center for interdisciplinary environmental justice

In the highlands of the Andes, Indigenous peoples have used lagoons of ancient brine to interpret the night sky since time immemorial. These lagoons are sacred cultural sites and home to their ancestors, some of the earliest forms of microbial life.

This region is one of the driest deserts in the world. (The Salar de Atacama receives ~80 mm/3 inches of rain per year. Sahara desert 100 mm.)

Even so, ecosystems--including people--have adapted to the hyperarid, hypersaline environment. Organisms include stromatolites, extremophile bacteria, flamingos, llamas and vincuña, brine shrimp, and halophyte grasses. People living in the salar regions are agro-pastoral farmers, meaning they integrate crop and livestock cultivation. They have always managed the existing water systems to grow food crops and to sustain their animals and families.

The extremely salty water is called brine. The brines formed millions of years ago when the climate was wetter, as rain and snow carrying dissolved minerals collected in closed basins. Strong sunshine and dry conditions have concentrated this water over thousands of years. Brine rich in lithium and other minerals is part of a complex interconnected groundwater system, that supports Indigenous peoples and their traditional ways of life.

Mining companies, see this sacred landscape only as profitable resources. Lithium mining is expanding here to make electric vehicle batteries and other so-called “renewable” energy storage infrastructure.

In fact, investors and prospectors call lithium “white gold.” But to Indigenous peoples around the world, gold rushes have meant genocide and ecocide.

To mine lithium, brine is pumped into shallow pools where the water is evaporated and the minerals are collected. Lithium mining is groundwater mining, and the groundwater in the Atacama desert is nonrenewable. Lithium brine used to make “renewable” energy storage is a nonrenewable resource. 1 olympic size swimming pool of water = 23 Tesla vehicles. Tesla’s production goals = 20 million vehicles per year by 2030 (that’s 869,500 olympic size swimming pools per year).

Indigenous communities are resisting the destruction of their sacred waters and traditional homelands. Many say “No” to lithium mining. Communities the Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc, Argentina, blockaded the highway in February, 2019 to protest violation of consultation rights.

Many fear the destruction of ecological, cultural, and spiritual life cycles and further displacement of indigenous communities, forcing people off their homelands and into the cities where they become the racialized urban poor. Farmers are already noticing a sharp decline in their crops.

Electric vehicles and lithium batteries are not sustainable nor climate change solutions.. They only shift exploitation and extraction to differerent non-renewable resources and people.