Chile's lithium dreams raise concerns about water in the desert June 7, 2024
- Ana Cunha-Busch
- Jun 6, 2024
- 3 min read
By AFP - Agence France Presse
Chile's lithium dreams raise concerns about water in the desert
At nightfall in Chile's Atacama desert, the driest in the world, a drilling machine extracts brine to measure levels of lithium - a mineral crucial to the global shift to cleaner energy, but damaging in its way.
Chile is trying to regain its position as the world's largest lithium producer, but environmentalists fear that extraction in the Atacama Desert will damage the fragile ecosystems there.
The desert is home to the main deposits of the mineral in Chile, which is part of Latin America's “lithium triangle” with Argentina and Bolivia.
Demand for lithium in electric car batteries has grown sharply in recent years as the world seeks to move away from fossil fuels to curb global warming.
In the salt flats of Aguilar and La Isla, in the desert region of Altoandinos - at an altitude of 3,400 and 4,400 meters respectively - the temperature is minus zero and the wind is biting as the austral winter approaches.
There is a rush to complete the work of collecting brine samples, which are sent to a laboratory to measure the lithium content.
“We're drilling day and night,” said Ivan Mlynarz, executive vice president of the Enami National Mining Company, trying to start mining the “white gold” mineral here by 2030.
- 'Positive results' -
Between the Aguilar, La Isla, and Grande salt flats, Enami hopes to be able to extract 60,000 tons of lithium a year.
The project is key to Chile's plan to regain its position as the world's largest lithium producer, which it lost to Australia in 2016.
“We've had very positive results,” Enami official Cristhian Moreno told AFP, describing the quality of the lithium they are obtaining from the samples as “very favorable”.
Chile's leftist president, Gabriel Boric, took office with plans to create a national lithium company similar to the state-owned copper company Codelco, formed in the 1970s from nationalized mining companies.
Last month, Codelco signed an agreement with lithium miner SQM to almost double the current extraction of the mineral by the private mining company in the Salar de Atacama, north of the Alto-Andeans.
Competitor Australia, which extracts lithium from rock instead of brine, currently produces 43% of the mineral and Chile 34%.
The Codelco/SQM alliance would add around 300,000 tons to Chile's lithium production between 2025 and 2030, and another 280,000 to 300,000 tons a year from 2031 to 2060.
In 2022, the South American country produced around 243,000 tons.
- 'No more rain' -
In Chile, lithium is produced by evaporating brine in lagoons or pools filled with water pumped from under the salt flats.
Experts say that the method puts several species of animals and plants at risk with the loss of tons of water in one of the most arid places on Earth.
“These fragile Atacama salt flats are a refuge for a diversity of Andean life, biological corridors,” said expert Cristina Dorador, a professor at the University of Antofagasta.
“They're not mines, they're ecosystems,” she said.
Mining in the Altoandinos region, in the south of the Atacama region, also threatens the Colla indigenous people, some 20,000 people who live in Chile.
Diminishing water sources in the area are already forcing them out of the mountains, where they traditionally live as shepherds, into the cities - unable to look after their animals or themselves.
"If we dry up the salt flats, it won't rain anymore, it won't snow anymore, and? all biodiversity will decrease,” Christopher Castillo, 25, a representative from Colla, told AFP.
“It's to... exterminate what little biodiversity we have left.”
A research paper published in 2019 in the International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation found that the “water-intensive production process” used in the Atacama Desert has “increased concerns regarding hydrological disruption” in a region with minimal rainfall.
He reported “significant” environmental effects of brine extraction, “including degradation of surface vegetation, elevation of diurnal surface temperatures and decreased soil moisture levels.”
Paulina ABRAMOVICH
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