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New Delhi, India, Dec. 17 (IPS)— Green groups are jubilant over a potentially far-reaching court ruling this week, which said that the transnational beverage giant Coca-Cola may own the land on which one of its plants in southern Kerala state is sited —but not the water it holds.

The Kerala High Court ruled on Tuesday that the groundwater resources below Coca-Cola’s bottling plant at Plachimada village, home to tribal people, was in fact “property held in trust.’’

It directed the company find alternate sources of water for its plant within a month.

“This is an important ruling and may have a bearing on similar large-scale extraction and misuse of groundwater resources by industrial units in other parts of the country,’’ Gopal Krishna, coordinator for Toxic Links, a well-known non-government organization (NGO), told IPS.

But local groups were not satisfied with the court’s ruling, against which Coca-Cola said it would be filing an appeal.

Said C.R. Bijoy, who leads the National Front for Tribal Self-rule (NFTS): “The whole issue is reduced to how much water the Coke plant can extract from the ground right below the plant in order to ensure that the factory continues in operation.’’

Bijoy and the NFTS have been agitating, sometimes violently, for the closure of the Coca-Cola plant and compensation for local residents. They also want the restoration of the environment in and around the 16-hectare plot to the original state before bottling operations began in 2000.

“The issue is about criminal liability, ecological accountability, and the impact of the plant on health, economy, employment, and agriculture,’’ Bijoy said.

One way or another, the court ruling has charged up the atmosphere for the World Water Conference that is being held at Plachimada — it is being seen as an Indian version of Cochabamba in Bolivia, where local people struggled and succeeded in thwarting the commodification of their water resources.

For 605 days now, more than 1,000 households of tribal and ‘dalit’ (untouchable caste) people have been in agitating in front of the Coca-Cola plant’s premises, demanding compensation for depleting water resources and environmental degradation that they say has been caused by the company.

“This has a historic parallel to the Cochabamba water stir,’’ said M P Veerendrakumar, chief of Mathrubhumi, the popular Malayalam-language daily newspaper, current president of the Indian Newspaper Society and one of the main organizers of the three-day conference that starts on Jan. 21. According to Veerendrakumar, the Plachimada conference, timed to follow the World Social Forum in Mumbai from Jan. 16-21, would discuss issues related to water management such as the plan to link up India’s major rivers.

“This conference will redefine the poor people’s fight for water for survival in India and in the world,’’ said Vandana Shiva, the internationally known activist for sustainable development and leader of the People’s World Water Forum (PWWF). This was formed to counter the agenda of the World Water Forum (WWF).

Shiva charged the WWF with being “a brainchild of the World Water Council (WWC), a policy think tank run by the World Bank, IMF and regional banks such as the Asian Development Bank (AsDB) as well as the major water corporations, such as Vivendi, Suez and Bechtel.’’

“Water is a human right, and corporations have no business profiting from peoples’ need for water,’’ said Shiva, adding that governments are failing in their responsibilities to their citizens and nature by allowing the commodification of water.

According to Greenpeace, which is supporting the Plachimada agitation, the Coca-Cola plant is extracting more than 1.5 million liters of water everyday through a number of tubewells installed within its premises.

“Coca-Cola is drawing this water for free and making millions of dollars by converting it into soft drinks without paying anything to the villagers,’’ said Greenpeace activist Ameer Shahul.

Coca-Cola vice president Sunil Gupta has said that the plant extracts only 300,000 liters of water per day and that it had permission from the government to use up to half a million liters.

But Tuesday’s court order said the government had no right to allow a private company to extract large amounts of water out of the ground because this would encourage other landowners to mine water, resulting in the drying up of groundwater resources.

According to A Krishnan, president of the Perumatty ‘panchayat’ (elected village local body) on which the plant stands, it is difficult to verify the exact amount of water that is extracted by Coca-Cola.

But “we will not allow Coca-Cola to get away with this,’’ said Krishnan, who is busy sending out invitations for the water conference to people around the world on behalf of the Perumatty ‘panchayat’.

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Climate change leading to diseases: WHO

By Rahul Verma

New Delhi, India, Dec. 17— A new report by the World Health Organization (WHO) says climate change is adversely affecting the health of millions of people across the world, leading to the death of thousands, and fueling diseases like diarrhea and malaria.

The study released in Milan in Italy last week, estimates that in 2000, 150,000 deaths were caused because of climate change. It says climate change is responsible for 2.4 percent of all cases of diarrhea worldwide and for 2 per cent of all malaria cases in the world.

“There is growing evidence that changes in the global climate will have profound effects on the health and well-being of citizens in countries throughout the world,” says Kerstin Leitner, WHO assistant director-general for sustainable development and healthy environments.

“We must better understand the potential health effects particularly for those who are most vulnerable, so that we can better manage the risks,” says Leitner.

The report, released at the ninth session of the Conference of the Parties to The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Milan, examines the linkage between climatic changes, such as droughts, heavy rainfalls and extreme weather conditions, and the occurrence of infectious diseases.

According to the study, ‘Climate Change and Human Health: Risks and Responses’, rainfall can influence the spread of diseases, while temperature affects the growth and survival of an infectious agent.

The effect of climate change on the incidence of malaria in India has also been documented by scientists working on the issue in the south Asian nation. It is feared that in the coming years, because of climatic changes, malaria will spread to many parts of India where it is not yet prevalent.

“Our studies indicate that malaria will be prevalent through the year in 10 percent more states in India, including the southern states and Jammu and Kashmir in the north,” says Sumana Bhattacharya, expert consultant at the New Delhi-based NATCOM — or India’s Initial National Communication — a nongovernmental organization (NGO) set up by the Indian ministry of Environment and Forests.

The WHO study emphasizes that the link between malaria and extreme climatic events has for long been studied in India. “Early last century, the river-irrigated Punjab region experienced periodic malaria epidemics,” says the report.

“Excessive monsoon rainfall and high humidity was identified early on as a major influence, enhancing mosquito breeding and survival. Recent analyses have shown that the malaria epidemic risk increases around five-fold in the year after an El Nino event,” it says.

According to the study — authored by WHO in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Program, the World Meteorological Organization and the United States Environmental Protection Agency — even small temperature changes can increase the prevalence of malaria.

“Globally, temperature increases of 2-3 degrees Celsius would increase the number of people who, in climatic terms, are at risk of malaria by around 3-5 percent, that is several hundred million,” it says. The duration of malaria would also increase in areas where it is now endemic, the report says.

Bhattacharya, one of the five editors of the Book “Climate Change in India: Vulnerability, Assessment and Adaptation, stresses that scientists are concerned that climate change can lead to an increase in temperature-related infections or diseases, cardiovascular illnesses or vector-borne diseases such as malaria, filaria, dengue or kala-azar.

“Health is affected by extreme weather — such as cyclones, drought or heavy rain,” she says.

Food security is another issue that is negatively impacted by climate change. “Fall in food production can lead to hunger and malnutrition,” points out Bhattacharya.

The report urges governments to focus more on sustainability — maintaining that development does not adversely affect the Earth’s ecological and other systems. “If these systems decline, human population well-being and health will be jeopardized,” it says.

“Technology can buy time, but nature’s bottom-line accounting cannot be evaded. We must live within Earth’s limits,” it warns.

Source: OneWorld.net