Lithium extraction in Latin America: the EU has a card to play

Blog piece by Fred Pearce on behalf of Wetlands International Europe

The world is in the midst of a lithium rush. Mining companies are scouring the planet to secure cheap supplies of the metal regarded as vital for making the batteries for electric vehicles that will help us on the road to net-zero carbon emissions. But that rush, despite its environmental imperative, comes with huge potential local impacts on the environment and the communities whose land contains some of the world’s richest reserves. 

During EU Green Week, themed on the circular economy, Wetlands International Europe held a workshop to discuss the issues raised, particularly in the High Andes of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, an area now known as the Lithium Triangle. Geologists believe up to half the world’s available lithium may be held there,  dissolved in underground water.  

The scale of the potential environmental threat from lithium mining in the High Andes is huge, Roman Baigun, a biologist and coordinator of Wetland International’s High Andean Wetlands Program, told the meeting. Dozens of mining companies are lining up to extract the metal. Mining giant Rio Tinto is the latest, announcing in May that would invest billions of dollars there. 

The companies extract the metal by pumping underground water into vast ponds, covering hundreds of square kilometres, where the water evaporates in the sun, leaving behind the lithium. Besides the land grab, says Baigun, the problem is that the underground water naturally reaches the surface in places, sustaining wetland ecosystems where the region’s Indigenous communities graze their livestock on wet pastures. Pumping the underground water seems certain to dry out the wetlands and turn them to desert.

Producing every tonne of lithium involves evaporating more than two million litres of water

And, with every electric car requiring 60 kilograms on lithium carbonate in its battery (compared to 3 grams in a mobile phone), the world looks set to require many millions of tonnes of the metal. 

In theory, these unique ecosystems, and the flamingos, pumas, vicuna and other rare and charismatic species they contain, are protected under the Ramsar Convention on internationally important wetlands. But in practice, cash-strapped governments give priority to the income that can be generated by sacrificing nature to supply the lithium rush.

As moderator of the session, I asked how we might minimize the impact of this vast new trade;  how, as a major player on global markets, Europe could use its leverage to achieve responsible outcomes; and, ultimately, what price in damaged local environments we should be prepared to accept to help achieve the global environmental gain of stabilizing the climate.

Veronica Chavez, from the village of Santuario Tres Pozos near Argentina’s largest salt flat, the Salinas Grandes, was in no doubt that the mining had to be stopped. For more than a decade she has been leading communities opposing the unilateral takeover of their lands by mining companies. She told the meeting that her people’s rights, enshrined in international agreements, to give (or refuse) their free, prior and informed consent to mining was being widely ignored.

Companies buy off a handful of locals with the offer of jobs, then claim local support and bypass all forms of collective consultation, she said. “They try to divide us. Everyone who disagrees with the companies is ignored.”

“We had a meeting with the EU, which said the [Argentinian] government needs the money from the mining,” she said. “But while the government is getting richer, the communities are getting poorer.” Meanwhile, environmental impact assessments ignore the overriding threats that the mining poses to the region’s hydrology.  “They are destroying the land of our ancestors,” she said. 

Sadly, the European Commission could not, in a busy week, find a representative to contribute to the meeting. In particular, to discuss how its recently approved Water Resilience Strategy, which notes that wetlands worldwide are being degraded faster than forests, could trigger action. But other speakers were clear that the rights of local communities in the High Andes are being abused, and environmental considerations, including water resilience, are being sidelined. 

Are there technical solutions to defuse the fallout from the lithium rush? 

Marco Bersani, CEO of Circular Materials, a technology company engaged in finding ways to recycle critical raw materials from industrial waste streams, offered some ideas. Recycling of lithium is unlikely to be a major force for at least another decade, he said. It would to wait until the current generation of batteries reach the end of their working lives and enter waste streams.

Another problem for more responsible lithium use is that world lithium prices are currently low, he said. They certainly do not reflect the real cost to the wider environment of the metal’s production. The low prices make innovation to reduce lithium use – or to substitute other metals – uneconomic for the present, and render even finding funding for research problematic. 

Four years ago, major European car manufacturers launched a Responsible Lithium Partnership. But with Chinese manufacturers largely taking over production of electric vehicles, little has been heard of it since. One the positive side, Bersani said Chinese companies have made big strides in developing batteries based on abundant sodium ions, rather than lithium. 

Maybe that is the future. But for now, without tough interventions by leading consumer markets such as Europe and China, or international agreements to tighten environmental standards and reflect the real cost in lithium pricing, the lithium rush seems set to continue. And by the time used lithium batteries become available to establish a recycling industry, “our land will be barren,” said Chavez. 

The world does not yet seem to have decided if that is too high a price to pay.

Fred Pearce, on behalf of Wetlands International Europe

https://europe.wetlands.org/lithium-extraction-in-latin-america-the-eu-has-a-card-to-play/