Alberto Ma

In recent years, salt flats such as the Salar of Uyuni in Bolivia have begun to draw interest from "green" industries around the world because Lithium is easily mined from brines there.
The mineral is a key ingredient for the production of electric car batteries, which countries around the world are rushing to produce to switch away from fossil fuels.
Bolivia is the number 1 in the world for lithium deposits, followed by Argentina and Chile: this is the so-called "Lithium Triangle" where the rush for "white gold" is very much under way. In the Salar of Uyuni, the first industrial lithium processing plant had been recently inaugurated.
Already concerned about the effects of climate change, the prospect of incoming industrialisation is adding worries to local communities that live close to the Salares. Most people’s livelihoods are tied to farming quinoa and herding llamas. They already see less rain and changes in the weather due to climate crisis and now they are worried about the water usage of lithium extraction.
In November 2023, members of Villa Mar, a town in the Bolivian Andes, staged a protest when the Russian group Uranium One arrived to deposit machinery in their territory.
In January 2024, people from the local Indigenous communities in Chile also came out to block the roads leading to the salt plain in the Atacama desert. They protest about another new deal which is set to be signed this year between the government and private company SQM. In the nearby San Pedro River water level has decreased from 1,200 litres per second to 350 litres since 2008.
The data is alarming for the locals - mostly farmers and shepherds - who rely on this river to provide water for their herds and crops.
Last June, hundreds of protesters from Argentinian local communities blocked a highway to denounce a new reform that made easier Lithium extraction in the Jujuy region. At least 96 people were brutally injured by police. Since years Lithium mining here takes place in the Salar of Olaroz leaving farmers without enough water for their fields. In the nearest Salinas Grande, the 33 indigenous communities that live there managed to not have Lithium mining in their territory thanks to protests and tribunals.
But for how long? International pressure for the “green” energy transition is becoming every day more unbearable with activists and indigenous people accused to stop progress: they are put in jail or beaten up for defending water and their ancestral territory.