Lithium of the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia: The Next Battlefield Between Economy and Environment/Ecology

• In Event: International Environmental/Green Crimes

Abstract

Lithium is a key global resource for the global energy transition, efficient batteries that are used in smart phone and electric car. But the booming demand threatens to contaminate one of the world’s great wonders, the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, which holds 70% of the world’s lithium reserves. The present government of Bolivia wants to extract lithium under complete state control and to initiate an industrialization of the raw material and create a processing industry within Bolivia. But the plans demonstrate a lack of the consciousness about the social and environmental costs. The high water consumption of the lithium plant would deprive indigenous communities of their traditional income strategies, mainly quinoa and pastoral farming. In addition, they warn the risk of widespread pollution which would put the Salar’s flora and fauna at risk. With little concern for the environmental ill-effects of using toxic materials, destroying the people’s environment, the lithium strategy contradicts the principle of ‘vivir bien’ (live well) and the ‘rights of mother earth’.
In this presentation, based on our research in Bolivia, emerging environmental and ecological problems of lithium extraction in Bolivia are cleared and what we should do is suggested.

Author

• Noriyoshi Takemura, Toin University of Yokohama