Interview with Marc Hufty ( Project Investigator ) & Jonas Köppel at CIES
You recently organized the international Lithium Crossroads conference at the Universidad Nacional de San Martín (UNSAM) in Buenos Aires, Argentina with your ongoing Green Dealings project. What were your main takeaways?
One lesson is that it takes a lot of work to bring so many different stakeholders together. It is a main objective of the Green Dealings project to enable conversation along the lithium battery value chain across the two continents. We managed to gather representatives from the academy, the private sector and civil society from Argentina, Bolivia and and Chile, and from Europe. We witnessed during the conference how fresh ideas emerged at these crossroads, and how foundations for future collaborations were established.
This is maybe another takeaway, that at least half of the conference interactions happen on the sidelines, so to say. When we arranged the program we reserved ample space for dialogue between participants; not only long coffee breaks but also small workshops, and dinners. This has worked well, and the conference has been a starting point for future projects.
The conference noted that mining activities, particularly in Argentina, are characterized by high levels of social conflict. What is the political situation in the lithium triangle for researchers working on resource extraction?
In South America, lithium is symbolically very charged. This has to do with its role in the energy transition – in batteries for e-vehicles and energy storage – and Latin America’s history with mining and development. Lithium is perceived as an opportunity to generate wealth, but also to do certain things differently. In particular, many wish to overcome the region’s historic role as raw materials producer and develop a full chain of production in South America or at least to participate adequately in this new economy. Much of the current political debate around lithium is happening in the (near) future. This is equally true when impacts are concerned.
One has to consider both the national or regional governments and actors, who favor the extraction of lithium and possibly the creation of national batteries industries, and the local and indigenous communities living close to the salt flats (“salares”) where lithium is extracted, concerned about potential environmental and social impacts in their territories.
This raises the question of the sustainability of lithium extraction and resource governance. There are a lot of uncertainties about what the consequences for the territories of extraction will be, especially the question of water in semi or desertic and highly fragile ecosystems. Often there are simply not enough data. The data that are available, for places like the Atacama salt flat, increasingly point towards detrimental consequences for the highly sensitive ecosystems in the salt flats. Thus there are of course choices to be made and “opportunity costs” linked to the energy transition. In some places, like Salinas Grandes in Argentina, local people have said no to lithium extraction.
At the same time, mining is also one of the few ways to generate an income and sustain communities in these remote places. This dilemma between the risks and opportunities defines the political debate about lithium mining in South America. And it is the source of much disagreement and conflict, as different people weigh opportunities and risks differently.
Meanwhile, the industry is expanding rapidly in the context of a world market short of lithium supply. The open question is whether the social and political institutions in South America will be able to keep up with this pace and handle disagreement and conflict well. If they don’t lithium will become just like other resource booms the region has known for centuries, with its lot of inequalities and pollution.
Representatives from lithium mining companies were also present at this conference. Can you tell us more about their role there?
We were happy that some companies accepted to come. As mining is a highly contentious issue, most companies shy away from being exposed in public debates in academic spaces, or don’t deem it relevant to even talk about these issues. In Buenos Aires, the debates were surprisingly nuanced. Obviously, the company representatives defended the viewpoints and interests of their employers. Off-stage, however, they were more nuanced, and shared their frustration with the polarization of the issue, which makes them enemies for many. So they appreciated the opportunity and the atmosphere of the conference.
As was to be expected, we were also criticized for providing a platform to companies. There is always a risk that in such heterogeneous spaces the debate is reduced to the smallest common denominator. For companies, acceptable positions are limited. They may be willing to talk about sustainability, whatever the meaning given to the concept in a mining context, but will not find legitimate more radical positions such as saying no to lithium mining altogether. On the other side, some representatives of local communities or even academics won’t even listen to companies’ arguments. That is what we tried to transcend.
The Green Dealings project is primarily concerned with a just energy transition - one that is environmentally sustainable but also socially equitable. What are the main opportunities and obstacles facing the lithium industry in terms of a just transition?
A just energy transition implies to examine situations at many levels. Given the present economy, capitalist and industrial, achieving carbon neutrality requires a “green economy” based on mineral extraction, for wind mills, solar panels, e-vehicles, etc. Mining has to take place somewhere. But it doesn’t need to be as dirty and as exploitative as it has been until the present. More and more companies are opening up to this new reality.
The lithium industry is peculiar; three countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile) hold 60% of the reserves, five countries mine 84% of the metal, four firms produce 75% of it, and three countries produce the batteries, of which over 50% for China alone. And the market is evolving very fast, as Europe and the USA have declared lithium a strategic mineral and are in the process of developing their own value chains. Being “just” in such a context is a challenge. The EU is willing to exclude from its market firms that would not comply with environmental and social sustainability. How exactly is currently being debated, and also depends on other actors.
Suddenly, lithium has become a hot topic, and actors all along the chain are a bit overwhelmed with all the claims directed at them. The mining industry is faced with growing supply demand, which is certainly in its favor, but at the same time, geopolitical forces, sustainability requirements, a massive image problem, and claims for social justice are exerting strong and sometimes contradictory pressures. At the local level, especially in South America, they have to deal with difficult socio-environmental conditions, and are much criticized for their water use, impact on biodiversity and other issues. At the national level there are many expectations for “development”.
Yet, most people in the industry probably prefer to focus on getting lithium out of the ground rather than thinking about whether it makes the energy transition just or not. Anyway, problems of justice are structural in Latin America and the lithium industry alone will not solve them. Governments have to define clear rules and stick to them.
But themselves, they have to face the international division of labor, in which some regions sell raw materials while others process them into high-value goods. Because of such inequalities in global economic structures the energy transition offers in fact very different opportunities to different regions. The same is true for environmental impacts. Mining always has impacts, and as long as most of the lithium the world demands is extracted from a few places, these impacts will necessarily be distributed unevenly.
In our research project we focus on governance tools such as international “green” standards and norms. These promise to do things differently, to ensure human rights, sound management, and minimal impacts along the entire value chain. We have some doubts that they will fulfill their promises, but our research is still ongoing.
At the conference, a strategy that was also often discussed was regional collaboration between Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. The hope is that together the countries could gain a stronger standing. So, problems of justice globally need to be addressed on the larger scales from which they originate.
Read article Mining indigenous territories: Consensus, tensions and ambivalences in the Salar de Atacama.
Read blog post Mining Indigenous Territories – Agree to disagree?