Raquel Celina Rodríguez treads carefully as she crosses the Vega de Tilopozo in Chile’s Atacama salt flats.

Once a wetland fed by groundwater springs, the plain is now parched and cracked, punctuated by holes that were once pools.

“Before, the Vega was all green,” she says. “You couldn’t see the animals through the grass. Now everything is dry.” She gestures to some grazing llamas.

For generations, her family grazed sheep here. But as the climate changed and the rains ceased, the grass withered, making their work ever harder.

The situation worsened, she says, when “they” began taking the water.

By “they”, she means the lithium companies. Beneath the Atacama Desert’s salt flats lie the world’s largest reserves of lithium – a soft, silvery-white metal essential for batteries in electric cars, laptops, and solar energy storage systems.

As the world moves towards renewable energy, demand for lithium has surged.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), global consumption rose from around 95,000 tonnes in 2021 to 205,000 tonnes in 2024. By 2040, it is forecast to exceed 900,000 tonnes, with most of the growth driven by the electric vehicle industry.

Local people say the environmental costs have risen alongside demand, raising an uncomfortable question: is the race to decarbonise inadvertently fuelling another environmental crisis?

Chile is the world’s second-largest lithium producer after Australia. In 2023, the government launched a National Lithium Strategy aimed at expanding production through partial nationalisation and encouraging private investment.

The finance minister suggested output could increase by up to 70% by 2030, although the mining ministry insists no firm target has been set.

This year, a key step towards that goal is under way. A planned joint venture between SQM and Chile’s state-owned mining company Codelco has gained regulatory approval to extract at least 2.5 million metric tonnes of lithium metal equivalent annually, with operations extended until 2060.

The government presents this as part of the global fight against climate change and a source of national revenue.

Lithium here is extracted largely by pumping brine from beneath the salt flats into evaporation ponds. The method consumes vast quantities of water in a region already prone to drought.

Faviola González, a biologist from the local indigenous community who works in the Los Flamencos National Reserve, has been monitoring these changes. The reserve, in the heart of the Atacama Desert, contains extensive salt flats, marshes, lagoons and supports some 185 bird species.

“The lagoons here are smaller now,” she says. “We’ve seen a decrease in the reproduction of flamingos.”

She says lithium mining affects microorganisms that feed birds, impacting the entire food chain. This year, flamingo chicks hatched in one location for the first time in 14 years – a modest success she attributes to reduced water extraction in 2021. Still, she says, “It’s small.”

“Before there were many. Now, only a few.”

Groundwater here, flowing from the Andes, is ancient, mineral-rich, and replenishes only slowly.

“If we are extracting a lot of water and little is entering, there is little to recharge the Salar de Atacama,” she explains.

Damage to flora has also been documented. A 2022 report by the US-based Natural Resources Defense Council found that in parts of the salt flats mined by SQM, nearly one-third of native algarrobo (carob) trees were dying as early as 2013 due to mining impacts.

The problem extends beyond Chile. In the same 2022 report, academic James J. A. Blair wrote that lithium mining “contributes to conditions of ecological exhaustion” and may reduce freshwater availability for plants, animals, and humans – though he noted it is hard to find definitive evidence.

Mining inevitably causes environmental harm. “It’s hard to imagine any mining without a negative impact,” says Professor Karen Smith Stegen of Constructor University, Germany, who studies global lithium extraction.

“What [mining companies] should have done from the very beginning was to involve these communities,” she says.

She argues companies should mitigate these impacts through measures such as social impact assessments, which consider effects on water, wildlife, and communities before pumping begins.

Mining firms say they are listening. SQM, a key player, insists it is working closely with communities and conducting environmental studies.

At one of its plants in Antofagasta, Valentín Barrera, SQM Lithium’s Deputy Manager of Sustainability, says the company is trialling new technologies to reduce water use – including direct lithium extraction without evaporation ponds, and systems to capture and reinject evaporated water.

In Antofagasta, he says, over one million cubic metres of water have been recovered, with a transition to the new methods planned from 2031.

Locals remain sceptical. Faviola questions whether the salt flats can withstand reinjected water and fears the area is being used as a “natural laboratory.”

Sara Plaza, another lifelong resident, recalls water levels dropping as far back as 2005, yet mining extraction never stopped.

“The salt flats produce lithium, but one day it will end. Mining will end. And what are the people here going to do? Without water, without agriculture. What are they going to live on?”

“Maybe I won’t see it because of my age, but our children, our grandchildren will.”

She becomes emotional speaking about the future, convinced the industry has taken too much water from an ecosystem already stressed by climate change.

“It’s very painful,” she adds. “The companies give the community a little money, but I’d prefer no money.

“I’d prefer to live off nature and have water to live.”

Sergio Cubillos, leader of the Peine community association, says shortages have forced Peine to overhaul its drinking water, electricity, and treatment systems.

“There is the issue of climate change, that it doesn’t rain anymore, but the main impact has been caused by extractive mining,” he says.

Since the 1980s, he claims, companies have removed millions of cubic metres of water and brine – hundreds of litres per second.

“Decisions are made in Santiago, in the capital, very far from here,” he adds.

He believes the President must involve indigenous people “who have existed for millennia in these landscapes” if the aim is truly to combat climate change.

Sergio accepts lithium’s importance in the energy transition but rejects the idea that his community should be the “bargaining chip”. While some benefits and oversight have been secured, he fears the impact of ramped-up production. Decisions, he says, cannot be made “from a desk in Santiago” but must involve those living in the affected territory.

The government says it has engaged in “ongoing dialogue” with indigenous groups, and that the new Codelco–SQM venture includes provisions to address water use, technology adoption, and community contributions. It insists increased output will rely on new methods to reduce environmental and social harm, and that lithium’s high value could present economic opportunities for Chile.

Sergio, however, worries about the area becoming a “pilot project”. If the technology has harmful effects, he warns, “We will put all our strength into stopping the activity that could end with Peine being forgotten.”

The Salar de Atacama illustrates a global dilemma. Climate change is bringing droughts and unpredictable weather, yet one of the proposed solutions – lithium for renewable energy storage – may be worsening the problem.

Supporters of lithium mining argue it brings jobs and revenue, even if it causes environmental damage. Daniel Jiménez, of Santiago-based consultancy iLiMarkets, goes further, claiming some communities exaggerate the harm to secure pay-outs.

“This is about money,” he argues. “Companies have poured a lot of money into improving roads, schools – but the claims of communities really go back to the fact they want money.”

But Prof Stegen is unconvinced. “Mining companies always like to say, ‘There are more jobs, you’re going to get more money’,” she says.

“Well, that’s not particularly what a lot of indigenous communities want. It actually can be disruptive if it changes the structure of their own traditional economy [and] it affects their housing costs.

“The jobs are not the be all and end all for what these communities want.”

But in Chile, those interviewed did not ask for more money, nor do they oppose action on climate change. Their question is simply why they are the ones paying the price.

“I think for the cities maybe lithium is good,” Raquel says. “But it also harms us. We don’t live the life we used to live here.”

“We all must reduce our emissions,” she says. “In developed countries like the US and Europe the energy expenditure of people is much greater than here in South America, among us indigenous people.”

“Who are the electric cars going to be for? Europeans, Americans, not us. Our carbon footprint is much smaller.”

“But it’s our water that’s being taken. Our sacred birds that are disappearing.”

Faviola doubts electrification alone can solve climate change.

 

 

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