" Latin America eyes the lithium boom, but opposition endures" 26 October 2023

“There used to be more. With this water we wash, we sow, we water vegetables and quinoa,” says Andrea, who lives in the community of Calcha K, where recurring complaints that “it doesn’t rain like it used to” are heard. Calcha K, in the southwestern department of Potosí, is one of 46 communities settled around the Uyuni and Pastos Grandes salt flats, two of the Bolivia’s three major lithium reserves. The third, Salar de Coipasa, is found in Oruro, in the west of the country.

This year, the Bolivian government has announced a series of agreements to build lithium industrial complexes in this area: a consortium comprised of the Russian Uranium One Group and Chinese company CITIC Guoan will build plants at Pastos Grandes and Uyuni, while CATL, also from China, will build another plant at Uyuni and in Coipasa.

Public talks over the projects have been held periodically in the nearby areas, organised by state-owed lithium company Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB)... But some who have attended do not feel these could be classed as a true “consultation”...

Aquilina Mamani, the former leader of a nearby community called Aguaquiza, says that the explanations at these talks have been technical, so very few people understand what is being explained. They also speak to the audience in Spanish, when many people only understand Quechua, their native language...

“The fear is for the water,” says Marcial Muraña Ramos, the local justice minister of Mallku Villamar, a community near the Pastos Grandes salt flat...

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Bárbara Jerez Henríquez, a researcher at the University of Valparaíso in Chile, told Diálogo Chino that research addressing the issue of lithium in environmental, social, cultural, archaeological and biological terms is “very limited”...For Jerez, it is undeniable that the environmental risks associated with the activity are high. One of them is the lack of understanding of the hydrology and biodiversity of the salt flats.

Another issue is the uncertainty over what will be done with wastes left over from the process...

Across South America’s lithium-rich nations, concerns for what the future may hold are shared among Indigenous and local communities living close to salt flats...