00:00 Beneath Bolivia's surreal salt flats sits the largest deposit of lithium in the world.
00:08 And now Chinese and Russian energy companies are getting ready to mine it.
00:14 The lightweight metal is known as white gold because it's essential for making rechargeable
00:19 batteries that power things like computers, mobile phones and electric cars.
00:25 Gold production has nearly quadrupled over the last decade, but it's still not enough.
00:31 So battery manufacturers around the world are eyeing up the lithium triangle, the name
00:35 given to the high-altitude salt flats in Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.
00:41 This is where over half of the world's known supply of lithium is stored.
00:52 The lithium here in Chile is locked away in underground salt water, or brine.
00:57 Billions of gallons are pumped to the surface every year, where it is left to evaporate
01:02 and concentrate.
01:04 Mining companies also use millions of gallons of fresh water, and in one of the driest places
01:09 on earth, locals are scared of what that will do to their already scarce water supplies.
01:17 And they worry they won't get their fair share of the white gold rush unfolding in their
01:21 own backyard.
01:32 Mining the lithium triangle looks inevitable in the rush towards an all-electric future.
01:37 But what is the true cost?
01:44 Jose Morales has lived near Bolivia's salt flats his entire life.
01:49 He makes a living growing quinoa and selling wool from his llamas.
01:56 There is very little rainfall, and a nearby river that used to provide water is all but
02:00 dried up.
02:03 So Jose now pumps groundwater from wells.
02:06 In
02:33 early 2023, the Bolivian government granted a mining licence here that would massively
02:38 scale up lithium extraction.
02:41 People like Jose are afraid that's just going to make the drought worse.
02:52 We'll come back to Bolivia, but for now, neighbouring Chile might hold some answers.
03:00 These are the Atacama salt flats, a natural wonder, one of the driest places on earth,
03:06 and a vast source of lithium.
03:09 The bright squares are pools of brine, where the water is left to evaporate and leave behind
03:14 a mix of salts and minerals.
03:17 The more yellow the pond, the higher the concentration.
03:30 It can take more than a thousand gallons of brine to produce enough lithium for just one
03:35 electric car battery.
03:38 Two companies control the right to operate here, American Albemarle and Chilean SQM.
03:43 In 2021, Chile exported almost $1 billion worth of lithium carbonate, and satellite
03:50 imagery shows just how that has transformed the landscape.
03:55 It can take around 18 months for the brine to move through the series of ponds.
04:02 The concentrated lithium brine is then processed into lithium carbonate, which is then taken
04:07 to another factory near the coast where it is purified into battery-grade lithium.
04:13 The two companies suck out enough brine to fill an Olympic swimming pool every 20 minutes.
04:19 They also draw 32 gallons per second of fresh water from underground aquifers for use in
04:24 the processing factories.
04:26 That would fill an Olympic-sized pool in roughly five hours.
04:31 It's no surprise that water usage is such a sensitive issue in one of the driest regions
04:35 on earth.
04:37 Central Chile has experienced a mega-drought since 2010, the region's longest on record.
04:45 Brine is far denser than fresh water, and the two rarely mix, but regulators worry that
04:50 pumping so much brine too fast will increase the risk of fresh water contamination.
04:57 And lithium isn't the only thirsty industry here.
05:01 Since the 1980s, copper mines have been responsible for around half of the region's fresh water
05:06 use.
05:07 The Chilean government blamed the copper and lithium industries for a 25-centimetre drop
05:13 in the height of the water table.
05:15 The copper mines plan to switch to desalinated water by 2030.
05:23 Jorge MuƱoz Coca is concerned about the damage this use of fresh water could be doing to
05:29 the environment.
05:30 "Mining always tries to show that they are sustainable, that they are improving,
05:38 a constant improvement.
05:39 And the truth is that we can't contact that information."
05:46 He is part of the AtacameƱo indigenous community, and lives in San Pedro with his three children.
05:53 In 2015 he founded an activist collective to educate people about lithium mining.
05:58 "We didn't know much about lithium mining.
06:01 At one point we thought that lithium was extracted from rocks, just like copper mining."
06:08 Jorge says locals lost faith in the mining industry a long time ago.
06:14 In the 1990s, the Chilean government agreed to hand ancestral lands back to indigenous
06:19 communities, including the Atacama lithium mines.
06:23 Some land was transferred, but crucially not the mines.
06:28 Neither of the two lithium companies in Chile consulted with locals before starting their
06:33 operations.
06:34 At the time, they didn't need to.
06:36 But in 2008, Chile's government agreed to involve indigenous people in any decision
06:42 that could affect them directly.
06:44 Still, it would take another eight years for one of the companies, Albemarle, to begin
06:49 giving over 3.5% of its profits.
06:53 That same year, SQM was sued for extracting more brine than allowed.
06:58 SQM recently committed to reduce brine and freshwater use, and monitor their environmental
07:04 impacts.
07:08 Jorge feels there has never been real transparency.
07:11 "It's not a real community relationship where we have someone from the mining industry
07:18 to tell us our worries, our complaints about the mining industry."
07:30 And his community's concerns, almost always, come back to water.
07:34 "We have a very significant relationship with water.
07:39 It's a shame that there is so much exploitation in this area, but for us it's a peaceful
07:50 area."
08:02 But demand for lithium shows no signs of slowing down.
08:07 It is the ideal metal for batteries, because it is extremely light and stores energy very
08:12 efficiently compared to traditional batteries.
08:15 It would take around four lead-acid car batteries to get the same amount of energy as one lithium
08:21 battery of the same size.
08:24 This makes them perfect for maximising power, without adding much weight or taking up too
08:29 much space.
08:31 A booming electric vehicle industry has roughly tripled lithium prices in the last three years,
08:37 while companies scramble to ramp up production.
08:41 So now all eyes are on Bolivia and its wealth of white gold.
08:48 At more than 4,000 square miles, the Uyuni salt flat is over double the size of the Grand
08:53 Canyon and clearly visible from space.
08:58 More than 90,000 visitors come from all over the world each year to photograph the shimmering
09:02 sea of salt.
09:10 Antonia Cabrera moved here back in 2009.
09:14 That was when Bolivia announced it would invest $900 million in the lithium industry.
09:30 Antonia had high hopes that would bring jobs and prosperity.
09:45 A state-controlled company built a small pilot plant, which opened in 2013, but Bolivia lacked
09:50 the technical know-how to scale up.
09:54 Almost a decade later, the pilot plant was only producing a few hundred tonnes of lithium
09:58 carbonate per year, a tiny fraction of Chile's exports.
10:06 For Antonia, the industry's failure to take off meant the promises of work came to nothing
10:11 and five of her six children left to find jobs in other cities.
10:16 Today she lives with her daughter and grandson.
10:19 She says even the local school only has one teacher left.
10:24 To make things worse, the pandemic hit the tourism industry hard.
10:36 Adon Morales is also disillusioned after years of high hopes for Bolivia's lithium industry.
10:43 He's an active leader for his community and lives 60 miles from the pilot plant with his
10:48 daughter.
10:59 He worked for the lithium company as community liaison back in 2019.
11:04 He was supposed to help recruit workers locally.
11:08 But in the end, he says, most workers were brought in from Bolivia's large cities instead.
11:14 Now with the Chinese and Russian companies moving in, he's worried about his precious
11:18 water supply.
11:30 He says water levels have dropped more than two metres over the last two years because
11:35 of droughts.
11:36 "When we were here in 2009, we were five metres over. This water is clean. In this time, there's little water."
12:04 Adon is not against lithium mining.
12:07 He just wants any company that comes in to extract the metal to be open and honest.
12:29 If you look at Bolivia's history, you can understand why local communities might be suspicious
12:34 of international interest in their natural resources.
12:38 Zoom out and you can see how, for more than 500 years, silver mining has left its scars
12:44 on the landscape.
12:47 It was the Spanish conquistadors of the 16th century who laid claim to what's now known
12:52 to be the largest global silver deposit.
12:55 An estimated 8 million enslaved miners lost their lives in the mines.
13:00 Mercury, which was used to refine the silver, polluted streams and poisoned local ecosystems.
13:07 These ancient mines have created untold wealth.
13:11 Yet the region of Potosi remains the poorest in Bolivia.
13:17 The government is nonetheless optimistic for the next chapter of its lithium story.
13:23 Almost $3 billion of investment from Chinese and Russian companies will build an array
13:28 of new lithium plants, capable of processing an estimated 100,000 metric tonnes of lithium
13:34 carbonate each year.
13:37 The Bolivian government says that it will bring infrastructure and employment.
13:41 But with the touted rewards come risks.
13:44 They're gambling on a relatively new technology.
13:47 It's called DLE, or direct lithium extraction.
13:52 Instead of pumping brine to the surface and waiting for the water to evaporate, this method
13:56 separates out the lithium using a range of filtration techniques.
14:01 It can take only a few hours, but it's unclear how water or energy intensive the process
14:06 will be.
14:08 There are small operations testing this method in the US and Argentina, but it hasn't yet
14:13 been proven to work at scale.
14:17 For many Bolivians, this uncertainty breeds concern.
14:22 We don't know what this agreement says, this agreement with the consortium, the Chinese
14:28 consortium says.
14:30 And this is incredible because the natural resources are from us, are from all Bolivians.
14:40 But we have not access with this agreement.
14:43 The agreement is closed.
14:44 Just on the outskirts of Uyuni lies a stark reminder of what can happen if grand mining
14:54 projects go wrong.
14:56 The carcasses of over a hundred trains lie in the sun, rusting away, some dating back
15:02 to the early 20th century.
15:05 The town was once a transport hub linking the Pacific coast with tin and silver mines
15:10 of the high plains of the Andes.
15:13 The industry and the local economy collapsed after the Second World War, and the trains
15:18 were left to rot.
15:23 The lithium industry here will need to promise a better future than that for local communities
15:27 and the environment if it is to overcome doubts that it is anything more than a mirage.
15:32 [MUSIC]
15:42 (chimes)
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