Environmental Knowledge Production at the Lithium Frontier
Pere Nogués-Martín
City University of New York
“This is like playing soccer on a slanted field,” said Juan Diego, a mechanical engineer committed to grassroots environmental advocacy. “We don’t have the equipment, personnel, or funding that lithium mining corporations or government agencies use to generate environmental data.”
It was a late September night, and we were gathered in the communal assembly hall of an Indigenous village in southwestern Bolivia. That day, local leaders, elders, and members of the village’s water commission had worked alongside environmental activists to set up a monitoring system that could track changes in water levels and composition in the salt flats and wetlands. Now, they sat together, reviewing the first results of their survey.
Gonzalo, an environmental engineer who had been collaborating with the community for years, nodded. “We’re just putting numbers to what you already know,” he said. “Your wetlands, where your cattle graze, are drying up. But if we want to be heard in legal and political arenas, we need measurable evidence to challenge YLB” (Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos, the Bolivian Lithium Corporation).
Seated around the room, other villagers listened intently. Many had spent the day tending quinoa fields or guiding llamas to higher pastures, their daily routines already shaped by unpredictable rainfall and shrinking wetlands. They spoke of the changing taste of water from a drying spring, the disappearance of once-abundant flamingos, and the shifting color of the salt flats—undeniable signs of a changing environment.
A woman in the audience hesitated before raising her hand. “Community members who work as miners say we can't blame the mining companies for the lack of rainfall, can we? Isn’t that because of climate change?”
Leo, an Indigenous leader, responded calmly, addressing the concern with care. “Mama, climate change is real. It’s affecting our region—melting snowcaps, reducing water outcrops, making rainfall more erratic. But mining also consumes water, alters underground flows, and disrupts landscapes in ways that can intensify these changes. It’s not just one or the other—together, their effects multiply.”
Vivian, a human rights lawyer with extensive experience in advocating for Indigenous land and water rights, leaned forward. “That’s exactly where companies find their advantage—exploiting the difficulty of distinguishing how much damage comes from climate change and how much from their own activities.” She paused, then added, “Uncertainty is part of the problem, but that should not lead us to inaction. The work we are doing together—bringing your knowledge and environmental data into dialogue—is a step toward protecting your land, water, and way of life. What truly matters is that you assert your rights as Indigenous people.”
In Bolivia, public debate on lithium mining is shaped by profound asymmetries in knowledge production and authority. The state-owned lithium corporation (YLB), with vastly greater financial and institutional resources than Indigenous communities, environmental activists, and NGOs, dominates scientific research and controls the framing of environmental risks. This imbalance allows YLB to shape public discourse, often dismissing Indigenous and activist concerns as anecdotal, unscientific, or exaggerated. Meanwhile, critics must rely on selectively disclosed data from company reports, leaving them structurally disadvantaged in scientific and policy debates. These disparities are further reinforced by a contradictory legal framework, where environmental protections coexist uneasily with expansive mining rights. Weak regulatory enforcement and a political culture that normalizes extractivism limit oversight, while the promise of mining royalties as a driver of regional development entrenches the perception of environmental harm as an inevitable cost of economic progress.
Yet, despite its dominance in discourse, the state’s control over lithium extraction has not translated into an operational industry. Since its inception in 2008, the state-led lithium initiative has faced persistent setbacks, never advancing beyond the pilot phase. This stagnation has raised doubts about the government’s technical and scientific capacity to develop lithium independently. After years of nationalist rhetoric, the Bolivian government has now turned to Chinese and Russian companies to push the project forward. This shift marks a transition from largely unproductive evaporite-based extraction methods to Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE)—a technology unproven at scale, requiring adaptation to the unique conditions of the Bolivian salt flats and generating significant chemical residues with no clear disposal plan. Crucially, key studies that should precede extraction—such as Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) and hydrology or geochemistry reports—remain undisclosed. In a region where hydrology remains poorly studied, these omissions leave local communities in a state of uncertainty, amplifying fears of environmental degradation and dispossession.
Amid this uncertainty, Indigenous and environmental organizations are mobilizing to challenge official narratives and generate alternative collaborative knowledge. However, these processes are not without tensions. Within communities, perspectives on mining vary, with some supporting extraction due to economic opportunities, others opposing it for its environmental and social consequences, and many navigating pressures from political groups or personal livelihoods tied to the industry. Gatherings like the one described above serve as crucial spaces for discussing environmental risks, yet they also reveal disagreements over the causes of ecological changes, as the attribution of specific phenomena to mining or climate change is often contested. Collaborative research aims to produce more comprehensive and culturally relevant solutions, empowering communities by addressing their concerns, enhancing decision-making, and promoting holistic approaches to environmental issues. However, local knowledge is not static or inherently resistant; in many cases, it is being eroded by socio-economic transformations and generational shifts, while also shaped by histories of extraction, as many community members have long participated in mining itself.
The morning after the gathering in the communal assembly hall, local representatives led the activists and me on a fieldwork trip through different salt flats, some at 14,000 feet high, revisiting 50 sites where water samples had been collected earlier. At each location, they measured parameters such as pH, conductivity, oxygen levels, and temperature, ensuring consistency in the data and monitoring for any significant changes. As we worked, Juan Diego explained that while these measurements alone do not directly confirm contamination or the presence of heavy metals, significant deviations can signal shifts in water composition—potential indicators of environmental harm—warranting more costly and specialized laboratory analyses.
During this trip, an activist biologist cataloged local flora and fauna, paying special attention to a 1,000-year-old yareta—a native shrub that has survived centuries of mining-driven exploitation, including extensive harvesting for firewood. As he recorded measurements, coordinates, and photographs, he explained that these shrubs are key to maintaining moisture in such arid environments. Leo, the Indigenous leader, enriched the cataloging process by sharing traditional plant uses, particularly for medicinal purposes. Guiding the biologist to key species and explaining where different plants thrive within the wetlands, he emphasized the deep historical relationship between local communities and their environment. He described how, for centuries, people gathered these plants alongside salt and llama products for trade with neighboring ecological zones, highlighting the enduring dependence of Andean populations on this landscape. The collaboration between the biologist and Leo not only provided a clearer picture of plant diversity, abundance, distribution and ecological roles but shed light on the ongoing transformations in a region where extensive studies remain scarce.
We stopped for lunch beside a shepherds' hut near a wetland, with a salt flat stretching out before us. As we ate, the Indigenous representatives discussed long-standing communal practices, such as constructing small irrigation canals to manage water flows and sustain wetlands. These canals, which require continuous maintenance, expand grazing areas and increase soil moisture in the arid high-altitude environment. Such interventions underscore that these ecosystems are far from untouched—human activity has long been integral to their dynamism.
Yet, despite recognizing the fluid and evolving nature of these ecosystems, activists face the challenge of producing "stable" scientific facts that meet the expectations of environmental science and policy. This process, which Fabiana Li (2015) describes as "stabilization," involves reconciling the inherent complexity of Andean ecosystems with the demand for standardized, objective, and verifiable data. While such stabilization is crucial for advocating against the impacts of lithium mining, it risks oversimplifying the nuanced, context-dependent ecological practices of Indigenous communities.
Environmental knowledge production at Bolivia’s lithium frontier is not merely a technical or scientific endeavor; it is a deeply political struggle over whose expertise is recognized, whose observations are validated, and whose interests shape the trajectory of the territory. The efforts of Indigenous communities and environmental activists to document environmental changes highlight the fundamental tension between different ways of knowing. While dominant frameworks privilege quantifiable and standardized data, local knowledge is rooted in lived experience, intergenerational transmission, and a holistic understanding of ecological relationships. Yet, as history shows, local communities have not always been passive victims of environmental degradation; they have also played a role in shaping the landscape, sometimes in ways that have led to ecological harm (i.e., by contributing to the indiscriminate logging of yareta). At the same time, their interventions have been crucial for sustaining ecosystems (i.e., by constructing canals that regulate moisture distribution). This contradiction challenges simplistic narratives that frame Indigenous groups as either protectors or destroyers of nature. Instead, it reveals the historically situated and often ambivalent ways in which communities interact with their environments—sometimes adapting, sometimes exploiting, but always engaged in a process of negotiation with the land.
These entanglements call for a more nuanced approach to environmental governance—one that moves beyond rigid scientific or legal frameworks and instead embraces the co-production of knowledge through social, political, and ecological interactions. The lithium frontier is not merely a site where scientific expertise dictates policy but a contested arena where different knowledge systems interact, compete, and sometimes converge. Understanding these negotiations requires moving beyond static categories of "modern science" versus "traditional knowledge" and recognizing that all forms of knowledge are shaped by power relations and historical processes. Acknowledging this dynamic is essential for crafting governance frameworks that are not only scientifically sound but also socially just, reflexive, and attuned to historical shifts and ecological uncertainties.
References
Li, Fabiana. 2015. Unearthing Conflict: Corporate Mining, Activism, and Expertise in Peru. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.