"Lithium mining leaves severe impacts in Chile, but new methods exist: Report", 10 September 2025

...A new report on the impact of lithium mining in South America’s lithium triangle has found that methods used by companies in the rush to extract the mineral in Chile’s Salar de Atacama has led to an “irreversible” and “unrecoverable” loss of water. Nearby Indigenous Colla peoples, whose land has not yet been exploited, told Mongabay that without the implementation of more sustainable mining methods, they will likely face the same problems neighboring communities have experienced over the last four decades, such as a loss of vegetation cover and the disappearance of lagoons...

Mining has also caused a significant loss of vegetation cover in areas where Indigenous peoples practice agricultural activities, and it has also led to the disappearance of lagoons, which are important for communities and local wildlife...

The damage is primarily driven by the extraction methods used...

Chile’s National Geology and Mining Service and its Ministry of Environment did not respond to Mongabay’s requests for comment by the time of publication...

Across the lithium triangle, which includes the high Andean salt flats of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, where more than half of the world’s lithium reserves have been identified so far, companies and governments are attempting to introduce new methods to extract lithium. One such method is direct lithium extraction (DLE) technologies, which allow lithium to be extracted directly from brine using chemicals, therefore avoiding the problems associated with evaporation methods.

Researchers said that while DLE technologies can reduce land and water usage, there are still several challenges. One is that the composition of each brine found across the world differs and therefore each DLE method must be designed on a project-by-project basis, reports say...