#lithium-mining

#lithium-mining

She also keeps chickens and has planted quince and peach trees and grapevines, which are watered by a stream winding down the hills towards the Indigenous community of Copiapo. But now the huge British-Australian mining multinational Rio Tinto has signed a deal to extract lithium, the white gold of the energy transition, from a salt flat farther up the mountains,

According to a September 2025 report issued by Comité Cívico del Valle and Earthworks, Controlled Thermal Resources' proposed lithium mining operation, the Hell's Kitchen Lithium and Power Project, will have significant environmental impacts on the surrounding area. The operation, which is still in the beginning stages, will divert at least 6,500 acre-feet of fresh water each year, straining natural resources in an arid region that's already struggling to combat drought.

It was meant to be the world's grand fix for the climate crisis: nations would make their economies greener by transitioning to renewable-energy technologies, electrifying transport and digitalizing the global economy to reduce material use. After years of fraught negotiations, countries agreed to this global transition at a momentous summit in Paris in 2015. But the fix has proved to be more complex.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump is considering as much as a 10 percent stake in Lithium Americas, a Canada-based lithium mining company. Reuters reported on Tuesday that the White House is considering taking a stake in the company, citing two people familiar with the matter. The possible investment comes as part of the $2.2bn loan from the US Department of Energy for the company's Thacker Pass mining project in northern Nevada, the largest planned project of its kind in the Western Hemisphere.

Growing up near Bolivia's Uyuni salt flats, Franz Ali Ramos remembers playing in the high-altitude wetlands near his home during the rainy season. It was a beautiful recreation area for us and for animals, he says. Now, the wetlands have given way to cracked, sunbaked earth a change that Ali Ramos blames on nearby operations by Bolivia's state lithium corporation, Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB).

Raquel Celina Rodriguez observes that the once lush Vega de Tilopozo is now dry, highlighting the stark impact of climate change on the region's landscape and ecology.

The Hualapai tribe regards H'a'Kamwe' as a sacred healing place, symbolizing their connection to the land, threatened by proposed lithium mining activities nearby.