With the demand for electric batteries sky-high, mining companies are moving to the salt flats of the Andes, where over half of the world's known lithium reserves are stored. But locals are concerned about damage to their scarce water supplies and fear they will not benefit from the white gold rush occurring in their own backyard.
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00:00 Beneath Bolivia's surreal salt flats sits the largest deposit of lithium in the world.
00:08 And now Chinese and Russian energy companies are getting ready to mine it.
00:14 The lightweight metal is known as white gold because it's essential for making rechargeable
00:19 batteries that power things like computers, mobile phones and electric cars.
00:25 Gold production has nearly quadrupled over the last decade, but it's still not enough.
00:31 So battery manufacturers around the world are eyeing up the lithium triangle, the name
00:35 given to the high-altitude salt flats in Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.
00:41 This is where over half of the world's known supply of lithium is stored.
00:52 The lithium here in Chile is locked away in underground salt water, or brine.
00:57 Billions of gallons are pumped to the surface every year, where it is left to evaporate
01:02 and concentrate.
01:04 Mining companies also use millions of gallons of fresh water, and in one of the driest places
01:09 on earth, locals are scared of what that will do to their already scarce water supplies.
01:17 And they worry they won't get their fair share of the white gold rush unfolding in their
01:21 own backyard.
01:32 Mining the lithium triangle looks inevitable in the rush towards an all-electric future.
01:37 But what is the true cost?
01:44 Jose Morales has lived near Bolivia's salt flats his entire life.
01:49 He makes a living growing quinoa and selling wool from his llamas.
01:56 There is very little rainfall, and a nearby river that used to provide water is all but
02:00 dried up.
02:03 So Jose now pumps groundwater from wells.
02:06 In
02:33 early 2023, the Bolivian government granted a mining licence here that would massively
02:38 scale up lithium extraction.
02:41 People like Jose are afraid that's just going to make the drought worse.
02:52 We'll come back to Bolivia, but for now, neighbouring Chile might hold some answers.
03:00 These are the Atacama salt flats, a natural wonder, one of the driest places on earth,
03:06 and a vast source of lithium.
03:09 The bright squares are pools of brine, where the water is left to evaporate and leave behind
03:14 a mix of salts and minerals.
03:17 The more yellow the pond, the higher the concentration.
03:30 It can take more than a thousand gallons of brine to produce enough lithium for just one
03:35 electric car battery.
03:38 Two companies control the right to operate here, American Albemarle and Chilean SQM.
03:43 In 2021, Chile exported almost $1 billion worth of lithium carbonate, and satellite
03:50 imagery shows just how that has transformed the landscape.
03:55 It can take around 18 months for the brine to move through the series of ponds.
04:02 The concentrated lithium brine is then processed into lithium carbonate, which is then taken
04:07 to another factory near the coast where it is purified into battery-grade lithium.
04:13 The two companies suck out enough brine to fill an Olympic swimming pool every 20 minutes.
04:19 They also draw 32 gallons per second of fresh water from underground aquifers for use in
04:24 the processing factories.
04:26 That would fill an Olympic-sized pool in roughly five hours.
04:31 It's no surprise that water usage is such a sensitive issue in one of the driest regions
04:35 on earth.
04:37 Central Chile has experienced a mega-drought since 2010, the region's longest on record.
04:45 Brine is far denser than fresh water, and the two rarely mix, but regulators worry that
04:50 pumping so much brine too fast will increase the risk of fresh water contamination.
04:57 And lithium isn't the only thirsty industry here.
05:01 Since the 1980s, copper mines have been responsible for around half of the region's fresh water
05:06 use.
05:07 The Chilean government blamed the copper and lithium industries for a 25-centimetre drop
05:13 in the height of the water table.
05:15 The copper mines plan to switch to desalinated water by 2030.
05:23 Jorge Muñoz Coca is concerned about the damage this use of fresh water could be doing to
05:29 the environment.
05:30 "Mining always tries to show that they are sustainable, that they are improving,
05:38 a constant improvement.
05:39 And the truth is that we can't contact that information."
05:46 He is part of the Atacameño indigenous community, and lives in San Pedro with his three children.
05:53 In 2015 he founded an activist collective to educate people about lithium mining.
05:58 "We didn't know much about lithium mining.
06:01 At one point we thought that lithium was extracted from rocks, just like copper mining."
06:08 Jorge says locals lost faith in the mining industry a long time ago.
06:14 In the 1990s, the Chilean government agreed to hand ancestral lands back to indigenous
06:19 communities, including the Atacama lithium mines.
06:23 Some land was transferred, but crucially not the mines.
06:28 Neither of the two lithium companies in Chile consulted with locals before starting their
06:33 operations.
06:34 At the time, they didn't need to.
06:36 But in 2008, Chile's government agreed to involve indigenous people in any decision
06:42 that could affect them directly.
06:44 Still, it would take another eight years for one of the companies, Albemarle, to begin
06:49 giving over 3.5% of its profits.
06:53 That same year, SQM was sued for extracting more brine than allowed.
06:58 SQM recently committed to reduce brine and freshwater use, and monitor their environmental
07:04 impacts.
07:08 Jorge feels there has never been real transparency.
07:11 "It's not a real community relationship where we have someone from the mining industry
07:18 to tell us our worries, our complaints about the mining industry."
07:30 And his community's concerns, almost always, come back to water.
07:34 "We have a very significant relationship with water.
07:39 It's a shame that there is so much exploitation in this area, but for us it's a peaceful
07:50 area."
08:02 But demand for lithium shows no signs of slowing down.
08:07 It is the ideal metal for batteries, because it is extremely light and stores energy very
08:12 efficiently compared to traditional batteries.
08:15 It would take around four lead-acid car batteries to get the same amount of energy as one lithium
08:21 battery of the same size.
08:24 This makes them perfect for maximising power, without adding much weight or taking up too
08:29 much space.
08:31 A booming electric vehicle industry has roughly tripled lithium prices in the last three years,
08:37 while companies scramble to ramp up production.
08:41 So now all eyes are on Bolivia and its wealth of white gold.
08:48 At more than 4,000 square miles, the Uyuni salt flat is over double the size of the Grand
08:53 Canyon and clearly visible from space.
08:58 More than 90,000 visitors come from all over the world each year to photograph the shimmering
09:02 sea of salt.
09:10 Antonia Cabrera moved here back in 2009.
09:14 That was when Bolivia announced it would invest $900 million in the lithium industry.
09:30 Antonia had high hopes that would bring jobs and prosperity.
09:45 A state-controlled company built a small pilot plant, which opened in 2013, but Bolivia lacked
09:50 the technical know-how to scale up.
09:54 Almost a decade later, the pilot plant was only producing a few hundred tonnes of lithium
09:58 carbonate per year, a tiny fraction of Chile's exports.
10:06 For Antonia, the industry's failure to take off meant the promises of work came to nothing
10:11 and five of her six children left to find jobs in other cities.
10:16 Today she lives with her daughter and grandson.
10:19 She says even the local school only has one teacher left.
10:24 To make things worse, the pandemic hit the tourism industry hard.
10:36 Adon Morales is also disillusioned after years of high hopes for Bolivia's lithium industry.
10:43 He's an active leader for his community and lives 60 miles from the pilot plant with his
10:48 daughter.
10:59 He worked for the lithium company as community liaison back in 2019.
11:04 He was supposed to help recruit workers locally.
11:08 But in the end, he says, most workers were brought in from Bolivia's large cities instead.
11:14 Now with the Chinese and Russian companies moving in, he's worried about his precious
11:18 water supply.
11:30 He says water levels have dropped more than two metres over the last two years because
11:35 of droughts.
11:36 "When we were here in 2009, we were five metres over. This water is clean. In this time, there's little water."
12:04 Adon is not against lithium mining.
12:07 He just wants any company that comes in to extract the metal to be open and honest.
12:29 If you look at Bolivia's history, you can understand why local communities might be suspicious
12:34 of international interest in their natural resources.
12:38 Zoom out and you can see how, for more than 500 years, silver mining has left its scars
12:44 on the landscape.
12:47 It was the Spanish conquistadors of the 16th century who laid claim to what's now known
12:52 to be the largest global silver deposit.
12:55 An estimated 8 million enslaved miners lost their lives in the mines.
13:00 Mercury, which was used to refine the silver, polluted streams and poisoned local ecosystems.
13:07 These ancient mines have created untold wealth.
13:11 Yet the region of Potosi remains the poorest in Bolivia.
13:17 The government is nonetheless optimistic for the next chapter of its lithium story.
13:23 Almost $3 billion of investment from Chinese and Russian companies will build an array
13:28 of new lithium plants, capable of processing an estimated 100,000 metric tonnes of lithium
13:34 carbonate each year.
13:37 The Bolivian government says that it will bring infrastructure and employment.
13:41 But with the touted rewards come risks.
13:44 They're gambling on a relatively new technology.
13:47 It's called DLE, or direct lithium extraction.
13:52 Instead of pumping brine to the surface and waiting for the water to evaporate, this method
13:56 separates out the lithium using a range of filtration techniques.
14:01 It can take only a few hours, but it's unclear how water or energy intensive the process
14:06 will be.
14:08 There are small operations testing this method in the US and Argentina, but it hasn't yet
14:13 been proven to work at scale.
14:17 For many Bolivians, this uncertainty breeds concern.
14:22 We don't know what this agreement says, this agreement with the consortium, the Chinese
14:28 consortium says.
14:30 And this is incredible because the natural resources are from us, are from all Bolivians.
14:40 But we have not access with this agreement.
14:43 The agreement is closed.
14:44 Just on the outskirts of Uyuni lies a stark reminder of what can happen if grand mining
14:54 projects go wrong.
14:56 The carcasses of over a hundred trains lie in the sun, rusting away, some dating back
15:02 to the early 20th century.
15:05 The town was once a transport hub linking the Pacific coast with tin and silver mines
15:10 of the high plains of the Andes.
15:13 The industry and the local economy collapsed after the Second World War, and the trains
15:18 were left to rot.
15:23 The lithium industry here will need to promise a better future than that for local communities
15:27 and the environment if it is to overcome doubts that it is anything more than a mirage.
15:32 [MUSIC]
15:42 (chimes)