Indigenous activists in the Salar del Hombre Morto. Credit: Susi Maresca
With a landmark ruling, on March 14 an Argentine court suspended the issuance of new lithium mining permits in the area of the Salar del Hombre Muerto, recognizing the catastrophic impacts on the local water sources, the environment, and the livelihoods of local communities.
“Although the ruling does not stop the operations of current projects, it’s a welcome first step,” says Santiago Kozicki, lawyer and member of the local organization Asamblea Pucarà(1), who supported the Indigenous leader Román Guitián to bring the case to court in 2021, on behalf of the community Atacameños del Altiplano de Antofagasta de la Sierra.
“The Supreme Court of Catamarca sets a historical precedent in environmental law. It establishes – as a constitutional obligation – that the provincial state has to carry out a cumulative and integral environmental impact assessment taking into account the different mining projects operating in the area. It also recognizes that there is an irreversible environmental damage, as mining operations have dried up a local river. And until this new environmental assessment is presented, the local government cannot issue permits for new mines or the expansions of current ones,” explains Kozicki(2).
Despite its dark name, “Salar del Hombre Muerto” (the salt flat of the dead man) is a scenic, volcanic and breathtaking territory, located in the northwestern province of Catamarca. For centuries, Indigenous and local communities living near the salt flat have preserved this precious ecosystem, protected the common goods, and used responsibly the fresh water from the rivers Los Patos and Trapiche. Since 1998, though, the arrival of several international mining companies – supported by international finance institutions such as IDB-Invest and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) – altered the ecosystem and biodiversity of the Salar, and has made the life of the people living in the area more and more difficult.
Water – already scarce in this arid territory – is disappearing quickly. For the families who have llamas, goats or sheep to feed, finding water and food for their animals is becoming a daily challenge.
The impacts of climate change are being exacerbated by the operations to extract lithium, a mineral that requires huge quantities of water to be processed: it is estimated that every metric ton of lithium requires 1,9 million liters of water. According to some studies, one mining project alone (such as Livent’s Phoenix Project) consumes in two weeks what all the 2000 people living in Antofagasta de la Sierra consume of freshwater in a year.
As lithium is used in the batteries for the electric vehicles, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) there might be a 40-fold increase in demand for lithium by 2040. And Argentina – which alone accounts for 21% of the world’s reserves – is a key player in the global lithium rush.
“Where are we transitioning to?” asks Veronica Gostissa, lawyer and member of Asamblea PUCARÁ. “They are calling it just energy transition, but this is not just at all. The companies extract lithium here and then they sell it outside. And what are we left with here? The river Trapiche has already disappeared, and this has catastrophic consequences not only for the local farmers but for all the people living here.”
In the Salar del Hombre Muerto alone, there are eight lithium mining projects. One of the biggest ones is Sal de Vida. Once fully operational, the project should extract brine from the Salar through eight pumping wells and produce up to 600,000 tons of lithium carbonate, that will then be exported to Europe and the United States. Sal de Vida heavily impacts also the fresh water sources, as the project includes an aqueduct to extract water from the river Los Patos and bring it to the processing plants.
“In the name of the so-called green energy transition, the common goods of the Global South are being sacrificed to meet high demand for resources in the Global North. Under the current energy transition model, we remain a sacrifice zone for the Global North, exploited to maintain its levels of overproduction and overconsumption,” says Leandro Gomez, coordinator of the Investment and Human Rights Program at the Argentine organization Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (FARN).
Sal de Vida was originally owned by Galaxy Resources Ltd. In August 2021, the company merged with Orocobre Ltd and created the lithium chemicals company Allkem Ltd. Even though local communities and non-governmental organizations had already raised serious concerns about the project, in July 2023 the IFC granted a 180 million USD loan for the Sal de Vida project. In October 2023 IDB-Invest, the private arm of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), followed suit and provided another $50 million USD.
“International financial institutions like IFC and IDB-Invest have a responsibility to respect human rights and protect the environment,” says Ivahanna Larrosa, Regional Coordinator for Latin America at the Coalition for Human Rights in Development. “Yet, they have chosen to ignore the concerns of local communities and the studies presented by several civil society organizations. They pushed forward a project like Sal de Vida without conducting meaningful consultations and without presenting a cumulative environmental impact assessment, despite the warnings around the destructive impacts for the people and the environment. This is neither green, nor just.”
Local communities living near the Salar del Hombre Muerto have long been raising their voices to protect their territories, through collective assemblies, campaigns and activities to raise awareness about the importance of protecting the local rivers and defending their rights to water. But their voices have often been ignored, or silenced.
Immediately after the Supreme Court ruling, the Indigenous cacique Román Guitián received death threats. This is not the first time that people resisting the expansion of mining projects face reprisals. As documented in a briefing about the Sal de Vida project published by Asamblea Pucarà, FARN, Fundacion Yuchan and Bank Information Centre, in October 2019 several members of a local family were arrested in their homes and then displaced. The mining companies forcibly took their ancestral land, to create a shortcut for their trucks (the so-called mining bypass). A month later, after a peaceful demonstration, a local leader was summoned by the police and other community members were arbitrarily arrested for alleged “threats”. Another person was fired from her job as a retaliation for their activities to raise awareness around the mine’s impacts.
The story of the communities near the Salar del Hombre Muerto should send a warning message to all the companies and development banks that are interested in investing in lithium mining. To be truly just, the energy transition cannot imply creating sacrifice zones, where rivers run dry, local communities’s rights are violated, and projects are imposed without their consent and without respecting environmental safeguards. To be truly just, it needs to ensure that all people can live with dignity, can speak freely, and can access and protect the common goods.
To learn more:
- “Sal de Vida: A risky lithium mining project in Argentina” (May 2023) – By Asamblea Pueblos Catamarqueños en Resistencia y Autodeterminación (PUCARA), Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (FARN), Fundación Yuchan, and the Bank Information Center (BIC).
- “Fallo histórico: comunidades indígenas y asambleas socioambientales frenan a mineras de litio” (March 2024) By Manuel Fontenla for Tierra Viva
- “Antofagasta de la Sierra: Entre la transición energética y la vida en un territorio minado” (July 2022) – By Camila Parodi for Climate Tracker
- “Lithium mining in Salar del Hombre Muerto, Argentina” – Environmental Justice Atlas
- “Lithium: Here’s why Latin America is key to the global energy transition” (January 2023) World Economic Forum
- “Argentine court in key lithium region halts new permits over environmental concerns” (March 2023) Lucila Sigal for Reuters
- “Una comunidad argentina frena a las mineras que explotaban litio después de que se secara un río” (March 2023) By Agustin Gulman for El Pais
(1) – Asamblea PUCARÁ is a collective movement in Catamarca that brings together environmental groups and defenders, who take collective actions to defend life, water and their territory. Asamblea PUCARÁ is one of the partners of the Community Resource Exchange, a system – hosted by the Coalition for Human Rights in Development – to facilitate collaborations and co-develop strategies with and among communities defending their rights in the context of international investments and development projects. To find out more about the work of Asamblea PUCARÁ, check out their social media pages on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter/X.
(2) – The court case specifically looked at the impacts of the project Phoenix, owned by the lithium giant Livent (that in December 2023 merged with Allkem creating Arcadium Lithium). One of the key concerns raised in the case was the lack of environmental impact assessment on the cumulative impacts of the eight mining projects in the area, as well as irregularities in the assessment phase and lack of meaningful consultations with local communities. To obtain their permits, the companies so far have publicly presented assessments recognizing only the impacts of their specific activities, without taking into account the presence of the other mines despite they all operate in the same hydric basin.
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