Argentine lithium a boon for some, a downfall for others
Anahi Jorge, 23, works for a lithium mining company in Argentina and earns four times the salary of a local government worker in her village of Susques.
And while she welcomes the income of around $1,700 a month – a fortune for most in economic crisis-wracked Argentina – she laments the impact on critical water supplies in her city and the wider Jujuy province.
“Lithium is good and bad at the same time,” Jorge told AFP.
“The water issue is harmful to us, but (lithium) is good for the people who work there.”
Lithium is a crucial ingredient in electric car batteries and crucial to the global shift away from fossil fuels.
However, there are growing concerns about the impact on groundwater resources in regions already prone to prolonged droughts, as lithium extraction requires millions of liters of water per plant per day.
Susques, with fewer than 4,000 inhabitants, is one of the closest settlements to the Olaroz salt flat, home to two of Argentina’s four lithium production plants.
With its neighbors Chile and Bolivia, Argentina forms the so-called ‘lithium triangle’ of Latin America, where the metal nicknamed ‘white gold’ is found in greater quantities than anywhere else on Earth.
According to the US Geological Survey (USGS), about 56 percent of the world’s 89 million tons of identified lithium reserves are in the region.
Argentina is the world’s fourth largest producer of the metal.
In a country where almost half of the population lives below the poverty line, environmental problems can take a back seat to more immediate needs.
“It’s very hard to refuse the lithium favor,” Jorge said.
Before the factory, she said, young women like her had no choice but to move to the provincial capital to work as domestic servants for a pittance.
– ‘Nowhere to go’ –
Concrete and brick buildings have appeared among the mud houses of Susques as the local economy has seen some money seep in from the lithium boom.
However, the community still does not have adequate sewerage or gas pipeline infrastructure.
Some residents, many of them indigenous, have used their savings from years of work on lithium plants to start their own businesses, provide transportation for workers or start small hotels.
Susques city representative Benjamin Vazquez told AFP that 60 percent of the population works in lithium.
But it is not a stable prospect.
The price of a ton of lithium fell from almost $70,000 in 2022 to just over $12,000 this year, the kind of dramatic fluctuations that bring massive job losses.
“Most of the guys here say, ‘I’m going to finish high school and work in the mining industry,’” said Camila Cruz, 19, who lives in Susques and is studying medicine online.
“They don’t realize that mining is not a job that will last forever. You will generate income, but once it’s over you won’t be able to go anywhere if you haven’t studied,” she told AFP.
– ‘Major consequences’ –
Unlike in Australia – where the metal is mined from rock – in South America it is mined from salars, or salt flats, where salt water containing lithium is brought to the surface from underground briny lakes to evaporate.
Projects like Olaroz evaporate between one and two million liters of brine for every ton of lithium, while another 140,000 liters of freshwater are needed to clean the extracted metal, according to Argentina’s CEMA Chamber of Environmental Entrepreneurs.
Susques resident Natividad Bautista Sarapura, 59, told AFP that in the countryside, where she raises livestock as a subsistence farmer, “there is no water.”
“You used to be able to find water at a height of two or three metres, now you have to dig deeper and deeper,” he said.
In its 2024 World Water Development Report 2024, the UN said lithium extraction from salt flats “has major impacts on groundwater and the lives of local communities, as well as the environment.”
French mining group Eramet and China’s Tsingshan recently inaugurated a new lithium production plant in Argentina.
They said it will use a less harmful ‘direct extraction method’ to produce up to 24,000 tonnes of battery-grade lithium carbonate per year at full capacity – enough for 600,000 electric vehicle batteries.
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