Just a few years ago, spaceships flew through the vast expanses of Solar de Ujuni in Bolivia, one of the largest salt pans in the world.
The barren, white and almost completely flat area of about 11.000 square kilometers inspired George Lucas, the author Star Wars, to place one of the key battles in the film right there The Last Jedi of 2017..
The drained prehistoric lakes in the area left ten billion tons of salt, wrote the Spanish El Pais, but also "one of the largest reserves of lithium in the world".
Seven years later, Bolivia has long been talked about as a leg of the "lithium triangle" where spaceships could soon be replaced by machines designed to extract the metal.
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And the need for it is increasing - we carry lithium in our pockets every day, as it is part of mobile phone batteries, it is also important in the production of electric cars, as well as in medicine.
The search for new sources of lithium has led investors to western Serbia, where Rio Tinto plans to open a mine within project Jadar, but also to South America.
"In the triangle of Bolivia, Argentina and Chile, there are the largest reserves of lithium in the world," says Lucas Ribeiro Mesquita from Brazil's Research Center for Latin American Foreign Policy, for the BBC in Serbian.
"It positions the entire region as a strategic hub for the future of lithium access."
In the meantime, South American lithium has become the subject of "geopolitical disputes between the United States and China," Pablo Ibanez, professor of international relations at the University of Rio de Janeiro, points out in an interview with the BBC in Serbian.
"We just happened to be in the middle of it."
Where is the South American lithium?
Ibanez first heard about the term lithium triangle "not so long ago, around 2017".
Today he is talked about all over the world.
The triangle includes part of the Andes, a mountain range along Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, where more than 75 percent of the world's lithium reserves are located, writes Harvard International Review.
Lithium is concentrated in the salt marshes along the Atacama desert, the driest place on the planet, where it rains. "two to four times in 100 years" - Salar de Ujuni in Bolivia, Salar de Atacama in Chile and Salar del Ombre Muerto in Argentina.
"The main questions are about the method of lithium exploitation from those areas, but also about the locations of the deposits," says Mesquita, a professor at the Federal University for Latin American Integration.
Exploitation in salt pans requires a high level of water consumption, which is very valuable in such arid areas, which affects both the living environment and the locals, he explains.
Workers first drill holes, pumping brine from wells deep beneath the salt crust and depositing it in evaporation pools.
When water evaporates, it leaves behind a mixture of salt, potassium, manganese, boron and lithium, which is then filtered through physical-chemical processes.
The whole process takes between 12 and 18 months.
The issue of lithium has not yet "caused a wider political, economic and social debate" in South America, where, above all, gasoline and gas are at a premium, Mesquita points out.
however, he adds that it's slow
But it is being talked about more and more, especially in Brazil, where reserves have also been found in poor areas in the north of the country, which have therefore received the nickname "lithium valley", explains Ibáñez.
"Prices there immediately started to rise, even for small houses in very poor areas, far from economic centers like Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo," he says.
Brazilian lithium is being explored in the state of Minas Gerais, the second most populous and one of the richest, as well as in Goiás and Amazonas, he added.
"I think Brazil is going to become a big player in lithium very quickly."
Lithium = wealth?
In a world full of batteries, lithium is increasingly important.
So much so that experts see it as one of the most important strategic metals for the future of the planet, so there are announcements that demand will increase triple already during 2025.
Does this mean that the countries of South America will become rich overnight?
Well, not really, writes BBC Mundo.
As they state, it is a long and difficult road from the extraction of lithium to the production of batteries for electric cars or mobile phones.
"It's not enough to have lithium. It's not a guarantee of anything," Jose Lazuen, an analyst at Roskilde, a consulting firm specializing in the metals, minerals, chemical industry and lithium-related markets, told BBC Mundo.
The production chain is very long, and lithium is "just one part of it," he says.
One of the key problems is that the production of batteries requires a high level of technology, especially for lithium in salt pans, because it is not extracted from there like in ordinary mines.
In Bolivia, the salt pans are located at almost 4.000 meters above sea level.
Battery production is mostly close to car manufacturing centers such as the United States, Europe and Asia, quite far from South America.
"That's why the Chinese company will not open a battery factory in South America, only to send the same battery to China later," says Lazuen.
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"Lithium today is essentially completely exported outside the region, mainly to America and China, for production in the energy industries," says Mesquita.
Prema report of the International Energy Agency (IEA), the world's largest lithium producers are Australia, Chile and China.
Although it has significantly less reserves, Australia is a country with greater technological development, and therefore works, and that is the key, he explains.
"Lithium exploration has great potential for wealth creation and development capacity, but there must be adequate structure and conditions for this."
South America is a "geopolitical and historically peripheral region, dependent on foreign investments," he says
"Investors want to do research at the lowest possible cost, and countries depend on their capital to survive."
Arms of a triangle
A particular problem is that companies that want to exploit lithium do not have "guaranteed stability and legal certainty" in all three countries of the lithium triangle.
"China is the main producer of technologies that use lithium, and America is the main consumer, but it would also like to produce, and we are in the middle of that conflict," says Ibanez.
"There are also producers from the region, as well as companies from Australia... It's a complex situation."
- Bolivija
The most complex is perhaps in Bolivia, a country with about 12.000.000 inhabitants, the only one on this continent, along with Paraguay, that does not have access to the ocean.
It is one of the poorest countries in South America, but it is estimated that there are between 21 and 23 million tons of lithium reserves - the most in the world - worth several billion dollars.
And politically it is quite unstable.
At the end of June, General Juan José Zuniga and part of the army occupied the seat of government in the capital, La Paz, which President Luis Arce called an "attempted coup".
Zuniga soon withdrew due to weak popular support and great international pressure.
"Political problems and instability make it difficult for Bolivia to explore lithium more effectively," Ibanez says.
The possibility of a coup has been mentioned before - and it was about lithium.
To guard the reserves, the Bolivian government chose eight companies from America, Russia, China and Argentina.
In the end, agreements were signed only with companies from Russia and China.
Among the rejected companies is the American EnergiKs, part of the conglomerate of Ilon Musk, the owner of Iks and Tesla, one of the largest manufacturers of electric cars in the world.
Musk wrote on social media about a conspiracy that would lead to the resignation of former Bolivian President Evo Morales, all in order to gain access to lithium reserves.
"We will topple whoever we want" he stated in a reply to a tweeter.
He publicly congratulated the Bolivian people on the removal of Morales, who led the country from 2006 to 2019, when he was replaced by current president Luis Arce.
During the election campaign, Arse promised that Bolivia would earn up to 4,5 billion dollars annually from the export of lithium.
Still, data from the Bolivian National Institute of Statistics (INE) show that in 2023, Bolivia exported $14,6 million worth of lithium - just 0,13 percent of total exports.
As the key problem of Bolivia, Mesquita emphasizes the lack of necessary infrastructure, which is why lithium, despite significant reserves, is still "very little explored".
"The authorities are trying, mainly with the help of Chinese investments, to create companies capable of exploiting lithium, but this process is still in the early stages," he says.
Recently, the Bolivian government has been advocating the organization of the countries of the region into one organization, in order to influence the international trade in lithium.
Bolivians, however, do not harvest the fruits because of the lithium in the near their homes, they did not get jobs, nor were they trained for them.
Almost half of the population lives in extreme poverty, according to the data World Bank.
- Argentina
In Argentina, lithium exploration has just begun, and 19 million tons of reserves have been attracting the attention of many companies for years.
At the end of 2022, it was the country with the most lithium extraction projects - as many as 40, the magazine writes Economist.
If this trend continues, it is estimated that by 2027 or 2030 it could overtake Chile, the second country in the world in terms of production after Australia.
Argentina has two factories - with Australian and American capital - and two that are being built, one of them for the production of batteries.
"New deposits are being discovered all the time... I think there are currently 60 companies exploring lithium" in Argentina, Ibanez says.
One of them, the Canadian-Chilean Minera Ekar, made an agreement with six Argentine indigenous communities about lithium from their environment.
It was agreed that each community will receive from 9.000 to 60.000 dollars per year, but the locals say that this is not the case in practice.
Luisa Jorge from the town of Susques, in Huhuj province, in the very north of the country, believes that they are "lithium companies took millions of dollars without returning anything".
Locals also complain that lithium mining has polluted the water they use for livestock and crop irrigation, especially due to high consumption.
"We don't eat lithium or batteries, but we have to drink water," said 48-year-old Veronika Chavez from Salinas Grandes, not far from the lithium mining site. for Euronjuz.
Her fellow citizen Barbara Kuilpidor briskly adds that she just wants "companies to leave her alone" and to "worry about the future of her descendants":
Last year there were also protests, when the locals blocked the road used by the companies, but the government forcibly suppressed them.
Nevertheless, production is growing.
- Chile
Estimates are that there are nine million tons of lithium reserves in Chile, which is extracted jsince 1984writes Euronews.
Of the countries of the triangle, Chile has come the farthest, says Mesquita.
"They are the only ones who started exploitation through national companies, in partnership with international investors," he points out.
The powerful government also contributed significantly incentives.
There are two main mining companies, American Albemarle and Chilean SQMInji's lithium is sold at preferential prices to those who want to open factories for the production of battery parts in the country.
The Chilean government has also announced plans to nationalize the lithium industry.
"We have to invest a little realism. Many people think that we will produce electric cars in Chile, but this is not the case," Victoria Paz, director of strategy and sustainability at the Corporation for the Promotion of Production, told BBC Mundo.
Nevertheless, Chile can become a serious factor in the production of batteries, she believes.
Locals in the areas where lithium is mined, however, are not happy.
It is spent on drawing 65 percent the total amount of water in the Salar de Atacama region, which causes shortages, makes it difficult to grow crops and livestock, and leaves ecological consequences.
A connection has also been established lithium mining and a significant reduction in the number of flamingo birds, formerly common in that area.
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