From socio-environmental conflict to responsible lithium mining: understanding the Governance of Dispossession from the salt flats of Chile and Argentina

Abstract

Globally, decarbonisation policies are driving interest and speculation around the extraction of minerals such as lithium, which is mostly found in Indigenous and rural territories in the Puna de Atacama, within the transborder Circumpuneña Region. In this deployment, capital expansion has driven public-private strategies that seek to respond to territorial tensions and expand mineral extraction. Based on militant research situated in long-term relations with territorial resistances and nature protection initiatives in the region, in this article, we analyse this set of practices in four salt flats in Chile and Argentina. We argue that lithium extractivism expands through a ‘governance of dispossession’ model that responds to an emerging global scenario marked by the emergence of new public-corporate arrangements pushed by global powers seeking to ensure their access to so-called critical minerals more responsibly. These strategies also adapt to the local contexts marked by conflicts and tensions between Indigenous communities, mining companies, and State agencies to achieve legitimation. Moreover, the dispossession dynamics linked to lithium exploitation are enabled by a social engineering developed not only by mining corporations and State institutions, but also by car makers, civil society organisations, international cooperation organisations and, eventually, both public and private research centres. We conclude that these adaptations, far from being a solution to socio-environmental conflicts and Indigenous demands for FPIC, translate into a sophistication of the impacts of green extractivism in the Puna de Atacama. As we observe lithium companies' progressive adaptation of voluntary mining standards, we suggest that understanding the social and material impacts of brine mining in the Andean salt flats through independent, transdisciplinary studies is essential for impactful research and rightful policymaking.