New York Times
- Somini Sengupta | Photographs Marcos Zegers
Chile has lots of lithium, which is essential to the world’s transition to
green energy. But anger over powerful mining interests, a water crisis and
inequality has driven Chile to rethink how it defines itself.
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Evaporation ponds at a lithium plant in Chile’s Atacama Desert.
Questions of mineral wealth, global warming and water are at the
heart of a rewrite of the nation’s defining document.
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SALAR DE ATACAMA, Chile — Rarely does a country get a chance to
lay out its ideals as a nation and write a new constitution for itself. Almost
never does the climate and ecological crisis play a central role.
That is, until now, in Chile, where a national reinvention is underway. After
months of protests over social and environmental grievances, 155 Chileans have
been elected to write a new constitution amid what they have declared a “climate
and ecological emergency.”
Their work will not only shape how this country of 19 million is governed. It
will also determine the future of a soft, lustrous metal, lithium, lurking in
the salt waters beneath this vast ethereal desert beside the Andes Mountains.
Lithium is an essential component of batteries. And as the global economy seeks
alternatives to fossil fuels to slow down climate change, lithium demand — and
prices — are soaring.
Mining companies in Chile, the world’s second-largest lithium producer after
Australia, are keen to increase production, as are politicians who see mining as
crucial to national prosperity. They face mounting opposition, though, from
Chileans who argue that the country’s very economic model, based on extraction
of natural resources, has exacted too high an environmental cost and failed to
spread the benefits to all citizens, including its Indigenous people.
And so, it falls to the Constitutional Convention to decide what kind of country
Chile wants to be. Convention members will decide many things, including: How
should mining be regulated, and what voice should local communities have over
mining? Should Chile retain a presidential system? Should nature have rights?
How about future generations?
Around the world, nations face similar dilemmas — in the forests of central
Africa, in Native American territories in the United States — as they try to
tackle the climate crisis without repeating past mistakes. For Chile, the issue
now stands to shape the national charter. “We have to assume that human activity
causes damage, so how much damage do we want to cause?” said Cristina Dorador
Ortiz, a microbiologist who studies the salt flats and is in the Constitutional
Convention. “What is enough damage to live well?”
Then there’s water. Amid a crippling drought supercharged by climate change, the
Convention will decide who owns Chile’s water. It will also weigh something more
basic: What exactly
is water?
‘Sacrifice Zones’
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President-elect Gabriel Boric, center left, met with members
of Chile’s Constitutional Convention this month.
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Chile’s current constitution was written in 1980, by people handpicked by its
then military ruler, Augusto Pinochet. It opened the country to mining
investments and allowed water rights to be bought and sold.
Chile
prospered by exploiting its natural riches: copper and coal, salmon and
avocados. But even as it became one of Latin America’s richest nations,
frustrations mounted over inequality. Mineral-rich areas became known as
“sacrifice zones” of environmental degradation. Rivers began drying up.
Anger boiled over into huge protests starting in 2019. A national referendum
followed, electing a diverse panel to rewrite the constitution.
On Dec. 19 came another turning point. Voters elected Gabriel Boric, a
35-year-old former student activist, as president. He had campaigned to expand
the social safety net, increase mining royalties and taxes, and create a
national lithium company.
The morning after his victory, the stock price of the country’s biggest lithium
producer, Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile, or SQM, fell 15 percent.
The Father of Volcanoes
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An SQM lithium processing plant.
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One fifth of the world’s lithium is produced by SQM, most of it in the Atacama
Desert in northern Chile in the shadow of ancient volcanoes, including the
oldest and still-active one, Lascar. The Lickanantay, the area’s Indigenous
people, call Lascar the father of all volcanoes.
From above, the mine looks as though someone has spread a glistening blue and
green quilt in the middle of this pale desert.
The riches lie in the brine underground. Day and night, SQM pumps out the brine,
along with freshwater from five wells. Pipes carry brine to a series of
ponds.
Then, the sun goes to work.
The Atacama has the
highest solar radiation
levels on Earth. Water evaporates astonishingly fast, leaving mineral deposits
behind. Magnesium comes out of the ponds. Also potassium. Lithium remains in a
viscous yellow green pool, which SQM converts into powdery white lithium
carbonate for battery makers abroad.
SQM was a state-owned maker of fertilizer chemicals until Mr. Pinochet turned it
over to his then son-in-law,
Julio Ponce Lerou, in 1983. More recently, it has been fined by Chile’s stock market regulator
and by the
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
over violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Mr. Ponce, no longer
chairman, retains 30 percent ownership.
Today, SQM is riding a lithium bull market. Carlos Díaz, its vice president
for lithium, said the company is seeking to increase capacity from 140,000
tons of lithium carbonate to 180,000 tons by 2022. Mr. Díaz said the firm
wants to “produce lithium as green as possible,” including by reducing
saltwater extraction by half by 2030 and by becoming “carbon neutral” by
2040.
There is good reason. Nearby, a copper mine, called Escondida, was
fined $93 million
for extracting water and causing what a Chilean court called “irreparable
damage.”
The mining industry is bracing for change. A law to increase royalties is
working through the legislature. And the Constitutional Convention is weighing
provisions that could require more local decision-making.
Joaquin Villarino, president of the Mining Council, the industry lobby, said
both could diminish Chile’s appeal to investors. He voiced particular worry
that some of the Convention members appeared to be against mining altogether,
though he didn’t name any. “I hope this is not what we will have in our
Constitution,” he said, “because Chile is a mining country.”
The Convention is also likely to make water a public good. But another
question will bear on the industry even more: Is brine — the saltwater beneath
the desert — technically water? Mining companies assert it is not, because it
is fit for neither human nor animal consumption.
“There is a clear separation between what is coming from the mountain, that is
the continental water, and what you have in the brine in the Salar de
Atacama,” Mr. Díaz said.
Brine extraction is currently governed by the mining code. The new
constitution could change that. It could call brine water.
Crisis in a Bright Lagoon
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Paula Espíndola, a member of the Lickanantay community, who
lives in an oasis in Soncor, near the Atacama salt flats.
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In the shadow of Lascar, not far from the SQM mine, shimmers a lagoon
encrusted in bright, white salt. Jordán Jofré Lique, a geologist who works
with the Atacama Indigenous Council, walks along its edge. A solitary flamingo
crosses the salt crust.
The bird is looking for food, mainly brine shrimp, and this afternoon the
lake is unusually dry. Mr. Lique, 28, isn’t sure why. But it worries him.
The health of the salar (salt flat in
Spanish) constantly worries him, considering two major forces beyond his
control: the warming of the planet and the mining industry’s extraction of
water here in one of the world’s driest regions. The flamingo gives up its
search, unfurls its pale pink wings and flies.
Mr. Lique, a Lickanantay man, knows the tracks of the salt flat. His
grandfather herded sheep and goats here.
He was once set to go work for a mining company. It was a path to a good
salary. Instead, he found himself studying the effects of mining on his
people’s land. “Maybe it was an act of God or life’s circumstances,” he
said.
Some Indigenous people say mining companies have divided their communities
with offers of money and jobs. Mr. Lique’s organization is shunned by some
people because it accepts research funds from Albemarle, an American company
that also mines lithium locally.
His group has installed more than a dozen sensors to measure water levels,
salinity and temperature. He is particularly worried about “the mixing
zone,” a sensitive ecosystem, where freshwater coexists with saltwater
underground. The bright evaporation ponds act like mirrors, which Mr. Lique
suspects heats the air.
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Independent research has found
declining soil moisture and ground cover in the salt flat, along with rising daytime
temperatures, evidence of a strong correlation between the expansion of
lithium mining and the drying of the area.
A government census has recorded a slight decline in the Andean flamingo
population in the Atacama since 1997, whereas their numbers remain
unchanged elsewhere in Chile. Alejandra Castro, a park ranger in charge of
flamingo reserves, suspects climate change.
SQM says its monitors show brine levels decreasing marginally in the
mixing zone, and that the flora and fauna remain healthy.
The Atacama is full of surprises. Parts of it are so dry the ground is
sharp and craggy, with no vegetation. Then the landscape changes suddenly,
giving way to ankle-high shrubs, or a forest of towering tamarugo trees. A
dirt road twists through the bare ocher hills, depositing you abruptly in
a ravine carrying mountain spring water.
Mr. Lique sees the compounding effects of climate change. Water on his
family’s farm, near the mine, evaporates more quickly. Rains are more
extreme.One alfalfa patch didn’t grow this year. The corn is short.
But Mr. Lique is most worried about how the extraction of so much brine
could change the delicate equilibrium of sun, earth and water, especially
amid climate change. “The best scenario is that it doesn’t get worse than
this,” he said. “The worst scenario is that everything dries up.”
Clues to the Future
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Dr. Dorador, a microbiologist and member of the
Constitutional Convention, at the Antofagasta market.
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Dr. Dorador, the Constitutional Convention member, walks through a busy
market in her hometown, Antofagasta. “The Constitution is the most
important law in the country,” she tells a man selling mangoes.
He listens politely.
Dr. Dorador, 41, describes what the assembly is discussing — water,
housing, health care. She explains the timeline: a draft constitution by
July, followed by a national vote.
Behind her, a man yells out the price of corn. Another is selling rabbits.
One woman vents about shoulder pain. A few tell her they have no time.
Dr. Dorador became drawn to the microorganisms that have survived for
millions of years in the salt flats. “We can learn a lot of things about
climate change studying the salares,
because they are already extreme,” she said. “You can find clues of the
past and also clues of the future.”
Dr. Dorador is vying to be the convention’s president. She wants the
constitution to recognize that “humans are part of nature.” She bristles
when asked if lithium extraction is necessary to pivot away from fossil
fuel extraction. Of course the world should stop burning oil and gas, she
says, but not by ignoring yet unknown ecological costs. “Someone buys an
electric car and feels very good because they’re saving the planet,” she
says. “At the same time an entire ecosystem is damaged. It’s a big
paradox.”
Indeed the questions facing this Convention aren’t Chile’s alone. The
world faces the same reckoning as it confronts climate change and
biodiversity loss, amid widening social inequities: Does the search for
climate fixes require re-examining humanity’s relationship to nature
itself?
“We have to face some very complex 21st century problems,” said Maisa
Rojas, a climate scientist at the University of Chile. “Our institutions
are, in many respects, not ready.”
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A natural freshwater pond in the Salar de Atacama.
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NOTE: John Bartlett contributed reporting.
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