“Bolivia looks to opaque methods, firms to build lithium powerhouse”

The Bolivian government is set this month to choose companies that would turn the lithium in reservoirs below its salt flats into economic resources exported to the world market.

Launched during a global commodities boom that emboldened the country, Bolivia’s lithium industry has struggled. The state lithium corporation, Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos, or YLB, has produced only a fraction of what was hoped. The solution, it thinks, is a series of new technologies designed by new companies.

Six foreign firms – four from China, one from the U.S. and one from Russia – expect a decision from the Bolivian government about which will earn the opportunity to use new technologies, collectively called direct lithium extraction, or DLE, to speed up the country’s extraction of the world’s largest recorded reserves of lithium.

With scant public information about neophyte technologies, the ecosystems supported by the salt flats, and the companies vying for the government tender, researchers and advocates are worried that YLB and officials are rushing into a billion-dollar development scheme that risks failure at the expense of communities and the environment.

Information about the selection of companies and development of lithium has been tightly controlled by YLB and the Ministry of Energy and Hydrocarbons, both of which did not respond to requests for comment for this article. Both organizations are fielding simultaneous criticisms over a lack of transparency and weak results from years of lithium development. [...]

The 77 communities of the Indigenous Lipez Nation, which recently received recognition of their right to territory in southern Bolivia, struggle to participate in the development of the lithium industry, says Vivian Lagrava, a human rights lawyer with the Plurinational Observatory of Andean Salt Flats. [...]

Protections for Indigenous Peoples to be consulted and participate in industrial projects are weak, says Lagrava, who also works with the human rights group Empodérate. A study in collaboration with CEDIB found that “the exploitation of lithium puts the ecosystem at risk, and there is no political will… to prevent environmental impacts, and even less to maintain the unity of Indigenous people who have always been considered weak and dispersed,” she said. [...]