Once-green wetlands in Chile’s Atacama salt flats now lie dry and cracked, as Raquel Celina Rodriguez watches llamas graze on fading grass.
For generations, her family raised sheep here, but climate change and lithium mining have made survival harder than ever before.
Beneath the Atacama lies one of the world’s largest reserves of lithium — vital for electric cars and solar batteries.
As global demand for lithium soared, production more than doubled between 2021 and 2024, with forecasts predicting a fourfold rise by 2040.
But locals say the cost is steep: lagoons are shrinking, grasslands are disappearing, and water sources are vanishing faster than they can be replenished.
Flamingos have stopped breeding in some areas, and native trees have been dying since at least 2013, scientists report.
Lithium companies pump salty groundwater into evaporation pools, extracting water in a region already suffering long-term drought.
The Chilean government sees lithium as key to the global fight against climate change and a boost to national income.
Yet communities like Peine, where families have lived for centuries, say they are being sacrificed in the name of progress.
While mining firms like SQM promise new technology to reduce damage, residents remain sceptical and fear they are test subjects in an environmental experiment.
Locals argue they’re bearing the burden for a cleaner world they may never benefit from.
“Our sacred birds are disappearing,” says biologist Faviola González. “And it’s our water that’s being taken.”
The race to decarbonise may be fuelling a new environmental crisis — right where water is already life’s rarest resource.
