From the Lithium Triangle to the Latin American quarry: The shifting geographies of de-fossilisation

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic represented a watershed in the dynamics of global socio- environmental change. Against this transforming scenario, extractive pressures on lithium reserves in the Global South increased. Furthermore, the Lithium Triangle also witnesses the unfolding tensions between the Asian block and the Atlantic world, visible centrally in the dispute between the United States and China. We hypothesise that the Lithium Triangle, made up of the salt flats of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, has given way to a Latin American lithium-bearing. Methodologically, the research combines data collected over a decade on the lithium debate, bibliographic review, statistics, interviews with key informants, and participant observation. After the pandemic, a booming lithium market and its price growth resulted in an attempt to sustain a more substantial presence in national states. The paper argues that, because of post-pandemic geo-political transformations, we are now witnessing a new post-pandemic reality in lithium deposits and salt lakes. The latter reflects the increasing pressures from the Global North on reserves met with a repertoire of rather heterogeneous actions of institutional and social resistance by the countries of the Global South to resist them.