Beverage Companies, the Human Right to Water, and Water Neutrality

Beverage Companies, the Human Right to Water, and Water Neutrality: "

Elizabeth Royte's blog Waste, Water, Whatever led me to this story by Rebecca Bowe,The Human Right to Water, that recently appeared in the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Bowe covered an event called the Second Annual Corporate Water Footprinting Conference, that was

...part of a corporate conference series called Action for Sustainable America, cost approximately $2,000 to attend. Unlike last year, when conference organizers denied press passes to both the Guardian and the San Francisco Chronicle, they opted to allow reporters in this time — perhaps as a show of goodwill after being publicly critiqued for a lack of transparency (see "Tap dreams," 12/10/08). The event was held at Le Meridien, a swank Financial District hotel, and was attended by businesspeople from a variety of high-profile companies.

Representatives from Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Nestle portrayed their respective corporations as model stewards of the environment, the opposite of the bad raps they've been branded with by social justice advocates, who complain that these corporate entities are responsible for exacerbating water shortages in drought-prone areas. Rather than profit-driven behemoths sapping communities of a critical resource, the spokespeople described their companies as environmentally-minded leaders acutely aware of the widespread lack of access to clean water and actively trying to hatch solutions to alleviate it.

Here is what the panel session on the human right to water covered:

• What is the human right to water?


• As it is not defined as one of the 32 internationally recognized human rights listed in UN Declaration on Human Rights does the corporate community need to specifically recognise this?


• What are practical applications and corporate implications of such a right?


• Is it possible for companies to include the human right to water within strategy and operations?


• Can a rights based approach to water management work – can this be aligned with corporate water strategy?


• What are the responsibility and ethical boundaries for the various water stakeholders (government, rights holders, corporates, utilities, communities) on the right to water?

Sounds good, right? Bowe continues:

Mark Schlosberg, California director of Food & Water Watch, made it clear that he views the human right to water through a very different lens than the other panelists. "The 'human right to water' is not a concept for corporations to implement," Schlosberg said, relaying what was perhaps an unpopular message to a tough crowd. "Just as free speech is not a concept for corporations to implement. The human right to water is a concept which says that nobody should be denied access to clean water for basic human needs. It's not a question of whether or not a corporation wants to adhere to that. It's the responsibility of governments to create laws, and of corporations to follow laws. I don't think that the basic human right to water ... is alienable, just like certain constitutional rights are also inalienable and can't be contracted away."

I get the sense that Mark Schlosberg's viewpoint was not one that was widely shared by the typical corporate attendee, but perhaps I am being cynical. I should note that not all the speakers were corporate types.

Here's more:

Dan Bena, director of sustainability, health, safety and environment for PepsiCo International, kicked off with a presentation about how an estimated 1.5 billion impoverished people living in developing countries worldwide lack access to safe drinking water. Showing images of African children swimming naked in a river, he stressed the frequently repeated statistic that once every 15 seconds, another child in the developing world perishes from waterborne illness.

To hear Bena tell it, PepsiCo is emerging as a corporate trailblazer in protecting people from such a fate. In addition to its conservation efforts, it has donated to an organization that provides microloans to families for small-scale water infrastructure projects, he said. And at the urging of one of its shareholders, it recently agreed to sign a commitment supporting "the human right to water.

But when asked whether PepsiCo, the parent company of Aquafina, has a strategy for reducing the widespread use of bottled water — a flashpoint for environmentalists because it taxes aquifers, requires extensive shipping, and uses tons of plastic to produce — Bena didn't have a straight answer. "We are evaluating it, but I can't tell you," he said. "The critics are certainly very strong, but we think that people, by and large, want the convenience that bottled water provides."

Bowe also noted that Coca-Cola spokesperson Denise Knight trumpeted (Bowe's word) "Water Neutrality", something Coke pursues. But given the fact that Coke annually uses 313 billion liters of water to produce 129 billion liters of beverages and uses more water as its business grows, Knight acknowledged that the term might be somewhat misleading.

Ya think?

One activist referred to the "water neutrality" claim as "greenwashing".

But decide for yourself - read Bowe's entire article.

Wish I could have been there.

"I don't necessarily agree with the term 'human right to water,' because then the lawyers jump in here ... and become rich off of this back-and-forth, knocking-heads process." -- Harry Ott, conference speaker, quoted in the article

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