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Communities around the world’s largest salt flat in the South of Bolivia, Uyuni, oppose the government's plans to install lithium extraction plants, threatening the environment and their principal source of income: tourism.
Image credits: Ana-Luna Py Brozovich
by Nina Py Brozovich
The environment is so arid and hostile that no plants can grow here. Yet its human inhabitants are almost literally living over a gold mine: 21 millions of metric tons of lithium. Communities around the world’s largest salt flat in the South of Bolivia, Uyuni, struggle to survive ruthless weather conditions by developing tourism as their major economic engine. The arrival of an emerging industry, lithium manufacturing, puts the landscape at risk for underperforming contracts that produce low income for the country.
Like an ocean with no wind. In the horizon, an immense flat salt desert that extends for 12,000 kilometers. White like the clouds when it's dry and crystal clear when it rains, you can’t distinguish the limits between sky and earth. Not a sound. Not a movement. The ground, so dry and hard that it can cut if you touch it. It can hurt your eyes if you look at it without glasses. The freezing wind can hurt your skin if you don’t layer up correctly.
“[The nature in Uyuni] offers the passerby neither hospitality, nor shade, nor shelter.” 2 (extract from the Bolivian tale by Adolfo Costa Du Rels, La Miski Simi). Life in the Altiplano is cruel, “dura y fatigosa”, “hard and tiring” as says the popular bolivian expression. Only strong and resilient beings have the courage to stay: the cactus, the weeds that protect the surroundings, and the people living only some miles away in Uyuni.
Image credits: https://www.tripsavvy.com/complete-guide-salar-de-uyuni-salt-flats-of-bolivia-4693472
Bolivia possesses one of the most impressive environments on the planet: the Salar de Uyuni, a salt flat in the southwest of Bolivia. The harsh living conditions and ecosystem have led its inhabitants to rely on tourism as their main source of income. Recent projects seeking to extract lithium in the area have raised concerns among the locals, who fear it could damage the landscape from which they make their livelihoods. Not only does the recent industrialization fail to consider the inhabitants of Uyuni, but the government has shown no intention of distributing the benefits to the community.
Bolivia has a long love-hate relationship related to its mineral resources. Since the colonial era, the country has been deprived of its resources by the hands of northern countries. During colonization the Spanish Kingdom took the equivalent of what is needed to build a bridge from Bolivia to Spain and back, using only silver as material extracted from the Cerro Rico de Potosí, the richest source of silver in human history. Almost all natural resources and public services in the country were managed by international industries, until the government nationalized them in 2008.
Today, Bolivia leads the short list of countries with most certificated ressources of lithium in the world (BBC). Despite its large reservoirs, the country is far from being an important actor in the production of lithium worldwide.
The rise of climate change highlighted the urgency to switch our production and consumption habits. The use of electricity has become a popular option in developed countries over the years, giving lithium a protagonic role as one of the key elements to build the batteries to store energy. Recently, the Bolivian government has shown growing interest in entering this promising industry, without much success. In 2018, they signed a contract with the German enterprise ACI Systems to implement the first pilot industry in the Salar de Uyuni in Potosi and Coipasa in Oruro, both departments in the south of Bolivia.
“Up until now, it was found that the production waste has more lithium components than the actual product,” says Jorge Campanini, researcher for the Bolivian Information and Documentation Center (Centro de Documentación e Información CEDIB), a non-profit civil organization that provides information and documentary consultation services on social issues in Bolivia and Latin America since 1970. Many experts associated this failure with the lack of trained professionals in the area, and serious preliminary field studies.
Image credits: Ana-Luna Py Brozovich
“The government focused on the fact that lithium was a growing industry and tried to become a leader without understanding what we had and how to properly treat it: it’s like buying something without knowing how much money you have available,” said Campanini.
What will come in the following months is still very uncertain. About a month prior to the publication of this article, the Bolivian government signed an agreement with the Chinese manufacturer of lithium batteries Contemporary Amperex Technology to build two industrial complexes that aim to produce 45,000 to 100,000 tons of lithium carbonate each year for battery production. “Nobody knows the details. Nobody knows what the role of each country will be and what the next steps are,” Campanini says. “The process has been very confidential.”
Nearby communities, as well as field experts, doubt the success of the industrialization process and question the benefits lithium extraction will bring to the community. People in these communities make a living out of this natural miracle, which is visited every year by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. The government hasn’t revealed plans to include the communities around Uyuni in the industrialization process or to redistribute the wealth produced by this emerging technology.
“There may be mixed feelings about the new project with China among the communities, but there is a common complaint: no one asked them for their approval. They are the ones who will have to face the consequences of the decisions taken, but the government never asked for their opinion.”, said Jorge Campanini.
As says Hilarión Mejía Castro, the Jatun Curaca of the Nación Chichas and a tourism guide for 22 years today, “the Nación Chichas was never consulted. It feels as if the government was handing in our territories.”
Image credits: https://elpotosi.net/cultura/20160205_el-tio-en-las-minas-del-cerro-rico.html
Bolivia is a Catholic country by tradition. A large majority of its population celebrates Catholic divinities and festivities; such practices are intertwined with other cultural traditions.
Bolivia’s pre-colonial past and the rich cultures—which no empire could erase— endure in religious synthesis. Many Bolivians hold pre colonial beliefs along with Catholic ones, and experience both through active and devout practices like Todos Santos (a Bolivian celebration to commemorate the death). Many believe in God and practice an active religious lifestyle, but also believe that only the devil can help them survive the harsh conditions of life and work in the mining regions of the country. Bolivians call him “El Tío,” the devil, the god of the underworld. As in the Catholic faith, he is venerated and honored, in search of protection against this hell on earth, from which not even the government offers to protect them.
The altiplano is cruel and ruthless. The wind is cold and the sun, burning. There’s only sky on the horizon and the extent of white dust over miles in sight. The pan flutes and tarka blown by the stubborn wind, and its consistent tempo feel like the sound of the wind making its way between each little crack of the surrounding mountains.
The reality of many of these touristic sites is that most of the time they are more or less equipped to receive tourists, especially in luxurious accommodations, while the local communities struggle to access basic services such as consistent electric power, clean water, or even just access to education at all levels.
The major activity in the region is indubitably tourism, that is most of the time conducted by independent specialists that live there and know the place better than anyone else. “The guides get loans to work. During the pandemic, several had to sell their houses, auction their cars a precio de gallina muerta (at the price of a dead chicken -hispanic expression-). The tourism sector never received governmental help,” says Hilarión.
The debate arises again as the sector was particularly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the urgency of developing new technologies to counteract climate change at a global level, as the situation worsened in a context in which each country is trying to recover from the economic downturn caused by the pandemic.
Most doubt the industrialization of the white gold will actually help them improve their already quality of life, and worse, fear it would only destroy their workplace. Even though the industrialization would only be done in a portion of the Salar de Uyuni, the landscape would be unavoidably affected. “The depuration pools are very big. The landscapes have already changed with the existing pilot plants and will be modified even more,” explains Jorge Campanini. “The constructions can be seen tens of kilometers away,” says Hilarión.
Image credits: https://abi.bo/index.php/economia2/10580-Nueve-empresas-realizar%C3%A1n-pruebas-piloto-en-el-Salar-de-Uyuni-para-la-extracci%C3%B3n-directa-del-litio
As climate change progresses, the lithium industry will become increasingly important, raising questions about how the world's largest lithium reserve should manage the resource. For the moment, the communities that surround el Salar de Uyuni are abandoned by the government and left out of their plans for the place they live and work on.
Nina Py Brozovich, a first-year at Brown from Bolivia. Stereotypical nerd concentrating in Computer Science and Mathematics. Passionate about animals and anime.
White gold
After a life-changing internship in 2019 at the refuge La Senda Verde I became very attached to the environmental cause and worked for years with several environmental organizations in Bolivia. Since then, I hope to contribute to social and environmental justice with everything I engage in. As someone who has visited the Salar de Uyuni, I can corroborate the magic of this place. As a Bolivian I feel intrigued about this new issue the country is still very uncertain how to deal with, and as an environmental and social activist I'm afraid this could lead to destructive practices and dangerous for those living and working there. This piece was for me an essential process to analyze and understand better what the stakes around lithium extraction in Uyuni are, how the principal actors feel about it, and what the options are. I hope to give the reader a synthesis of what I've found and provide them with elements to make their own opinions. Most importantly I want to give space to those that are not being heard in this issue, even though they are the principal affected.
Research and Interviews
Hilarión Mejía - Curaca Nación Chichas 06/05/2023
Jorge Campanini - Centro de Documentación e Información CEDIB, 22/03/2023
BBC News Mundo. "El 'oro blanco' de Bolivia: ¿Qué es el litio y por qué es clave en la industria de las baterías eléctricas y el almacenamiento de energías renovables?". BBC News Mundo, 28 Feb. 2022, https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-61185238.
BBC News Mundo. "Litio en Bolivia: por qué el país con las mayores reservas de este valioso recurso tiene tantos problemas para explotarlo". BBC News Mundo, 26 Feb. 2020, https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-51666362.
SDPnoticias. “Bolivia da control de litio a China; da contrato para producción directa.” SDPnoticias, SDPnoticias, 30 Dec. 2021, https://www.sdpnoticias.com/internacional/bolivia-da-control-de-litio-a-china-da-contrato-para-produccion-directa/.
La Razón. (2023, February 10). La estrategia de Bolivia para convertirse en un actor central del litio. La Razón. https://www.la-razon.com/energias-negocios/2023/02/10/bolivia-actor-central-litio/
Pellegrino, Pauline. "El laberinto del litio en Bolivia: en busca de estrategias para extraer el metal." France 24, 7 Sep. 2022, https://www.france24.com/es/programas/reporteros/20220907-el-laberinto-del-litio-en-bolivia-en-busca-de-estrategias-para-extraer-el-metal.
"injerencistas" de dirigente militar de EE.UU. Notimerica. https://www.notimerica.com/politica/noticia-bolivia-gobierno-boliviano-rechaza-declaraciones-injerencistas-dirigente-militar-eeuu-20230312182426.html
“Huelga general en Potosí contra proyecto boliviano-alemán de explotación de litio,” DW Español, November 6, 2019, https://www.dw.com/es/huelga-general-en-potos%C3%AD-contra-proyecto-boliviano-alem%C3%A1n-de-explotaci%C3%B3n-de-litio/a-50724135.
Infobae. (2023, March 13). China se adueña del litio boliviano. Infobae. https://www.infobae.com/america/america-latina/2023/03/13/china-se-aduena-del-litio-boliviano/
Statista. (2022). Países líderes en la producción de litio a nivel mundial en 2021 (en toneladas métricas). [Countries leading lithium production worldwide in 2021 (in metric tons)]. Retrieved March 24, 2023, from https://es.statista.com/estadisticas/600308/paises-lideres-en-la-produccion-de-litio-a-nivel-mundial/
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