Calcha K, Bolivia – Teófila Cayo Calcina, 56, stands among her rows of quinoa plants, pointing toward the horizon. “The lithium plant is 50 kilometers in that direction. We are worried that mining will leave us without enough water to survive,” she says, clearly discouraged.
Calcina lives with her husband in one of the houses overlooking the central square of the small town of Calcha K, an hour's walk from her quinoa fields, where she grows real quinoa, a variety native to the Uyuni region in Bolivia and considered a “superfood” in Western countries such as the United States and Europe.
The town is home to 400 people who speak Quechua, an ancient Inca language but still widely spoken in South America. This community, where most people's livelihood is linked to growing quinoa and herding llamas, lives on the edge of the Uyuni salt flat in the Potosí region, part of the Bolivian Andes.
The Salar de Uyuni forms the largest salt flat in the world, stretching across nearly 10,500 square kilometers (more than 4,050 square miles), slightly larger than the size of Lebanon, and attracting tourists from around the world who come to marvel at its unique landscape.
In recent years, salt flats like this one have also begun to attract intense interest from “green” industries around the world because the Earth's lightest metals are extracted from lithium-rich brines, typically found in the salt flats.
Last year, geologists discovered a vast two-million-tonne deposit of lithium in the Potosí district, prompting a reassessment of previously estimated resources of the metal in Bolivian soil.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) now estimates that Bolivia has about 23 million tons (more than 20 billion kg) of lithium, about two million tons more than previously thought.
The mineral is a key ingredient for the production of electric car batteries, which countries around the world are rushing to produce in the race to abandon fossil fuels. The president of Bolivia, Luis Arce, has announced that he expects the country to be able to export batteries by the end of 2026.
The new lithium discovery has propelled Bolivia to number one in the world in lithium deposits, followed by Argentina with 22 million tons and Chile with 11 million tons.
This is the so-called “Lithium Triangle”, where the fever for “white gold” is underway.
