Deciphering the impacts of ‘green’ energy transition on socio-environmental lithium conflicts: Evidence from Argentina and Chile

Abstract

The surging demand for lithium-powered electric vehicles and energy storage systems, driven by the low-carbon energy transition, is explored in this study regarding its impact on socio-environmental lithium conflicts up to 2019. We show the limitations of applying resource curse models for this enquiry due to unique characteristics of lithium cases and discrepancies between economic (demand, price and production) and conflict data. Combining quantitative political ecology methods with the explanatory power of ethnographic insights from critical resource geography, this paper builds and investigates a dataset encompassing 13 lithium and 41 non-transition-related resource (‘NTR’) conflicts in Argentina and Chile, mainly using data from Environmental Justice Atlas. Findings reveal distinct patterns between the two conflict types, with lithium conflicts experiencing increased initiation and intensification during 2010–2019 when all of the core conflict events, i.e., human, indigenous and environmental rights violations & reported health hazards, legal actions, mass mobilisations and violent events took place. Forms of mass mobilisations, such as protests and roadblocks, were commonly observed in both lithium (15 events) and NTR (19 events) cases with higher intensity per case in the former whereas rights violations (1 vs 13 events) and legal actions (5 vs 34) were less common in lithium conflicts.We then discuss the impacts of the demand pressure on governments, companies and indigenous residents, with their responses to these influences. We demonstrate that, while State actors became more active in the economic sphere of lithium mining, they abandoned their role as the guarantor of indigenous citizens’ rights until 2019. Economic opportunities, uncertainties and the ‘green discourse’ fuelled by the transition demand led the State and private actors to neglect indigenous concerns, rights and lifestyles. In the absence of state support, indigenous communities asserted their agency through mainly protests and roadblocks navigating the socio-environmental impact landscape amidst evolving state-company-community dynamics.