In the main square of Peine, a village of low houses and dirt streets in Chile’s northern Atacama Desert, there is barely any movement. It’s midday and the sun beats down from a cloudless sky. At this hour, the streets remain largely empty. Every now and then, a truck interrupts the silence of its steep and cracked streets. But it’s not always this quiet. Although this small town has just over 300 residents, its population can quadruple after 6 p.m. when workers from across the country return from mining lithium — the mineral that has turned this remote village into a crucial link in the global energy transition.
Peine sits on the edge of the nearly 1,200-square-mile Atacama Salt Flat, or Salar de Atacama. Sitting beneath its surface, dissolved in underground saline waters called brine, is one of the largest, most concentrated reserves of lithium in the world.
The mineral is used in everything from air-conditioning, computers, ceramics, and mood-stabilizing medication to, most recently, electric vehicle batteries and renewable energy storage. As countries and industries around the globe race to adopt more climate-friendly technology, demand for lithium has spiked. The Atacama Salt Flat is an epicenter of this growth. The region contains an estimated 8.3 million tons of lithium and now supplies 30 percent of global demand annually. Chile has a national plan to increase production even more.
But this boom has reshaped the fragile Atacama ecosystem as well as the life of the 18 Indigenous settlements — which are home to the Lickanantay, or the Atacameño people — that surround the salt flat.
Trucks, heavy machinery, and pipelines now crisscross the desert landscape, transporting lithium-laden brine extracted from underground wells to a network of evaporation ponds. Under the blazing Atacama sun, water evaporates from the mixture, leaving behind piles of salt and lithium.
After evaporation, the lithium chloride from the Salar de Atacama is loaded on to trucks and carried across the desert, kicking up dust along the route to the Chilean coast. In the town of Antofagasta, the material is delivered to a chemical plant to be refined into lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide. It is then bagged, sent 40 miles north to the Port of Angamos in Mejillones, and shipped off to destinations such as China, Korea, Japan, and the United States.
Peine — once a town of “peaceful and healthy living,” according to Sergio Cubillos, president of the community — has become a thoroughfare for contractors’ trucks and buses in the evening. Residents, newly concerned for their safety, have installed bars on their windows and gates around their patios. “There are truck thefts, and there’s drug and alcohol use. People tend to keep to themselves more,” Cubillos said. Black flags on the facades of some homes in Peine reflect the residents’ discontent.
According to the president of the Peine Community, Sergio Cubillos, this locality has become a transit route for trucks and contractor buses. In several communities surrounding the Atacama Salt Flat, black flags on building facades reflect residents’ discontent with the future of lithium extraction. Muriel Alarcon / Grist
Then there is the critical problem of water. Mining in northern Chile “uses volumes of water comparable to the flows of the Loa River,” the longest waterway in the country and the main water source for the region, said Christian Herrera, an expert in hydrogeology in arid areas at the Catholic University of the North in Chile. One recent study found that the Atacama region where lithium-rich brine is pumped is sinking at a rate of up to 0.8 inches per year. It is also where groundwater levels have decreased the most.
The surrounding towns have seen their already scarce drinking supplies decline as the lithium mines boom. Toconao, a community east of the salt flat, and some towns surrounding San Pedro de Atacama have reported experiencing water shortages. Every night, households in Peine have their water cut off to refill the tanks that supply the city.
Cubillos understands that lithium is essential for a world without fossil fuels, but he wants to see more regulation. “[I hope] the time never comes when someone says: ‘You know what? You’ll have to leave because there is no more water, no more land left,’” he said.
The Lickanantay have inhabited the world’s driest nonpolar desert for millennia. They lived as hunters, herders, and farmers. In Kunza, the native language of the Atacameños, the land, or Mother Earth, is called Patta Hoiri and water, puri.
The region also happens to be rich in minerals: Volcanic and magmatic activity millions of years ago deposited them, and the Atacama’s exceptionally arid climate preserved them. As one biologist put it, the Atacama Desert is a “geological photograph.”
Mining companies first flocked to the region in the early 20th century in search of copper. Soon, mining camps and entire towns rose up around extraction sites. The industry pumped money into the rural economy: Mining helped build the chapel of the San Roque Church in Peine, the local school, and a soccer field. It has also been a critical source of formal employment for residents.
But the recent demand for lithium has far outpaced the region’s previous extraction rates, leaving local residents grappling with the environmental and societal impact of a rapidly growing industry — with little oversight from the nation’s regulators.
The country of Chile owns the mining rights to the Atacama Salt Flat. The Chilean Economic Development Agency, or Corfo, manages the agreements and leases with private companies operating and producing lithium in the region: Albemarle and SQM, which has among its shareholders the Chinese company Tianqi Lithium and the Ponce Lerou family, the latter which has ties to former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. A new public-private partnership between SQM and Codelco, the state-owned copper company, will also operate in the Atacama Salt Flat from 2025 to 2060, with Codelco holding a 50 percent stake plus one share.
According to the Chilean Copper Commission, which is responsible for generating statistics and reports on mining in Chile, global lithium demand is expected to reach 3.8 million metric tons of lithium carbonate equivalent (a standardized measurement of lithium) by 2035 — up from just 310,000 metric tons in 2020. That represents a twelvefold jump.
In 2023, Chilean President Gabriel Boric introduced the National Lithium Strategy to tap into this surging market. The plan seeks to increase lithium production in the country by 70 percent by 2030 and to restore Chile as the world’s leading producer of the mineral, a position it held until 2017 when it was outpaced by Australia.
“No one denies that there has been so-called ‘development,’” said Cubillos, referring to how mining has long contributed to the local Atacama economy. “But the main complaint here is the lack of government support.”
Unlike Australia, where lithium is mined from hard rock using complex and costly chemicals, in Chile the process involves brine extraction, “aided by the exceptional arid and sunny climate,” explained Hugo Romero, an expert in geography and climatology at the University of Chile.
Aguayo Araos / Anadolu via Getty Images
These conditions are what make the Atacama Salt Flat ideal for low-cost extraction, economically speaking, “because the inputs are almost entirely natural,” he said. But he cautions that the water extracted with the brine evaporates and is lost to the atmosphere, disrupting the socio-ecological and hydro-social balance of the area. Simply put, lithium mining “is drying out the desert,” said Mauricio Lorca, who researches lithium and its impact on Indigenous communities at the University of Talca.
Three decades ago, an influx of mining companies prompted local Indigenous leaders like Cubillos, to organize under the Council of Atacameño Peoples, or CPA in Spanish, representing the 18 communities surrounding the salt flat. The CPA has become the key negotiator with mining companies and employs legal advisers to defend its territory.
Some agreements, however, have sparked tensions. A decade ago, CPA signed an unprecedented cooperation, sustainability, and mutual benefit agreement, under which Albemarle committed to delivering 3.5 percent of its annual sales to the Atacameño people. While some believe the communities should economically benefit from the mining happening in the region, others “want to return to their previous, peaceful way of life,” Cubillos explained. Lorca, from the University of Talca, observes that “these transactional, albeit redistributive, relationships are transforming the interethnic relations of Indigenous communities into economic ones.”
Alexis Romero, a prominent figure and former president of the Council of Atacameño Peoples, has become a central figure in the debate. From the community of Solor, located in the northern part of the salt flat, he emphasized that the CPA has resolved “not to be partners or part of lithium production, to promote territorial unity, and to occupy every decision-making space concerning lithium” — though it has not dissuaded individuals from working in the mines.
The CPA is also demanding guaranteed access to water. They are asking state entities, such as the Ministry of Science and the General Directorate of Water, which manages and regulates Chile’s water resources, for studies on the impact of the projected extraction on their land through 2060. As Romero put it, “Our ancestral ways of life are now at serious risk of disappearing precisely because of the lack of water.”
In 2017, the CPA convened environmental representatives from all 18 communities to form a volunteer group focused on studying water availability in the desert. By 2019, this group had formalized, trained field technicians, recruited Atacameños and non-Atacameño water experts, and transformed into the CPA’s environmental unit. “The dream [was] that the communities could have their own data to debate with companies and the state,” explained Francisco Mondaca, an environmental engineer from Toconao who leads the initiative.
For Mondaca, who as a child helped his grandmother plant crops in the Atacama, a fair and sustainable transition to clean energy must be responsible and respect the fragility of this environment. “Otherwise, the much heralded energy transition will mean the extermination of an ancient nature and culture,” he said.
“Not all of us are against mining, but we do want to know the state of health of our basin,” said Edwin Erazo, a pharmacist from the community of Cúcuter, who is part of the CPA’s environmental unit. “We don’t want to be a sacrifice zone.”
The CPA does not act alone in defending the salt flat and its waters; Atacameños activists have teamed up with researchers and scientists to advocate for the region’s cultural, environmental, and biological significance.
Back in the early 2000s, Sonia Ramos, a Lickanantay healer from Chuquicamata, watched as her community lost access to its water due to the construction of a reservoir that charged farmers unaffordable prices. Confronted with this crisis, she felt compelled to act.
“From that point on, I realized that without this kind of stance and critical thinking, the next generation could be forced to migrate,” said Ramos from her home in San Pedro de Atacama, outside of the salt flat. Over time, her resistance made her a national figure in water defense.
In 2009, she walked 978 miles — almost the equivalent of walking from New York to Miami — to Chile’s capital city, Santiago, demanding the permanent cancellation of permits for a geothermal plant operating at the El Tatio geysers. The site is the largest geyser field in the Southern Hemisphere, known for its steam columns and fumaroles, and holds Indigenous significance as a ceremonial site.
“I thought it would set an example for my people, but I was wrong,” she said. She hoped her actions and the movement she led would change her community’s priorities around natural resources. But soon after her march, the CPA signed its cost-sharing agreement with mining companies. “Our people have had no other opportunities. The state has never viewed our land through any lens other than extraction,” she explained. “Here, it’s the transnationals who govern.”
She founded Ayllus sin Fronteras, an organization “uniting people in harmony between ancestral and non-ancestral ways” to preserve Atacameño cultural heritage and promote the idea that the Atacama Salt Flat is more than just a resource reserve — it is the grandfather heart (abuelo corazón) of Lickanantay culture. “It irrigates the entire greater Atacama with its underground rivers,” Ramos said. Her organization has put together various resistance strategies against natural resource extraction, ranging from summer schools and research projects with local and international universities that integrate science and ancestral knowledge to signature-collecting campaigns and public demonstrations.
Often invited to speak at forums, Ramos, whose father worked for the mining industry, has been connecting with researchers to study alternatives to natural resource extraction. “The desert holds great answers for humanity,” she said. “The groundwater holds the memory of all planetary processes.”
Her leadership has drawn researchers like Manuel Tironi, a sociologist at the Institute for Sustainable Development at the Catholic University of Chile, who has collaborated with Ramos on studies about how extractive industries disrupt the water balance and biodiversity, as well as the cultural and spiritual integrity of the Lickanantay world.
Ramos has also collaborated with Chilean biologist Cristina Dorador, an associate professor at the University of Antofagasta and principal researcher at the Center for Biotechnology and Bioengineering. Dorador’s research studies the biodiversity of Chile’s salt flats and their microbial richness. Her team’s recent findings warn that increased lithium extraction has led to declining flamingo populations, particularly among endemic species.
In 2020, during her participation in Chile’s Constitutional Convention, which aimed to draft a new constitution for the country, Dorador tried amending the draft constitution article that classifies salt flats as “mines” under Chilean law. “Salt flats aren’t mines; they’re ecosystems,” she said. While her edited text made it into the draft, the proposed new constitution was ultimately rejected by an overwhelming majority of the Chilean population.
Despite the setback, Dorador has continued to advocate for the region’s vital ecological role. “I knew it was urgent to study the salt flats, at least to preserve a record of what they once were,” she said. She eventually left her lab and switched full-time to fighting to preserve Chile’s salt flats.
Lucas Aguayo Araos / Anadolu via Getty Images
Mining continues to ramp up under Chile’s National Lithium Strategy, with companies exploring previously untouched parts of the Atacama and other salt flats in the country.
The SQM and Codelco partnership is promoting the “Salar Futuro” project, which commits to “building a governance model to foster a sustained relationship with the communities around the salt flat” and to implementing new extraction methods that achieve “a more efficient and sustainable production, that is, producing more lithium with less brine and no use of continental water.” In a statement for Grist, SQM and Codelco assured that among other things, this partnership “protects the local ecosystems of the salt flat and the surrounding communities.”
But even as the government has made funds available for studying these ecosystems, concerns remain about how mining expansion will impact the region. Dorador and her colleagues secured one of these grants and, over the next three years, will study the potential of salt flat microorganisms for everything from storing greenhouse gas emissions to benefiting human health, including as a source of antibiotics, anticancer compounds, and bacteria that break down plastics. “There’s almost no information about these basins; this is a chance to generate knowledge to appreciate ecosystems without exploiting them, as spaces for study,” she said.
In the past, Atacameños practiced the ritual of walking to the salt flat to gather flamingo eggs. The tradition, carried out collectively, provided food for families and facilitated trade with neighboring agricultural communities. To preserve the species, local customs dictated that some eggs should always be left in the nests. Flamingo feathers played a role in traditional ceremonies, including Talatur, a ritual still practiced today, “so that we don’t lose the water,” according to Cubillos. During the ceremony, participants clear irrigation channels and chant to the water in Kunza.
Today, this ecosystem has disappeared, the landscape is desiccated, and the flamingos no longer arrive.
The severe water shortage led Peine to file a lawsuit against Minera Escondida, a leading copper extraction company, in 2022. Later, the Consejo de Defensa del Estado, or State Defense Council — tasked in Chile with representing and safeguarding the public interest in environmental litigation — joined the case, adding Albemarle and the mining company Zaldívar. The companies were accused of continuously extracting water resources from the Monturaqui-Negrillar-Tilopozo Aquifer, a key source of groundwater in the Atacama Desert, vital for recharging ecosystems like Las Vegas de Tilopozo, a sacred space for the Atacameño people. A scientific study in which Mondaca’s environmental unit participated was presented as evidence in the lawsuit.
In December, the First Environmental Court of Antofagasta approved a settlement agreement between Peine, the State Defense Council, and the mining companies over responsibility for the environmental damage to the aquifer and Las Vegas de Tilopozo, which had profoundly affected the way of life and customs of the Indigenous community. Under the agreement, the mining companies must take measures to restore the aquifer and Las Vegas de Tilopozo, as well as compensate the residents of Peine for social, economic, and environmental damages.
“It’s not right for the world to benefit from these resources while we’re the ones paying the price,” Cubillos said. He added: “We want Peine to exist for future generations.”
