Surviving the white gold rush - life in the ‘lithium triangle'
'We won't have electric cars,' say local communities ravaged by lithium mining for car batteries.
Calcha K, Bolivia – Teófila Cayo Calcina, 56, stands among her rows of quinoa plants, pointing towards the horizon. “The lithium plant is 50km in that direction. We are worried that the mining could leave us with not enough water to survive,” she says, clearly disheartened.
Calcina lives with her husband in one of the houses overlooking the central square of the tiny village of Calcha K, an hour’s walk from her quinoa fields, where she grows quinoa real, a variety which is native to the Uyuni region of Bolivia and is considered a “superfood” in Western countries such as the US and Europe.
The Salar of Uyuni forms the world’s largest salt flat, stretching for nearly 10,500sq km (more than 4,050 square miles) – slightly larger than the size of Lebanon – and attracting tourists from all over the world who come to marvel at its unique landscape.
In recent years, salt flats such as this one have also begun to draw intense interest from “green” industries around the world because the lightest metals on Earth are mined from lithium-rich brines, typically found in salt flats.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) now estimates that Bolivia has about 23 million tonnes (more than 20 billion kg) of lithium – some two million tonnes more than previously thought.
The mineral is a key ingredient for the production of electric car batteries, which countries around the world are rushing to produce in the race to switch away from fossil fuels. Bolivia’s President, Luis Arce, has announced that he plans for the country to be able to export batteries by the end of 2026.
The new lithium find has propelled Bolivia to number one in the world for lithium deposits, followed by Argentina with 22 million tonnes and Chile with 11 million tonnes.
This is the so-called “Lithium Triangle” where the rush for “white gold” is very much under way.
Threatening water resources
Almost immediately, it seemed, the first industrial lithium processing plant had been inaugurated nearby by Bolivian Lithium Deposits (YLB) in December last year. YLB is Bolivia’s state-owned mining company founded in 2017 and responsible for the industrialisation of lithium in the country, a process that is still very much in its early stages of development.
The standard method of extracting lithium involves pumping brine into ponds on the salt flats and processing the lithium salts which crystallise once the water has evaporated. The process requires vast amounts of water.
Furthermore, the chemicals required to process lithium are toxic. “The release of such chemicals through leeching, spills or air emissions can harm communities, ecosystems and food production,” a recent report from the international environment activism group, Friends of the Earth, states. “Moreover, lithium extraction inevitably harms the soil and also causes air contamination.”
The locals are hesitant to be drawn in by such assurances, however. In November 2023, members of Villa Mar, a town in the Bolivian Andes close to the border with Chile, staged a protest when Uranium One Group arrived to deposit machinery and containers at the Laguna Pastos Grandes.
Back in Calcha K, like most others in the area, the Calcina family has been raising llamas and growing quinoa real, considered the gold standard of this variety of grain, for generations. Its seeds are larger, more expensive and considered a fashionable “super food” by many in the Global North.
“I have been working in this field since I was a child,” says Calcina, who owns six hectares of land, roughly the same size as 14 football fields, and is a member of the cooperative of quinoa real producers. “My parents and grandparents sowed this land before me; my children moved away but they come back in the summer to help with the harvest.” Her husband also works on the farm and takes care of the llamas.
“We are seeing less rain, and changes in the weather,” she says. “We are worried about the climate crisis but also the water usage of lithium extraction. My husband is scared because he heard that they are having problems in Chile and we do not know if we are going to have enough water for the quinoa and the llamas.”
Last year, her cousin, Mercedes Calcina, 60, who lives in the neighbouring village of Santiago de Chuvica and is also a member of the quinoa farmers’ cooperative, lost her entire harvest. Mercedes says: “There was no harvest of quinoa in my field last year because of the droughts. The rains are already changing due to climate change, now we are worried for lithium extraction.”
‘I fear we are going to disappear’
The rush for “white gold” in the Argentinian region of Jujuy is also ramping up after Governor Gerardo Morales approved a reform easing restrictions on mining industries and clamping down on the right to protest.
Lithium mining here takes place in the Salinas Grandes and the Laguna Guayatayoc, where the Ojos del Salar – groundwater pools found in the middle of the salt flat – are considered sacred to the Indigenous communities of San Miguel de Colorado, Pozo Colorado and Santuario de Tres Pozos. They are among the 33 communities in Salinas Grandes and Laguna Guayatayoc.
They were brutally put down by the army and the police and 96 people were injured, according to local authorities.
The brothers, who live 40km from the lithium mining site, are part of Colectivo Apacheta, a union of animal herders which has been protesting against lithium extraction in the salt flats of Olaroz-Cauchari, northern Argentina, for many years. But they have come into conflict with other residents who are in favour of the mining because of the jobs it brings.
Hipólito says he was hospitalised following a beating by local people in 2012 because of his views. His brother, Carlos, says: “Today we see the consequences (of the mining) since there’s no more water. It has changed a lot in the last five years. Lithium production pollutes our land and water. The world must know that we don’t agree with this.”
Over in Chile’s Atacama desert, on the other side of the South American Lithium Triangle, the metal has been extracted since the mid-1980s.
The flamingo population has dropped by 10 percent since lithium mining began in 1983, according to a scientific research paper published in 2022 in the Royal Society journal, which determined the cause to be the decline in water reserves.
Bastian Galvez, head of operations at the SQM lithium mining plant there, says that the plant currently uses about 120 litres (32 gallons) of water per second, half the amount authorised by the government.
The group’s former president is Chile’s “Lithium King”, Julio Ponce Lerou – the former son-in-law of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Lerou remains a major investor in the group with a 17 percent share.
The protesters only stepped down after Chile’s current left-wing president, Gabriel Boric, promised to visit. He still hasn’t come, though.
Karen Luza, 50, lives in Sequitor, a district of San Pedro de Atacama, one of Chile’s most popular tourist destinations and home to 18 Indigenous communities. She has the role of “water supervisor” in her Indigenous community, which means she oversees the local irrigation system, which still operates according to the ancestral system of canals used to bring water into desert areas. Her activist work includes monitoring the fluctuation of the water resources of an area used for irrigation.
Her activism has earned hostility from some locals who are in favour of the mining, however. Two of her horses were killed in an attack, for which no one has been brought to justice, a few years ago.
The data is alarming for the locals – mostly farmers and shepherds – who rely on this river to provide water for their herds and traditional crops like wheat, maize and alfalfa.
“We are in the most arid desert of the world and I fear we are going to disappear along with our Indigenous culture,” Luza says.
“Electromobility is promising so much change but this is not the truth. We won’t have electric cars here.”