31 detrimental effects to the environment and the surrounding community. Therefore, a more robust system of oversight and examination than those that currently exist is necessary for mining. Specifically, the Secretariat of Mining or provincial mining authority should appoint a team of environment and mining experts to monitor any given mining area. The team would be responsible for keeping all mining activities in check in terms of environmental compliance. The teamwould convene to discuss projects more frequently than every two years, ideally on a biannual schedule. There are two major advantages of this improved oversight. First, environment violations can be caught early and the resulting effects greatly mitigated. Second, as science and human understanding of the environment evolve, newly discovered problems may be identified and rectified in a timely manner. Any such novel discovery should be considered immediately through a regular evaluation because elongated delays could be detrimental to the environment and surrounding communities. When an evaluation detects possible environmental harm, project operations should be halted immediately, and the process remedied accordingly. At the same time, the responsible entity should provide reparations to local stakeholders for any inflicted harm. Argentine mining laws are convoluted and can be difficult to navigate, which can lead to barriers to entry for companies, both foreign and local, looking to start new projects. This effect is made worse by the fact that every province has its own separate set of rules, and all mining projects must be in accordance with both national and provincial laws. Furthermore, the laws do not offer enough protection to local indigenous communities or local competitors because of their outdated regulations. Therefore, Argentina should work to simplify their regulations to attract more lithium mining proposals, both foreign and local, while also establishing proper negotiation procedures between local communities and mining companies. They should encourage healthy competition between the companies so that the proposal most beneficial to local communities is awarded themining rights. They also should work with provincial governments to standardize mining laws across provinces. Finally, their regulations should be set up in such a way that mining activities are regularly monitored for possible local harm. Water Consumption, Human Health, and Local Economies The lithium in Argentina can be found in the arid central-northern part of the country in a region known as Salinas Grandes near the Andes mountains. This region consists of large flatlands covered with salt and other minerals, appearing shiny white during daytime (Dargám, 1994). These salt flats contain underground, mineral-rich brine deposits that contain highly diluted lithium. To extract lithium, miners drill a hole in the salt flat and pump the brine into surface holding ponds where the brine is concentrated with solar radiation over a period of 12 to 18 months. The mixture goes through multiple evaporation cycles in these ponds where multiple chemical compounds are added along with large volumes of freshwater to wash and further enrich the final product—lithium carbonate—along with other crystallized byproducts like sodium, potassium, and magnesium chloride. The lithium carbonate is then transported off-site to eventually obtain battery-grade lithium ion (Meshram et al., 2014). One of the most direct ways in which an expansion of the lithium industry in Argentina can harm local communities is through its massive volume of water consumption. This loss is exacerbated by the fact that the process takes place in already water-scarce locations (Katwala, 2018). This process is extremely water exhaustive, reportedly consuming 500,000 gallons per ton of lithium (Mayyas et al., 2019). For comparison, according to AQUASTAT—the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Global Information System on Water and Agriculture—in 2011, the annual per capita water consumption in Argentina was about 237,094 gallons (FAO, 2019). Argentina produced about 6300 tons of raw lithium in 2019 (Alves, 2021). Effectively, 13,286 individuals’ worth of water consumption was used to extract lithium in Argentina just in 2019. Comparatively, the entire steel-making process, including iron making and coke
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTA0OTQ5OA==