South America is in the midst of a global competition for lithium. Hence, its citizens must be aware of the environmental and social impacts of such energies, which are part of their governments’ development plans.
There is much talk about the need for a clean energy matrix for countries as part of a sustainable and carbon-free development model. For this reason, there is a lot of pressure from global governance for countries to make commitments to lower their CO2 levels. In this context, lithium as a mineral for the production of car batteries to replace combustion cars is increasingly contested on the international scene. However, its extraction is not as clean as advertised and desired. So, how strategic is lithium for South American countries?
In northern Argentina, in the provinces of Jujuy and Salta, the indigenous communities of the puna (Salinas Grandes Basin and Guayatayoc Lagoon) are still claiming, after decades, for land titles, from which they suffer evictions and exclusion despite the agreements between the provincial government and the large lithium extraction corporations.
Access to the territory was a form of historical reparation by the states for the dispossession suffered by the communities with the arrival of European colonization. However, at present, despite the important role played by native peoples in the maintenance of native vegetation and their novel (non-scientific) knowledge for the harmonious coexistence with the terrestrial ecosystem, many governments do not respect their territories and rights.
Photo: Ricardo de Carvalho Jatobá
In Argentina, as in several other countries, these communities have certain rights guaranteed in the 1994 constitutional reform based on International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 169, which establishes free, prior and informed consultation with indigenous and tribal peoples about the future of their lives and territories, when necessary. This international agreement was ratified in 1989 along with 15 other Latin American countries.
Nonetheless, in practice, the authorities authorize extractive activities and agricultural cultivation in indigenous territories without consultation or their participation in negotiations. This is a constant among Latin American countries, which continue to focus on the export of primary products such as grains and metals, due to global demand, even though this has environmental and social impacts in the medium and long term.
The current narrative promoting the use of electric cars to replace the use of fossil fuels to avoid greenhouse gas emissions, however, is confusing and misguided. Electric cars need batteries that are made from lithium, a metal in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, countries that concentrate about 85% of the world’s reserves. But these three countries that are part of the “lithium triangle” are not prepared, in part and with enormous differences, either to benefit from industrialization or to mitigate the negative impacts of its extraction.
What could be an opportunity for South-South cooperation, according to Evo Morales’ announcement in the past, became a threat to the governments of these countries and a new dispossession of the native peoples. There is no participation of indigenous communities in the design, monitoring, and evaluation of national or provincial development plans, and public interest is not prioritized over private and foreign interests.
Photo: Ricardo de Carvalho Jatobá
According to Florencio, an indigenous man who on September 2, 2023 was demonstrating along Route 52, in Salinas Grandes Basin, in the Argentine province of Jujuy, the demand of those affected by renewable energies is not radical. It is not a question of continuing with the carbonization of the global economy or stopping the production of telephones or electric cars, but of listening to the peoples to whom these territories and knowledge belong and involving them in decision-making. In that way, at least the disadvantages can be compensated by activities to reduce the damages and risks generated to the land and the communities.
This is the “national interest” that is so difficult for our leaders to assume on the international political scene. And there is concern that the new narrative implies nothing more than a historical repetition of colonialism and a new dispossession of the native peoples of the region. “First came the Incas, then the Spaniards, and now our own brothers, the Argentines,” says Florencio.
The indigenous people hold the key to changing the development model of the countries. Thus, it is important to recognize the political nature of the issue. This means rescuing the role of the state in the mediation between market and society, and in the planning of development with the participation of the different stakeholders. This is essential in order not to promote an energy transition that ends up benefiting only a global elite.
For this reason, the adjective “clean” should be changed to “renewable”. The concept of “clean energy” confuses public opinion as it omits the problems of environmental pollution, intensive use of water, impacts on the health of local indigenous communities and the displacement of peoples.
*Translated by Janaína Ruviaro da Silva from the original in Spanish.
Autor
Researcher, professor and CAPES postdoctoral fellow at the Federal University of Goiás (UFG), activist and professional of South-South international cooperation at the Center for Studies and Articulation of South-South Cooperation (ASUL), she is currently substitute advisor of CONSEA
Administrador con 25 años de experiencia en el Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD) en Brasil.
