CASE STUDY:

Salar de Maricunga, Atacama, Chile

From Yes to life No to Mining global network ‘On the Frontlines of Lithium Extraction’. Updated November 2024

Extractive projects for lithium on Indigneous lands and sensitive ecosystems are expanding in the Atacama desert of Northern Chile. This has sparked a nationwide environmental struggle with implications for Australian as well as other transnational mining companies.

Salar de Maricunga is a salt lagoon located in the Atacama desert that incorporates lands of the Colla Indigenous people, who depend on the salt flat and surrounds for farming and artisanal industries. The area contains a National Park (Tres Cruces) and Ramsar-listed wetlands; the ecosystem comprises a fragile balance of flora and fauna evolved for one of the earth’s driest climates at 3,700 metres in altitude. The global lithium boom has accelerated industrial expansion since 2019. The salt lake system  is covered with mining concessions, including parts of the National Park, impacting on water tables and ecosystems.

Maricunga historically has suffered from the impacts of gold mining by Canadian company Kinross, who was responsible for the desecation of about 70 hectares in the biological corridor  Pantanillo-Ciénaga Redonda, part of the Ramsar site Complejo Lacustre Laguna del Negro Francisco y Laguna Santa Rosa.

From 2018, the Chilean Government approved several new lithium projects – without proper environmental assessment or the free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) of Indigenous Colla communities. The most advanced of these is Salar Blanco, now 100% owned by Australian company, Lithium Power International. The $570 million Salar Blanco project is projected to produce 20,000 tonnes per annum of lithium carbonate over 20 years. Profits will flow overseas to Australian, Canadian and multinational investors, and the lithium is destined for Japan and China. While neighbouring company SIMCO plans to use new direct extraction technology – a purportedly ‘cleaner, greener’ process – Salar Blanco will use conventional, water-intensive evaporation extraction methods. Environmental experts fear that any new mining in the salar may permanently destroy its fragile ecosystems within two decades.

In 2020, Colla communities pursued legal proceedings to revoke the environmental licence of the Salar Blanco and SIMCO projects, alleging the companies excluded them from consultations – violating their rights as Indigenous people. In January 2022, the Regional Government of Atacama filed a case against the Ministry of Mining concerning whether changes in government policies related to lithium exploitation for Chile’s ‘green energy’ transition were made without public participation or assessment of environmental impacts. 

Lithium has been designated a ‘strategic mineral’ under Chile’s mining law since 1979, with priority given by the State to its exploitation over any environmental protection laws – and over water, which is owned by the State. Under the law, efforts to mitigate environmental risk are at the discretion of the company, and state oversight regarding companies’ obtaining of social licence is weak. 

In 2022, as Chile attempted to launch an ambitious rewrite of its Pinochet-era constitution, Indigenous land and water defenders across the country mobilised to call for  local struggles around green extractivism to be taken seriously. Though the constitutional reforms failed, these struggles for justice continue to be supported within the broader Latin American anti-colonial movement based on water justice. Grassroots groups such as the Colla are also aligned with wider and international networks, including OPSAL (Observatorio Plurinacional de Salares Andinas), Yes to Life No to Mining and War on Want.