The turquoise glimmer of open-air pools contrasts sharply with the dazzling white of salt flats in Latin America’s “lithium triangle,” where hope resides for a better life fueled by a metal bonanza.
A key component of batteries used in electric cars, demand has exploded for lithium — the “white gold” found in Chile, Argentina and Bolivia in quantities larger than anywhere else in the world.
And as the world seeks to move away from fossil fuels, lithium production — and prices — have skyrocketed, as have the expectations of communities near lithium plants, many of whom live in poverty.
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But there are growing concerns about the impact on groundwater sources in regions already prone to extended droughts, with recent evidence of tree and flamingo die-offs.
And there are scant signs to date of benefits trickling down.
“We don’t eat lithium, nor batteries. We do drink water,” said Veronica Chavez, 48, president of the Santuario de Tres Pozos Indigenous community near the town of Salinas Grandes in Argentina’s lithium heartland.
A poster that meets visitors to Salinas Grandes reads: “No to lithium, yes to water and life.”
Lithium extraction requires millions of liters of water per plant per day.
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Unlike in Australia — the world’s top lithium producer that extracts the metal from rock — in South America it is derived from salars, or salt flats, where saltwater containing the metal is brought from underground briny lakes to the surface to evaporate.
Soaring prices
About 56 percent of the world’s 89 million tons of identified lithium resources are found in the South American triangle, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS).
The world average price rose from $5,700 per ton in November 2020 to $60,500 in September this year.
Chile hosts the westernmost corner of the lithium triangle in its Atacama desert, which contributed 26 percent of global production in 2021, according to the USGS.
The country started lithium extraction in 1984 and has been a leader in the field partly because of low rainfall levels and high solar radiation that speeds up the evaporation process.
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But Chilean law has made it difficult for companies to gain concessions from the government since the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet declared the metal a “strategic resource” for its potential use in nuclear bombs.
Only two companies have permits to exploit the metal — Chile’s SQM and American Albemarle, which pay up to 40 percent of their sales in tax.
In the first quarter of this year, lithium’s contribution to the public coffers surpassed those of Chile’s mainstay metal, copper, for the first time, according to government records.
Yet, the environmental costs are starting to stack up, and locals fear there is worse to come.
This year, a study in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B found a link between lithium mining and a decline in two flamingo species in the Salar de Atacama.
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“The development of technologies to slow climate change has been identified as a global imperative. Nonetheless, such ‘green’ technologies can potentially have negative impacts on biodiversity,” said the study.
In 2013, an inspection at the SQM site — which reported using nearly 400,000 liters of water per hour in 2022 — found that a third of carob trees in the area had died.
A later study pointed to water scarcity as a possible cause.
“We want to know, for sure, what has been the real impact of the extraction of groundwater,” said Claudia Perez, 49, a resident of the nearby San Pedro river valley.
She was not against lithium, said Perez, provided there are measures to “minimize the negative impact on people.”
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‘Leave us alone’
Across the Andes in Argentina, the salt lakes of Jujuy host the world’s second-largest lithium resources along with the neighboring provinces of Salta and Catamarca.
With few restrictions on extraction and a low tax of only 3.0 percent, Argentina has become the world’s fourth-biggest lithium producer from two mines.
With dozens of new projects in the works with the involvement of US, Chinese, French, South Korean and local companies, Argentina has said it hopes to exceed Chilean production by 2030.
But not everyone is sold on the idea.
“It is not, as they say, that they (lithium companies) are going to save the planet… Rather it is us who have to give our lives to save the planet,” said Chavez, of Santuario de Tres Pozos in Jujuy province.
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A neighbor, 47-year-old street food seller Barbara Quipildor added fiercely: “I want them to leave us alone, in peace. I don’t want lithium… My concern is the future of my children’s children.”
Will locals benefit?
About 300 kilometers (190 miles) north of Jujuy, the salar of Uyuni in Bolivia holds more lithium than anywhere else — a quarter of global resources, according to the USGS.
Half of the residents in the region — which is also rich in silver and tin — live in poverty, household surveys show.
The country’s former leftist president Evo Morales nationalized hydrocarbons and other resources such as lithium towards the start of his 2006-2019 mandate and vowed Bolivia would set the metal’s global price.
In Rio Grande, a small town near the Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB) lithium plant, Morales’ plans were met with excitement.
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In 2014 Donny Ali, a lawyer now aged 34, opened a hotel with the expectation of an economic boom.
He called it Lithium.
“We were expecting major industrial technological development and more than anything, better living conditions,” he told AFP. “It didn’t happen.”
Hoping to boost the struggling lithium sector, the government opened it up to private hands in 2018, though domestic legislation has not yet denationalized the resource, and no private extraction has yet begun.
“Some think that Bolivia will ‘miss the boat’ of lithium,” said economist Juan Carlos Zuleta. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
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The real question, he said, is: when the boat comes, “will lithium extraction benefit Bolivians?”
The three countries are now looking towards battery manufacturing — possibly even building electric cars — as a way to turn the natural lithium bounty into a modern-day industrial revolution.
“There is a concrete possibility for Latin America to become the next China,” said Zuleta.
The new truce plan in Gaza includes “many demands” from Hamas, according to an Egyptian source
The talks held between delegations from Egypt and Israel in Tel Aviv for a truce in Gaza were “largely positive and successful” and included “many of the demands” of the Islamist movement Hamas, an Egyptian security source familiar with the negotiations and another from Hamas reported to EFE on Sunday.
A delegation from Hamas, headed by the member of the political bureau Khalil al-The Hague, is expected to arrive tomorrow in Cairo, mediator in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group, to deliver its response to the mediators, according to the Egyptian source, which asked not to be identified by the sensitivity of this issue.
This new proposal, on whose content it did not provide details, “overcomes the obstacles that hinder” the declaration of a truce, a ceasefire, the exchange of prisoners and hostages, as well as the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip.
The possible announcement of a truce “will contribute to the approval of a first phase and to the efforts of the entire international community to consolidate this ceasefire and seek to move to a permanent truce instead of a temporary one,” according to the informant.
On the other hand, a source of the Palestinian Islamist movement, which also asked for anonymity, confirmed to EFE that tomorrow a delegation from Hamas will arrive in the Egyptian capital to present its response to the new Israeli proposal.
The informant added that the proposal includes “reducing the minimum number of kidnapped that Hamas will commit to freeing and eliminating divisions in sections of the Gaza Strip.”
Last Friday, an Egyptian mediating delegation traveled to Tel Aviv to discuss this truce with Israel, while the Jewish State has warned that it will not allow the Palestinian group to delay and has once again threatened to invade Rafah, at the southern end of the strip and where more than a million refugees are overcrowded.
Hamas warns the United Kingdom that if it sends soldiers to Gaza they will be a “legitimate” military target
The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas warned the United Kingdom on Sunday that if it deploys military personnel in the Gaza Strip, after information that they could help in the distribution of humanitarian aid, they will be “legitimate targets” of its armed wing.
“We alert Britain, or any other country, against the deployment of forces on land or on the coast of the Gaza Strip and affirm that they will be legitimate targets for our people and their resistance,” Hamas said in a statement.
The armed group charged against any initiative in the Palestinian enclave that does not have its approval.
The Islamist group responded to the information released on Saturday by the British network BBC, according to which the British Armed Forces could deploy troops to deliver humanitarian aid on the ground arriving in Gaza through the new floating dock that is being built by Israel and the United States.
The public broadcaster indicated that the United Kingdom could be the intermediary to which the United States referred when it said that it would not be the American soldiers, but others, who would distribute the food packages sent by ship from Cyprus and then transferred to Gaza.
Yesterday, the Israeli Army assured at a press conference with international media that international organizations would be in charge of the distribution of humanitarian aid, but did not indicate which ones would have agreed to collaborate.
Although the British Government has not confirmed the news, the BBC affirms, according to anonymous sources, that the Ministry of Defense is considering getting involved with ‘wet boots’ on the ground.
The possible role of the British forces would involve driving the trucks with the help from the landing boats on the floating runway, hundreds of meters long, and delivering it to a safe distribution area on dry land, the station explained.
The London Ministry of Defense reported on Friday, in turn, that the British Navy auxiliary ship RFA Cardigan Bay set sail from Cyprus to provide support for the construction of the temporary dock, which is led by the United States.
This ship will provide accommodation for hundreds of American sailors and soldiers, about whom Washington has made it clear that they will not set foot in Gaza territory.
Nancy Pelosi says that Netanyahu “could not have made things worse” in Gaza
Former President of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi said that the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, “could not have made things worse” in the conflict in Gaza, in an interview broadcast this Sunday by the BBC.
Pelosi, who on Thursday participated in an event at the English university of Oxford, told the ‘Laura Kuenssberg Program’ that Netanyahu “was never a peace agent” and admitted that she “is not a great fan of his.”
The congresswoman said that what is happening in the Strip “challenges the conscience of the world” and maintained that the impact of famine on children “is almost unforgivable”, while calling the Hamas attack on Israeli territory on October 7 “barbaric”.
“Israel has the right to defend itself, but the way it is doing it is a challenge because Netanyahu has never been a peace agent,” he said.
“I’m not a great admirer of yours; I couldn’t have done things worse than those tens of thousands, or whatever number it is, of dead people, malnourished children and the uncertainty that exists… and that’s what people are talking about,” he said.
Asked if she understood why young people in the United States used controversial tactics when protesting against the conflict, Pelosi opined that “when they go beyond the campuses and block the Golden Gate Bridge, or something else, for a long time, and people can’t go to the doctor or the hospital or anything urgent in their lives, they don’t get support.”
But he added: “How can demonstrations on (university) campuses be criticized? That’s a way of life in the United States.”
On Thursday, the British police evicted two pro-Palestinian protesters who protested during their speech on populism to students from the University of Oxford, while abroad another group criticized her for her defense of Israel and her position on the movement to support Palestine.
