The blessed Chilean community with lithium deposits: NPR

Atacama Desert, Chile – at the top of a loud path in Socaire, a village on top of the hill in the Chilean desert Atacama, which is a black flag in the wind over Janet Cruz’s house.

The desert sun whiten it into a dark gray blur, but the challenge it represents is still strong.

Above every home in the village, shining in the evening sun, these black flags represent the resistance of the original Likanantay people of Lithium mining, which many say their societies are torn.

Lithium in a saline solution below the wonderful white Atakama salt apartment, which extends across the floor of the valley, has become a global source.

It carries the key to the transition of global green energy, but the Lickanantay societies that have inhabited the region for thousands of years wonder what they earn.

“Our life is in this water,” says Cruz. “On the day it dries, we have died as a culture, and we will have to leave.”

“It can give us all the money and resources they want, but we will never come back to lose.”

Before it is revised, a brine rich in lithium is pumped on the surface and mixed with groundwater, then it is slowly transferred between turquoise pools on the surface of the salt apartment where it evaporates.

The concentrated lithium carbonate salts are driven in wonderful caravans from trucks to the city of Antofagasta on the coast, where they are purified and exported to enter into the batteries – and end up in your mobile phone or your electric car.

Three companies have now created operations on Atacama Salt Flat.

SQM, a Chilean chemical company, has been working since the 1980s. The US -based Albeimarle Corp has obtained a concession since 2015, and the Chinese electric company BYD has been the latest creation.

The three of them all have rental contracts with the State Development Authority in Chile, Corfo, through which funds are allocated for “sustainable development of societies”.

“What I saw in the region is that we are able to work, at least in some way, with every society, which was not before,” explained by Javier Silva, who was running SQM relations with societies about Atacama Salt Flat for a period of three years.

“We see the perceptions improving, although you always find a wide range of opinions.”

As part of their contract with Corfo, SQM shares $ 15 million annually, equally between 19 society in the region; While more payments are made according to factors such as the population and the distance of mining operations.

SQM has agreements with five societies, through which it works on health care, education, culture and infrastructure.

At the same time, residents of a town on the distant end of Salt Flat.

BYD refused to request a comment.

Chile is the second largest producer of Lithium in the world and has the largest known metal reserves, according to what he said American geological survey.

But there is no little consensus among the local population about what to do with the revenue of the lithium mutation.

Some societies surrounding Salt Flat accepted direct compensation from companies. Others insist that the damage that occurs cannot be repaired and cannot be compensated for payments.

“Lithium will not continue forever,” Sarah Plaza, 72, sighed, residing in Penung. “For future generations there will be no water and there will be no work – there will be nothing.”

“It is the wealth of culture and the spirit of society that disappears. It was not as if it was before, and it will not be the same. I no longer see such a bright future.”

Under the plains, scales of salty rocks head towards frozen waves, and pieces of the harsh grass that stand out between them.

Plaza walks quite easily on the rough ground, referring to places or above the unique horizon that is not clear to foreign eyes.

Remember the place where the animals are grazing and the people of Lickanantay swim or wrap their skin in thick clay to relieve joint pain. Plaza says that a few birds visiting these parts after they have preceded others in the search for Flamingo eggs, but a few birds visit these parts anymore.

While you speak, a tanker to pour diesel is withdrawn into a generator that operates a water pump that extracts hundreds of water of water per second from the swamp area where it came one day to graze animals or swimming.

One of the recent studies conducted by scientists at Chile University linked the extraction of groundwater by the mining industry to the collapse of the Atakama salt apartment, which they found that it was drowned by one centimeter annually.

However, the exploitation of the salt apartment is set to increase more.

Starting in January 2031, a partnership between the public and private sectors will take over Lithium contracts with Codelco National Copper, Codelco, making Chilea the majority of Chile.

“It is an unprecedented step for the Chilean mining industry,” said President Gabriel Borik of the public and private partnerships at that time.

“We cannot repeat the same formulas from the past,” said Boric. “We need a state of revenue not only, but also participates in the process of extraction, production and generating fully -value lithium products.”

However, many population in the region does not agree.

“The extracted mentality and profit are already in our societies,” says Rosa Ramos Kolk, an activist in the town of San Pedro de Atakama, who works in environmental tourism. “The social and cultural fabric has already collapsed.”

At the other end of the flat salt in Ben, activist Sergio Copelos urges caution.

“We do not know enough of the influence [of further extraction] It will be on an apartment of Atakama salt, or whether the hydrology in the region is appropriate for the national lithium strategy. “

Every evening, PEINE streets became narrow and escalating in a racket for contracting vehicles while wearing the city.

Cubillos says there was friction in the city where more people arrived to work in the legion industry, which extends Peine resources and leading rental values.

There was even a handful of truck theft and people began to put security fences outside their homes. He says calm has moved from.

“We can disappear quite easily,” says Cubillos, unfortunately, sitting in a small garden funded by an agreement with a mining company.

“This is fear, and I think we all share it. Simply, our culture may stop existence.”