Twentieth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

Argentina’s extractivist economic model has expanded to lithium in the past two decades, aided by a federalist system of government, lax environmental regulations, and the increasing presence of China. The resulting socioeconomic consequences represent “accumulation by de-fossilization”, the privatization and concentration of public goods driven by a burgeoning international market for lithium-ion batteries. The capitalist discourse that dominates international climate negotiations considers a two-part energy transition: the decarbonization of electricity generation, and the electrification of the world economy. Lithium-ion batteries are considered the most viable technology for the replacement of fossil fuels for stored energy, and 68% of lithium reserves are found in the salt flats of South America’s “lithium triangle” – Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile. This paper will synthesize five key dimensions of energy – technology, economy, society, politics, and the environment – to describe and problematize the growth of lithium in the global economy. Using Argentina as a case study, I argue that the current path of the energy transition that prioritizes maintaining the resource-intensive lifestyles of the global North reproduces neocolonialism and is ultimately unsustainable for combating climate change. I focus on the localized environmental costs of the evaporative method of lithium mining, and link lithium to the ongoing conflict between indigenous activists and the Morales provincial government in Jujuy. The geopolitics of lithium are thus a critical yet often overlooked aspect of how unequal consumption patterns between the global North and South result in spatially displaced socioeconomic and environmental costs to the global energy transition.