The Bolivian government has been accused of ransacking the country's vast lithium reserves, concentrated in areas inhabited by Indigenous Aymara people. The Altiplano-Puna Plateau is home to the ‘Lithium Triangle’, salt flats that stretch across Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia and hold over 75% of the world’s known supply of lithium. Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni salt flat alone holds an estimated 17% of lithium globally.
Successive Bolivian governments and foreign investors have long been interested in this increasingly important commodity, but now the local people of Uyuni are protesting lithium mining. Union leaders claim Indigenous people are experiencing few benefits while being left to deal with the environmental consequences of lithium extraction.
THE RISE OF LITHIUM MINING
Lithium has become an increasingly valuable commodity in recent years. Aside from longstanding use in manufacturing things like ceramics and heat-resistant glass, it is a vital component in rechargeable batteries for products ranging from mobile phones and laptops to electric cars. It is the lightest metal, heat-resistant, and stores large amounts of energy in batteries, unique chemical properties that can make rechargeable batteries more efficient than ever before. This efficiency could allow electric vehicles, which produce roughly 60% less carbon pollution than traditional vehicles, to become more widespread, leading to positive environmental impact.
That has caused a dramatic rise in lithium production; between 2015 and 2017 alone, demand for lithium increased 10% each year and prices for lithium nearly tripled, with global usage reaching 40,000 tons in 2017. This demand shows no signs of slowing, as Goldman Sachs has predicted that every time electric vehicles replace one percent of all vehicles sold, lithium consumption will rise by 70,000 tons a year.
Existing lithium extraction projects have also proven that mining can actually provide benefits to the communities surrounding lithium plants. Sales de Jujuy, a mining company that has set up a plant in Argentina’s Salar de Olaroz, proudly proclaims on its website that it “fosters mutually beneficial partnerships with the local communities”. It has brought jobs to the area, paying workers roughly $1,000 per month – higher than average for the region – as well as providing medical services and funding local innovation through microloans. But these benefits come at a cost. It takes 500,000 gallons of water to produce each ton of lithium, which can cause significant water shortages, with lithium extraction using up 65% of the water supply in Argentina’s Salar de Atacama.
STATE-CONTROLLED MINING
That raises questions about how Bolivia, the poorest nation in South America, should deal with its vast lithium reserves, which are the largest of any country in the world.
The Bolivian government under Evo Morales previously developed a plan they dubbed “¡100 percent Estatal!”, or full state control of lithium extraction. Vice President Álvaro García Linera claimed that the lithium industry would be a boon to the 40% of Bolivians who live in extreme poverty, providing them with training in science and technology as well as the skilled jobs that came with it. García Linera argued that Bolivia's historic policy of signing over other mineral rights had “produced a country which is rich in natural resources and socially very poor,” and he aimed to reverse that trend with lithium, calling for Bolivia to “occupy the Salar, [and] invent our own lithium extraction method.”
So in 2018, Bolivia formed a joint venture with the German firm ACI Systems Alemania, who agreed to invest $3.1 billion in the country in exchange for a 49% stake in the project. However, Morales' promises failed to come to fruition. He announced that Bolivia would be independently producing lithium batteries by 2010 and electric cars by 2015, both of which have yet to happen. A pilot lithium plant in Potosí and one larger plant in Llipi are the only lithium production centres that have been opened to date, and the benefit to the Indigenous people living around these plants has been negligible. While the Llipi plant has 250 Bolivian workers, most come from Potosí or the capital La Paz rather than local Aymara communities. The plant director admitted that there were few jobs available for unskilled workers. Despite years of local leaders calling for educational or training opportunities for Aymara people, none have so far been provided.
LITHIUM IN LIMBO
On 3 November 2019, following Morales’ resignation, the interim government rescinded legislation that established the extraction partnership with ACI Systems, leaving the country’s lithium industry in limbo. Actions taken so far suggest that the new government wishes to cede state control of the extraction process, as officials have invited multinationals to visit Salar de Ujuni, even using Twitter to invite Elon Musk to set up a factory on the salt flat. On 23 April 2020, the Minister of Economy and Finance explicitly said the country needed foreign companies to inject funding that would make lithium extraction viable in Bolivia. Morales has claimed that foreign companies seeking access to Bolivian lithium was the reason for his fall from power, alleging that his resignation was forced by a US-backed coup. It is a bold claim, but people on the Salar, too, are concerned about the influence of private companies.
In the last year, there have been protests in Potosí, with calls for the community to receive a larger cut of the revenue from lithium production and higher royalties. Protests against privatisation have continued in recent months across Uyuni, with FRUTCAS union leader Ramiro Huayta setting out demands for the government to reactivate the industrialisation project and pass a general law to clarify how the state company is run. As it stands, the salt flats of Uyuni are vulnerable to outside influence and exploitation, but there are questions around how much Indigenous people were benefiting under Morales’ plan and dangers for the Salar regardless of who is doing the extracting.
FUTURE OF THE SALT FLATS
The environmental concerns surrounding resource extraction across the Lithium Triangle are particularly strong in Bolivia. While Bolivia has large stores of raw lithium, it is widely thought to be poor quality. Salar de Uyuni receives more rainfall than lithium-rich areas of Argentina and Chile, and the extraction process, which involves evaporating lithium brine above ground, takes longer. More concerningly, the brine in Uyuni has a magnesium ratio of 21 to 1, compared to a ratio of 5 to 1 in Chilean salt flats. This makes magnesium far more difficult to extract from the lithium brine, requiring more lime and creating more waste from both magnesium and lime. There are concerns, too, about the amount of water that extraction requires. The Bolivian government has claimed that 90% of the water needed will come from saltwater, but some experts are concerned about effects on groundwater that local farmers need to survive.
The consequences of large-scale lithium production are unknown, but the low quality brine means the environmental cost is likely to be more severe than in Argentina and Chile. The beauty and integrity of the salt flats is also at risk. The Salar is widely recognised as a site of natural beauty and is a draw for tourism, but lithium plants could consume much of the landscape. Luís Alberto Echazú Alvarado, the Vice Minister of Energy, admitted that the government plan focused on lithium production across the Salar. “Our vision is this is a long-term project. So you have to mix poor and rich brine so as to exploit the whole Salar,” he said.
MINERAL RIGHTS AND THE INDIGENOUS POPULATION
The prospects for the Indigenous people who live around the Salar are not hopeful. While lithium mining has the potential to bring jobs and economic development to the area, as Argentina’s Sales de Jujuy has shown, it is far from guaranteed. In fact, even under Morales’ “¡100 percent Estatal!” plan, the plants offered scant work or training opportunities for local people. Even if mining brings economic prosperity to local areas, serious environmental concerns remain. The amount of water needed to extract Bolivia’s lithium, and the waste the process generates, pose a real threat to farming in the area, while the creation of new lithium plants threatens to cover the Salar and destroy its natural beauty altogether.
When local leaders are not involved in discussions surrounding lithium, and local residents say that they “don’t even know what lithium is, what its benefits are, what its effects are,” it raises the question: are the region's natural rights to self-determination and control over their land being respected? In Bolivia, that question is yet to be answered.
Alice is currently studying the GDL at City, University of London and holds a BA in Classics from the University of Oxford. She is passionate about human rights, with a particular interest in refugee and migration issues.