Sao Paulo, 21 Mar Coca-Cola announced that in 2022 it will reach the mark of 16.5 million dollars invested since 2017 in environmental conservation, reforestation, treatment and access to water projects in South America, with the aim of collaborating for water resilience and for the prevention of an extensive and lasting crisis in the region. In an interview with Efe, Coca-Cola's Sustainability Manager for the Southern Cone, Rodrigo Brito, highlighted that the company has been carrying out water replenishment initiatives globally since 2007, and explained that the $15 million spent on such initiatives in the last five years in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia, will add nearly $1.5 million by the end of 2022. “Between 2021 and 2022, we will start and expand 16 conservation, reforestation and water access projects in the six countries of the Southern Cone, which, together, will protect more than 20,000 hectares, bring drinking water to 40,000 people,” said Brito, who specified that for this purpose the US multinational will reach an investment of 3.3 million dollars in the period. In addition, the company will surpass, by the end of the year, 150,000 hectares protected by environmental conservation initiatives with which it collaborates with local governments and civil society organizations. Thus, the company, which produces more than 45 billion liters of beverages per year in Latin America, manages to return almost 53 billion liters to nature and local communities. In this regard, the “Bolsa Floresta” program stands out, in which it collaborates with the “Fundação Amazônia Sustentável” since 2009 for the conservation of 103,000 hectores of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, impacting 40,000 people from 504 communities in the state of Amazonas and contributing to the reduction of the devastation of the mapped area by 53%. The Amazon, which spans nine countries, concentrates one-fifth of the world's drinking water reserves, and is home to the largest underground aquifer on the planet, with a volume of 162,000 cubic kilometers, capable of supplying the entire planet for 250 years, according to experts from the Federal University of Pará (UFPA). “A preserved natural area is a factory of water for the city and clean air for the community, and it also offers a better climate. That is why we must change this view that conservation is an expense (...) Investing in water replenishment, water return, access to water, is also a business continuity strategy,” Brito argued. THE MOST PRECIOUS RESOURCE Within the framework of World Water Day, this March 22, Brito noted the importance of the date set by the United Nations to promote debate on a topic “which is only given the critical importance it has when the resource is in lack”. “If you reach a condition of severe water scarcity, of depletion of watersheds and groundwater, no matter how much technology you have (...) you will have to move your house, your industrial plant, your crop, and we see that in history,” he insisted. In that sense, the sustainability manager explained that “water is a local issue”, since the volume of this resource on the planet is the same as it was millions of years ago, so the important thing is to “retain and take care of it” where it is needed. “I don't think it's a permanent problem, but it's much more difficult, expensive and time-consuming to remedy the lack of water than to prevent it through conservation (...) Those who don't have access to water lose time, energy and money, get sick, so I think it's important that there be a collective effort to avoid it, because a single company is not enough to protect this resource,” he concluded.
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