Lithium Mining, Formulaic Reporting and The Washington Post
21st December 2016
First, let’s agree that governments around the world regularly screw indigenous peoples. The most frequent governmental screwing occurs when authorities take their land on the grounds that it has not been not properly registered and titled. Additionally, except for the United States, nearly every other government claims to own all mineral rights within its territory. Consequently, royalties from mining concessions awarded by governments go to, yes, the governments. The upshot is that indigenous communities get screwed again when they have to endure the downsides of mining that takes place where they live while receiving none of the benefits that royalties would provide since those monies are diverted into government agencies headquartered far away.
Why am I going on about this? Because The Washington Post could have usefully made these observations in its story, “Tossed Aside in the ‘White Gold’ Rush: Indigenous people are left poor as tech world takes lithium from under their feet.” The article details how various mining companies are beginning to exploit lithium deposits in Argentina’s far northwestern province of Jujuy. The indigenous folks who dwell and herd llamas and goats in those remote Andean valleys happen to live next to giant salt flats that contain millions of tons of lithium. Lithium, of course, is the main element in the batteries that supply electricity to our mobile phones, computers, and electric cars.
The main complaint of the article is that besides new relatively high paying jobs and some minor financial assistance with community projects, the international mining companies that are making millions mining lithium are not sharing much of the proceeds with local communities. Basically, The Post casts the mining companies and the high tech companies that use Argentinian lithium in their products as the villains. Certainly, some of the local Atacama people are pissed off because they feel insufficiently consulted and rewarded. And that’s fine. But the real villains are the national and provincial governments that take the royalties and taxes and then do not use them to provide adequate services to their citizens who live in the region.
It’s all about the Hating Capitalism Narrative, Larry.