuse.org.]

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