The Atacama desert in the far north of Chile
is the oldest and driest on the planet.
It holds more than 40% of the world's lithium, the mineral used to make rechargeable batteries.
Sonya Ramos believes lithium mining is killing this desert.
A growing number of Chilean scientists agree.
And I've come to the Atacama to join her campaign to stop it.
Sonya is leading a protest walk from her home in San Pedro de Atacama,
350 km across the desert, to the regional capital Antofagasta.
She hopes that her protest will force local authorities there to meet her
and hear her case against the lithium mine.
But so far, they've refused to meet her.
Lithium and a global green energy boom
have made Atacama one of the busiest mining districts on the planet.
Last year, Chile exported nearly 1bn dollars of lithium
and it wants to expand its mining operation to meet
growing demand.
But lithium is mined by evaporating the mineral from water
and in this process, around 433bn of water have already been lost from the Atacama salt flats.
An estimated 1.5 trillion more litres will be lost by 2043.
In Chile we are the largest producers of lithium and also one of the largest producers of lithium
in the world.
Our plant in Antofagasta is the largest plant in the world
for production of lithium carbonate.
The process starts when we take the brine, beneath the surface, everywhere around here.
We take this brine and we put it in the solar evaporation ponds.
We started at the beginning when less than 2.2% of lithium.
Here's probably around 4.5% and then in the last pond, with 6% lithium.
That's the highest concentration we can achieve here.
Have you been surprised by recent protests against SQM?
Well, the relation with the communities, of course is a relation that is changing,
it has ups, it has downs.
I think it's a continuous process, there's a lot of information and things happening,
and as a company, we believe it's only with dialogue
and working with the local communities
that we will be able to be here in the long term.
Sonya's protest against the lithium mine has been engulfed in a wave of civil unrest
that has hit Chile.
What began as a student protest against a rise in train fares,
has erupted into an uprising against the far-right
administration of billionaire president, Sebastián Piñera.
Public anger has been fuelled by the shocking brutality of its security forces,
particularly against women.
So far, riot police have killed 23 anti-government protesters,
blinded hundreds and injured and detained thousands more.
Sonya fears that such loud public anger would drown out her protest.
Chile's lithium mines are private industries that pay rent to the government.
A portion of their profits goes back to Santiago in taxes
and they're required to reinvest money in local infrastructure.
But for Sonya, this isn't an issue of fairly sharing profits.
She believes there's no way lithium can be mined
without permanently destroying the fragile desert ecosystem.
She wants it to stop.
The national protest reached Antofagasta shortly before Sonya.
As she approached the city, she received word from the local authorities
that they had changed their minds
and they would meet her to hear her petition.
Several weeks after this meeting an environmental court in Antofagasta
ruled in support of Sonya
and her objection to SQM's plans to expand its lithium mining operation in Atacama.
SQM provided the Guardian with the written response
to this ruling,
saying that it regrets the court's decision.
The company is convinced its plans for expansion would safeguard the environment
and are considering their legal options.
Sonya may have won this fight
but she believes the struggle to save the Atacama
is a much bigger battle.