Narrator: Beneath Bolivia's surreal salt flats
sits the largest deposit of lithium in the world.
And now, Chinese and Russian energy companies
are getting ready to mine it.
The lightweight metal is known as "white gold,"
because it's essential for making rechargeable batteries
that power things like computers, mobile phones,
and electric cars.
Global production has nearly quadrupled
over the last decade,
but it's still not enough.
So battery manufacturers around the world
are eyeing up the Lithium Triangle,
the name given to the high-altitude salt flats
in Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina.
This is where over half of the world's known supply
of lithium is stored.
Narrator: The lithium here in Chile is locked away
in underground saltwater, or brine.
Billions of gallons are pumped to the surface every year,
where it is left to evaporate and concentrate.
Mining companies also use
millions of gallons of fresh water,
and in one of the driest places on Earth,
locals are scared of what that will do
to their already scarce water supplies.
And they worry they won't get their fair share
of the white gold rush unfolding in their own backyard.
Narrator: Mining the Lithium Triangle looks inevitable
in the rush towards an all-electric future.
But what is the true cost?
José Morales has lived near Bolivia's salt flats
his entire life.
He makes a living growing quinoa
and selling wool from his llamas.
There is very little rainfall,
and the nearby river that used to provide water
is all but dried up.
So José now pumps groundwater from wells.
Narrator: In early 2023,
the Bolivian government granted a mining license here
that would massively scale up lithium extraction.
People like José are afraid
that's just going to make the drought worse.
Narrator: We'll come back to Bolivia.
But for now, neighboring Chile might hold some answers.
These are the Atacama salt flats, a natural wonder,
one of the driest places on Earth,
and a vast source of lithium.
The bright squares are pools of brine
where the water is left to evaporate
and leave behind a mix of salts and minerals.
The more yellow the pond, the higher the concentration.
Narrator: It can take more than 1,000 gallons of brine
to produce enough lithium for just one electric car battery.
Two companies control the right to operate here,
American Albemarle and Chilean SQM.
In 2021, Chile exported almost $1 billion worth
of lithium carbonate,
and satellite imagery shows
just how that has transformed the landscape.
It can take around 18 months
for the brine to move through the series of ponds.
The concentrated lithium brine is then processed
into lithium carbonate,
which is then taken to another factory near the coast,
where it is purified into battery-grade lithium.
The two companies suck out enough brine
to fill an Olympic swimming pool every 20 minutes.
They also draw 32 gallons per second
of fresh water from underground aquifers
for use in the processing factories.
That would fill an Olympic-sized pool in roughly five hours.
It's no surprise that water usage is such a sensitive issue
in one of the driest regions on Earth.
Central Chile has experienced a megadrought since 2010,
the region's longest on record.
Brine is far denser than fresh water, and the two rarely mix,
but regulators worry that pumping so much brine too fast
will increase the risk of freshwater contamination.
And lithium isn't the only thirsty industry here.
Since the 1980s, copper mines have been responsible
for around half of the region's freshwater use.
The Chilean government blame the copper
and lithium industries for a 25-centimeter
drop in the height of the water table.
The copper mines plan to switch
to desalinated water by 2030.
Jorge Muñoz Coca is concerned about the damage
this use of fresh water could be doing to the environment.
Narrator: He is part of the Atacameño Indigenous community
and lives in San Pedro with his three children.
In 2015, he founded an activist collective
to educate people about lithium mining.
Narrator: Jorge says locals lost faith
in the mining industry a long time ago.
In the 1990s,
the Chilean government agreed to hand ancestral lands
back to Indigenous communities,
including the Atacama lithium mines.
Some land was transferred, but crucially, not the mines.
Neither of the two lithium companies in Chile consulted
with locals before starting their operations.
At the time, they didn't need to.
But in 2008, Chile's government agreed
to involve Indigenous people
in any decision that could affect them directly.
Still, it would take another eight years
for one of the companies, Albemarle,
to begin giving over 3.5% of its profits.
That same year, SQM was sued for extracting more brine
than allowed.
SQM recently committed to reduce brine and freshwater use
and monitor their environmental impacts.
Jorge feels there has never been real transparency.
Narrator: And his community's concerns
almost always come back to water.
Narrator: But demand for lithium
shows no signs of slowing down.
It is the ideal metal for batteries,
because it is extremely light
and stores energy very efficiently
compared to traditional batteries.
It would take around four lead-acid car batteries
to get the same amount of energy
as one lithium battery of the same size.
This makes them perfect for maximizing power
without adding much weight or taking up too much space.
A booming electric-vehicle industry
has roughly tripled lithium prices in the last three years
while companies scramble to ramp up production.
So now, all eyes are on Bolivia
and its wealth of white gold.
At more than 4,000 square miles,
the Uyuni salt flat is over double the size
of the Grand Canyon and clearly visible from space.
More than 90,000 visitors
come from all over the world each year
to photograph the shimmering sea of salt.
Antonia Cabrera moved here back in 2009.
That was when Bolivia announced it would invest $900 million
in the lithium industry.
Narrator: Antonia had high hopes that would bring jobs
and prosperity.
Narrator: A state-controlled company
built a small pilot plant, which opened in 2013,
but Bolivia lacked the technical know-how to scale up.
Almost a decade later, the pilot plant was only producing
a few hundred tons of lithium carbonate per year,
a tiny fraction of Chile's exports.
For Antonia, the industry's failure to take off
meant the promises of work came to nothing,
and five of her six children left to find jobs
in other cities.
Today, she lives with her daughter and grandson.
She says even the local school only has one teacher left.
To make things worse,
the pandemic hit the tourism industry hard.
Narrator: Abdón Morales is also disillusioned
after years of high hopes for Bolivia's lithium industry.
He's an active leader for his community
and lives 60 miles from the pilot plant with his daughter.
Narrator: He worked for the lithium company
as community liaison back in 2019.
He was supposed to help recruit workers locally.
But in the end, he says most workers were brought in
from Bolivia's large cities instead.
Now, with the Chinese and Russian companies moving in,
he's worried about his precious water supply.
Narrator: He says water levels have dropped
more than 2 meters over the last two years
because of droughts.
Narrator: Abdón is not against lithium mining.
He just wants any company that comes in to extract the metal
to be open and honest.
Narrator: If you look at Bolivia's history,
you can understand why local communities might be suspicious
of international interest in their natural resources.
Zoom out, and you can see how for more than 500 years,
silver mining has left its scars on the landscape.
It was the Spanish conquistadors
of the 16th century who laid claim
to what's now known to be the largest global silver deposit.
An estimated 8 million enslaved miners lost their lives
in the mines.
Mercury, which was used to refine the silver,
polluted streams and poisoned local ecosystems.
These ancient mines have created untold wealth.
Yet the region of Potosi remains the poorest in Bolivia.
The government is nonetheless optimistic
for the next chapter of its lithium story.
Almost $3 billion of investment
from Chinese and Russian companies
will build an array of new lithium plants
capable of processing an estimated 100,000 metric tons
of lithium carbonate each year.
The Bolivian government says
that it will bring infrastructure and employment.
But with the touted rewards come risks.
They're gambling on a relatively new technology.
It's called DLE, or direct lithium extraction.
Instead of pumping brine to the surface
and waiting for the water to evaporate,
this method separates out the lithium
using a range of filtration techniques.
It can take only a few hours,
but it's unclear how water-
or energy-intensive the process will be.
There are small operations testing this method
in the US and Argentina,
but it hasn't yet been proven to work at scale.
For many Bolivians, this uncertainty breeds concern.
Manuel: We don't know what this agreement says,
this agreement with the Chinese consortium says.
And this is incredible,
because the natural resources are from this,
are from us, are from all Bolivians,
but we have not access with this agreement.
The agreement is closed.
Narrator: Just on the outskirts of Uyuni
lies a stark reminder of what can happen
if grand mining projects go wrong.
The carcasses of over 100 trains lie in the sun,
rusting away, some dating back to the early 20th century.
The town was once a transport hub,
linking the Pacific coast with tin and silver mines
of the high plains of the Andes.
The industry and the local economy collapsed
after the Second World War,
and the trains were left to rot.
The lithium industry here
will need to promise a better future
than that for local communities and the environment
if it is to overcome doubts
that it is anything more than a mirage.