Energy transition and “green” extractivism around the lithium industry. New socio-territorial conflict in northern Argentina

Abstract

Consolidating the energy transition towards the decarbonization of the global economy demands the growing consumption of minerals and strategic resources. The advance of extractive projects on lithium deposits in the last decade in Latin America and in Argentina in particular implied that local sources of conflict emerged in the region that brought together different collective actors in opposition and resistance. The present work analyzes, based on a qualitative case study strategy on the "Mesa de Comunidades de la Cuenca de Guayatayoc y Salinas Grandes", the cycle of social conflict that emerged in the Argentine northwest as a result of the exploitation of lithium. This research seeks to respond to the main social actors involved and to identify the forms of struggle they adopt, with their demands and main programs. In this way, the work is organized as follows. In the first place, the concept of socio-territorial movement is reviewed, as a specificity of certain social movements in order to account for the demands, practices and programs of the collective subjects that intervene. The second section describes the rise of the lithium industry in Argentina and the emergence of socio-territorial movements in opposition to the advance of the extractive export model. The third section analyzes, in particular, the case of the Mesa de Comunidades de la Cuenca de Guayatayoc y Salinas Grandes in northwestern Argentina as the main socio-territorial movement, its demands and programs. It is concluded that the emergence of communities as a socio-territorial movement transcends the dispute around lithium as a strategic resource for the energy transition, encompassing a broader dispute for the construction of an alternative territoriality of change based on self-determination.