Brine to Batteries | Thea Riofrancos || Harvard Radcliffe Institute
hello and welcome to the harvard radcliffe institute my name is claudia rizzini i'm the executive director of the fellowship program the institute is one of the world's leading centers for interdisciplinary exploration we bring students scholars artists and practitioners together to pursue curiosity-driven research expand human understanding and grapple with questions that demand insight from across discipline you can be a part of this vibrant community by attending public programs such as this one visiting virtual exhibitions or pursuing the special collections held at the schlesinger library to learn more you can visit radcliffe.harper.edu and sign up to receive more information on news and events we begin the program with the presentation by theory of rankos after the presentation the speaker will respond to questions from the audience please use the q a feature on zoom to submit your questions at any time throughout the program we ask that you keep your questions brief to allow us to address as many as possible in the time that we have together it is my pleasure to introduce this year catherine hampson vessel fellow theorio francos an associate professor of political science at providence college a 2020 andrew carnegie fellow professor rio franco's researches resource extractions renewable energy climate change green technology social movements and the left in latin america in her first book resource radicals from petro-nationalism to post-extractivism in ecuador professor rio francos studies the conflict between the two leftism alive in contemporary ecuador the administrations resource nationalism and emphasis on economic development and second the anti-extractivism of grassroots activists who criticize the government's neglect thoughts nature and the indigenous communities through archival and ethnographic research professor rio francos presents ecuador as a unique case study with its commodity dependent economy and history of indigenous uprising resulting in a better understanding of development democracy and the ecological foundation of global capitalism the peer-reviewed articles have appeared in journals such as cultural studies perspective on politics and world politics and her essence have been featured in outlets including the new york times the guardian boston review the bufflers m plus one descent and jacobin among others iraqis professor rio franco's is working on a new group project prime to batteries the extractive frontiers of the global energy transition which will investigate the politics of transition to renewable energy through the global supply chain of one of its crucial technologies lithium batteries through original and multi-sited field work professor rio francos follows lithium from the moment of extraction in chilean desert in the chilean desert through its distribution across the global supply chains this book will address pressing planetary and political issues as the fate of our planet will relies on a swift transition to new energy sources and these energy systems like were bound abound in political strife prior to coming to radcliffe professor rio franco served as a visiting researcher at the nuclear millennium the investigacion and energia in sociedad in santiago chile as a visiting fellow at the kellogg institute for international study at the university of notre dame and in the visiting researcher at the facalta latino americana de cienza sosales in ecuador professor rio franco's earned her phd at the university of pennsylvania it is my pleasure to give the virtual floor to thiario francos hi everybody um thank you claudia for that wonderful introduction thank you to the radcliff institute and colleagues for the support and intellectual community that has enabled this project i want to also thank my amazing research pro uh partners jack walker and xinjiang shen and of course the donor who established my catherine hampson vessel fellowship we tend to think of the climate crisis in terms of extreme weather and rising seas and we often see the politics of this crisis in terms of tense international negotiations over emissions targets these targets are of course extremely important the world is currently on a path to warming far above the paris agreement's two degree goal and even farther above the un international intergovernmental panel on climate change 1.5 degree goal the justice implications are stark everywhere in the world those least responsible for runaway emissions are most vulnerable to climate-related harm but as exemplified in the current debates in congress over trillions of dollars in infrastructure spending the politics of global warming are just as much about how societies will be transformed to mitigate and adapt to rising temperatures and more frequent hurricanes floods and droughts how those dollars are spent will help determine how much the world heats up they will also determine how societies change in the years ahead this social scientific aspect of the climate crisis the social science of green investment demands far more attention than it's currently getting after all a clean energy transition requires the wide scale deployment of green technologies to harness store and distribute renewable energy to electrify entire sectors of the economy and to transform the built environment retrofitting homes redesigning energy grids and building new transportation infrastructure these transformations in turn raise deep questions who will control the global transition to renewable energy who will benefit and who will bear the costs will the transition reinforce or reduce inequality the energy transition will also challenge how we think about these power relations we tend to think of inequality as either between countries or within countries but the global and multi-scalar dynamics of green capitalism compel us to understand how these dimensions intersect and generate new geographies and those geographies will be shaped by specific minerals oil will matter less but cobalt iron ore rare earths and lithium will matter more with lithium batteries instead of combustion engines cars and buses can get their energy from the grid and be fueled by sun and wind instead of carbon spewing gasoline utility scale batteries also perform a crucial function on those renewable energy grids storing energy when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing lithium batteries which power our cell phones and laptops are therefore essential for addressing the climate crisis they play a key role in decarbonizing the transportation sector the single largest source of u.s emissions but while lithium is needed to mitigate global warming its extraction causes environmental and social harms lithium battery supply chains thus offer a window into the global injustices and emerging geopolitics of the renewable energy transition i first understood this in the desert landscapes of northern chile which supply 30 percent of the world's lithium the salty crust is peppered with red legumes where pink andean flamingos endemic to this ecosystem feed on tiny brine shrimp beneath the surface are underground brine reservoirs in those deposits lithium ions are dissolved in water that's saltier than the ocean in addition to flamingos this salt flat is home to massive installations where brine is pumped to the surface and a raid and evaporation ponds that with the sun's help result in a dense lithium-rich liquid this is the first link in a long chain of electrochemical processing and industrial manufacturing that ultimately produces lithium batteries the impact on the water system of this desert wetland are concerning just one of the two multinational lithium companies pumps out brine at a rate of 1700 liters a second 95 of which is then evaporated extracting lithium involves drying up a lot of water and throwing most of it into the air in the second driest place on earth after antarctica as a result fresh water is less accessible to the 18 indigenous atacameno communities that live on the salt flats perimeter and habitats of species like that flamingo have been disrupted this situation is in turn exacerbated by climate change induced drought and the impacts of extracting and producing copper of which chile is the world's top producer compounding these environmental harms the chilean state has not enforced indigenous people's rights to prior consultation or lithium workers rights to unionize without retaliation as i've discovered over a decade of researching extractive sectors in latin america these conditions are unfortunately commonplace at the frontiers of capitalism's global supply chains the sites where raw materials like iron soy timber coal rare earth elements and water required for industrial production are extracted or harvested in the case of lithium batteries these include nickel cobalt manganese graphite copper aluminum and of course lithium which i'll focus on in today's talk extracting these minerals from the earth's crust at industrial scale carries grave consequences for wildlife freshwater and marine ecosystems and produces enormous quantities of toxic waste it exposes affected communities to harms including respiratory ailments territorial dispossession and outright violence mine workers face severe health and safety risk and minimal protections and all these threats to well-being are compounded by paltry economic benefits and a stark contrast between mining company profits and poverty afflicted mining communities indigenous environmental and human rights activists call these extractive frontiers sacrifice zones in the case of lithium extraction they use the term green extractivism to target the tension of fighting climate change while at the same time producing localized environmental damage at the same time the geopolitics of green technologies are reconfiguring this geography of extraction expanding lithium frontiers to countries in the global north that have long offshored toxic sectors to the global south this shift poses novel challenges and opportunities for a globally just transition in what follows i'll say a bit more about my research methods and sites then i'll give an overview of the raw material requirements for the energy transition with that context in place i'll walk us through three key forces shaping lithium extraction at a planetary scale green straight statecraft green capitalism and resistance to green extractivism these dynamics are relevant well beyond the sector at hand lithium batteries are much more than a tool to combat climate change they are terrains of geopolitical and social conflict bellwethers of a potentially post neoliberal global order and new frontiers in the capitalist appropriation of nature today i'm presenting the initial findings of an ongoing project tracing the global political economy of lithium battery supply chains with a focus on the public policies corporate strategies and grassroots protests shaping their attractive frontiers thus far i've conducted four months of immersive field work in chile and observed three major industry conventions i've interviewed over 60 actors including corporate executives regulators investors scientists lawyers indigenous leaders union organizers environmental activists and ngo staff in chile the us uk and eu given current covid limitations for the past year i've conducted virtual ethnography observing industry and activist webinars as well as analyzing government and corporate documents and media coverage as restrictions ease i'll return to chile and conduct new field work in nevada and portugal these actors places events and texts give me perspective on a process unfolding on a planetary scale mines and their surrounding communities and landscapes strategies devised in corporate boardrooms and public policies developed in the halls of state power ngo pressure campaigns environmental lawsuits and territorial blockades erected by anti-extracted protesters these are all instances of what we should see as a planetary lithium frontier co-constituted by local sites and global processes here the global process in question is the renewable energy transition a transformation with parallels and the 19th century shift to coal and the 20th century shift to oil i investigate the material foundations of a transition often discussed in terms of gleaming technologies and carbon free energy rather than the enormous quantities of earthly matter that will be extracted to build a world powered by sun and wind to grasp this materiality and impacts on ecosystems and populations let's take a look at the forecast for the mineral requirements of green technologies like wind turbines solar panels lithium batteries and electric vehicles for example the world bank predicts that by 2050 the production of new energy technologies will increase demand of graphite and lithium by 500 percent and nearly by 500 percent for cobalt given skyrocketing demand for these minerals along with the prospects for a robust though highly unequal global economic recovery market analysts are predicting a commodity super cycle a period of sustained high prices for raw materials in the global south commodity booms provide economic revenues but also devastate devastate mining communities and ecosystems and give rise to social resistance these patterns also play out here in the us now the top global producer of oil and gas and site of militant protests against fracking and pipelines where will these raw materials come from who will control and benefit from their extraction and who will pay the social and environmental cost i argue that three key forces are at play the first is green statecraft in the context of a new wave of mineral extraction for crucial green technologies policymakers around the world are jockeying to control supply chains from beginning to end in february president biden decreed a review of supply chains for quote critical and essential goods two of the four goods listed are quote high capacity batteries including electric vehicles and quote critical minerals the stated motivation is reducing vulnerability to quote production shortages trade disruptions natural disasters and potential actions by foreign competitors and adversaries end quote in the white house's view resilient supply chains also bring positive opportunities well-paid jobs technological innovation and national security they also offer the rare benefit of bipartisan consensus supply chain security is a point of agreement across the political divide in justifying the need to onshore critical minerals u.s policymakers and their eu and uk
counterparts often imply that these resources are scarce but although lithium is currently extracted from a few countries this element is in fact abundant in the earth's crust despite this abundance it is possible that a supply chain could occur in the near or medium term after multiple fall starts and then a global recession ev markets are finally taking off and increasing demand for batteries and lithium there are many new lithium projects planned to meet this demand but they take time especially brine projects with long evaporation processes as a result there's a lag between upticks and demand and availability of new supplies however the precise year this bottleneck occurs and the degree to which it affects battery manufacturing is highly contingent on how fast production of existing and new lithium projects can ramp up on battery chemistry and design and on recycling capacity it also depends on how aggressively governments promote ev adoption policies that favor public transit improve materials recovery and reduce the resource intensity of batteries in turn reduce the demand for lithium the volume of extraction is thus not a given but an outcome of political and economic decisions nevertheless state actors invoke tropes of scarcity with historical roots and imperialism and recently salient in the context of the so-called new cold war with china they describe a quote scramble or race to secure battery minerals and equate controlling extraction with geopolitical status and national security in this spirit the eu sees lithium batteries and electric vehicles as a top regional priority spurring a flurry of lithium projects and battery factories they've also proposed a quote sustainable battery policy that aims to increase the recycled content and reduce the carbon footprint of production this represents an emerging pattern in the global north policy makers justify lithium mining in the name of both security and sustainability and often conflate the two this is no accident as multiple interviewees attested political elites in the global north see sustainable and ethical production as the quote west's last hope to reassert manufacturing prowess as the one terrain on which they can successfully compete with china the mantra that environmental sustainability and national security are intimately connected and best achieved through control of supply chains is redrawing the map of lithium extraction new projects are advancing in the eu uk and u.s in many cases with public financing on public lands or with other forms of state support some projects are owned by the same multinationals that operate in australia chile and argentina the top global producers it is to these companies that i now turn lithium miners and ev firms are also growing concerned about the sustainability and even ethics of raw materials two pieces of context will help explain why first is the dramatic economic implications of electrifying transportation lithium batteries are transforming the two trillion dollar global auto industry an industry that has seen years of decline in the global north automakers know that they need public policies that will stimulate electric vehicle demand and are thus very attentive to the broader politics of the energy transition second in a world racked by climate and environmental crises and increasing public awareness of both these firms know that green branding is an advantage but it can also be a liability as a result lithium and electric vehicle companies are competing over sustainability or at least the consumer perception of it a few examples will illustrate over the past year alone volkswagen organized a site visit to the atacama salt flat to investigate concerns over water use likewise bmw commissioned a team of scientists to study the impacts of brine extraction on fresh water volkswagen and mercedes partnered up with the same consulting firm to ensure quote responsible sourcing of raw materials and mercedes-benz bmw and ford committed to only procure lithium and cobalt from certified responsible suppliers these firms have also made a slew of public statements touting sustainability and ethics mercedes refers to its quote sustainability offensive bmw promises to uphold high quote environmental and social standards throughout the entire supply chain volkswagen says that quote the raw materials for our electric batteries must be extracted under sustainable conditions that quote ensure the extraction of lithium does not harm people or nature these corporate moves are putting pressure on their suppliers this in effect externalizes the costs of green and ethical sourcing or the appearance of it onto upstream extractive firms in response lithium companies like sqm and albemarle which are the two that operate in chile have made commitments to reduce their carbon footprint and water use and ensure benefits flow directly to communities they have sought certifications to ensure their commitment to the environment and human rights green branding however isn't the only reason lithium companies are committing to do better in addition these firms are the direct target of community resistance in fact local protest also explains the moves that car companies are making as consumer facing companies they are sensitive to bad publicity especially investigative journalism and ngo pressure like amnesty international's ongoing efforts to bring attention to battery supply chains but what prompts these media reports and ngo campaigns in the first place are the grievances and protests of directly affected communities for all these reasons downstream firms like volkswagen are asserting more control over upstream extractive frontiers those moves are additionally motivated by concern about market availability of raw materials private firms thus in effect mirror the dual preoccupations of green statecraft sustainability and security car companies are signing long-term contracts with minors and even getting directly involved in extractive projects in a potential shift away from the mantra of flexible just-in-time production they are tightening supply chains ironically these strategies exacerbate the concern that motivates them in the first place long-term contracts constrain market availability and contribute to market concentration rendering supply less elastic with respect to demand what are the implications of these state and corporate strategies for communities and ecosystems now i'll turn to the third factor shaping lithium frontiers the resistance proliferating transnationally across extractive zones around the world environmental and indigenous activists are scrutinizing battery and ev supply chains as noted such activism is a direct and indirect cause of new corporate practices touting ethics and sustainability but these corporate responsibility promises don't resolve conflict rather activists target firms for falling short of professed commitments to protect the environment and human rights and to combat climate change as lithium extraction expands intensifying in top producers like chile and moving to new zones in the eu and u.s i've observed these resistance movements articulate a shared set of grievances and demands as i described i first witnessed the indus injustices of lithium extraction in the deserts of northern chile the 18 indigenous communities that ring the atacama salt flat which act collectively via the committee of atacameno peoples have opposed new lithium projects and called for an overhaul of regulations governing the sector they have used tactics such as road blockades and successfully worked through the legal system prompting more stringent environmental requirements for sqm one of the two companies operating in the salt flat simultaneously and often in coordination with the committee the pluri national salt flat observatory which links activists across borders in chile argentina and bolivia organizes protests and educational events the observatory which i participate in asserts that desert wetlands volcanic mountains endemic wildlife and thousands of years of indigenous culture should be prioritized above rapacious extraction the grievances motivating these protests lawsuits are myriad but the primary focus is the effect of brine extraction on vulnerable water systems already at risk due to copper mining's tremendous water use and the local effects of global warming chilean activists articulate a trenchant critique of green extractivism eco-coloniality and the sacrifice zones where people and ecosystems are rendered disposable in the name of mitigating climate change these tactics are proliferating beyond chile and as we'll see neither lithium extraction nor frontline resistance to it are limited to the global south despite the limitations on travel in this moment anti-extractive activists make use of digital tools to forge connections diffusing language and tactics linking together far-flung zones of extraction they resist a new wave of mining unleashed by green technologies this movement is growing in europe in direct response to the eu's commitment to expanding lithium extraction within its borders portugal is a hot spot of the eu's lithium push and a protest against it although currently a small producer portugal's lithium sector is the largest on the continent the planned mina dobroso project in the verdant hills of the country's north has sparked an outcry due to concerns over impacts on watersheds local livelihoods like farming and ecotourism communal land and cultural heritage sites activists use multiple tactics ranging from demonstrations to passing municipal anti-mining resolutions they participate in anti-mining networks at the national regional and global scale as a result they have forced concessions from the portuguese government including repeated delays to the international bids for lithium exploration and the removal of particular geographic zones from consideration altogether among the most recent sites of conflict in the expanding lithium frontier is here in the united states lithium nevada is planning to exploit a claystone deposit at thacker pass in the northern reaches of the state this project once in operation will be the second lithium mine on u.s soil lithium nevada is a subsidiary of a canadian company lithium americas which is developing a brine project in argentina in a joint venture with chinese company gang thing this past january the mine received a green light from the bureau of land management a necessary step as it sits on public land in a fast-track process that environmentalists and community members saw as papering over impacts such as threats to the habitats of wildlife species like sage grouse and golden eagle that are already in decline like in chile and portugal resistance is multi-faceted encompassing legal tactics and protest a coalition of environmental groups and a local rancher have filed lawsuits last week the fort dick nurmet mcdermott peyote shoshone tribal council announced the cancellation of a prior agreement with lithium nevada and initiated its own lawsuit in addition to impacts on wildlife the tribes cited threats to their land water hunting and gathering areas and sacred ceremonial sites factor pass has also seen a growing protest encampment drawing environmentalists tribal members as well as ranchers and other community residents meanwhile echoing the elite discourse that resonates across business and government on both sides of the atlantic lithium executives promoting the project have appealed to both national security and sustainability as one put it fac or pass would be a quote critical for establishing a strong domestic lithium supply chain required to support a low-carbon economy another executive favorably compared the project with brine extraction in south america which activists have targeted for its impact on watersheds noting quote we recycle a lot of our water we actually generate carbon free energy from our process but activists aren't convinced and have called out the company for greenwashing and open pit mine and related facilities that will occupy nearly 18 000 acres of public land and extractive processes involving chemical reagents and large quantities of water which will leave behind waste in the form of rock piles and toxic streams we are in the beginnings of an uncertain transition this transition isn't merely a switch to renewable energy as if that could happen in a vacuum confronting the climate emergency and creating resilient communities requires transforming the built environment changing where and how we live work eat travel commute and spend leisure time with implications for every single sector of the economy these changes can help mitigate global warming and adapt to the already baked in extreme weather sea level rise and drought but these changes also pose complex challenges for political economy and social justice they can unfold in ways that reinforce hierarchies locally nationally and globally or upend them building a greener and more egalitarian world at the same time i won't pretend to have all the right answers to these weighty challenges which will be shaped by collective decisions and intense battles between the forces competing to shape our planetary future but my ongoing research on lithium battery supply chains reveals ominous developments and inspiring possibilities for the past for the pathway forward to conclude i'll mention two first is the new political salience of supply chains and in particular supply chain security to see this as a shift it's worth recalling how avidly politicians across the ideological spectrum in the us uk and europe previously promoted the tenants of globalization comparative advantage economic efficiency free trade and market integration now in rhetoric and to an extent in policy political elites in the global north are questioning these tenants and they are doing so first and foremost in the realm of technologies like lithium batteries this shift has many sources some longer term like decades of declining productivity and de-industrialization in the world's wealthiest countries and some more immediate such as the pandemic but even more than these factors policymakers invoke china's rapid economic ascent and the chinese government's use of policy tools that flout the neoliberal consensus given that from the transatlantic slave trade and colonial conquest capitalism has always been globetrotting i'm skeptical that quote deglobalization is imminent but i worry all the same about the pernicious effects of quote securitizing and dominating supply chains when economic policy is seen through the lens of national security states expand their coercive capacities in addition the so-called new cold war undermines the interstate cooperation needed to combat climate change cooperation that must take the form not only of shared emissions targets but also of the globally equitable access to green technologies like lithium batteries in addition the race to secure raw materials is already incentivizing rapacious extraction with fewer environmental or social protections and might bring even more state repression of the protests against it this brings me to my second point we are as i've said throughout this talk in a moment of transition transitions are critical junctures moments that are more open to contingencies and higher stakes the decisions made in such moments have enduring effects into the future right now the choices between on the one hand greener forms of capitalism and imperialism or on the other transformations that tackle emissions inequality and environmental damage at the same time the transportation sector exemplifies this fork in the road pun intended we can swap traditional cars for electric vehicles maintaining auto-dominated landscapes the suburban sprawl and highways and the race and class segregation they enforce incentivizing huge volumes of extraction or alternatively we can expand electrify and make more equitable our mass transit systems and experiment with car-free cities more amenable to walking and cycling such an approach would still require lithium and other raw materials but fewer of them and fewer electric cars on the road actually facilitates decarbonization making it easier to slash emissions we could also ensure that trade agreements enforce indigenous and labor rights and encode environmental protections we could redesign industrial policies to embrace sustainable materials recycling and an ethic of repair a world of climate safety and less extraction and fewer of the social and environmental harms that come with both is possible and that's the world i think we should envision and advocate for thank you and i look forward to your questions thank you tia uh this was uh very informative and of course there are questions indeed so let me go to the first one um are there better ways to extract or will a green transition necessarily deepen exploitative relations or production what are the possibility for more environmentally and socially just for creation of the necessary raw material for green energy trans for the green energy transition yeah that's an excellent question um and one that is still being researched um in by by scientists um uh by those that focus on on material science and electrochemical engineering as well as the immediate technologies of extraction so um first and foremost i would say that yes there are always better and less harmful modes of extraction that doesn't mean that any form of extraction is sustainable and i would always you know prompt uh you know the audience to kind of question when mining companies profess to be sustainable which is a physical impossibility given the just actual limits of non-renewable resources in the earth's crust like there's no way to sustain that forever there's a limited quantity so and also there is always environmental and social impact to varying degrees but but we should be suspicious of sustainable um however better and worse so there are um lithium companies and scientists that are looking into forms of lithium extraction that don't involve removing so much brine and therefore water from the underground and evaporating it that that for example um and if the process is a bit technical so i won't get into it but that that removed through a filtration process the lithium ions directly from the brine rather than moving taking sucking up all the brine and putting it in evaporation ponds that type of process though untested at scale is one that wouldn't involve much less water use if it worked right um that just one example there are some others um for example in general when lithium is extracted from geothermal deposits there is less water use or the water is is is re-injected um and more recovered and um and also green energy renewable energy can be co-generated at the same moment so it has that effect so there are some better methods a lot of them are still in the pilot stage what i would emphasize is that companies don't adopt better methods on their own goodwill because they're enlightened right they adopt it you know for a few different reasons and they actually map on to what i've talked about in my talk today one is when states force them to right so if states were to have public policies that require much less water use much more recycled content etc that could help the eu's doing that though environmentalists have said that actually the regulations are not stringent enough we should push for more but you know regulations are important to some extent these companies are also competing as i said to look more sustainable if that was not just like an appearance but actually a practice that could be helpful and then you know i think ultimately it's always protest and conflict that really pushes change that just you know sort of my approach to seeing uh the world in general and so the more that activist protests across those uh nodes of of the of the lithium battery supply chain and do so in ways that are coordinated especially with ngos or groups that get a lot of publicity um i think that we'll see uh companies be forced in this direction but it is possible it is possible to extract in ways that are that are less harmful and i would say that the mode of extraction in chile is one of the most environmentally destructive ways of extracting lithium because of the fact that it uses so much water in a desert indeed um there are a couple of questions on statecraft so let me go to the first one can you comment on the different forms of statecraft that we see at the extractive end of the lithium frontiers yeah so i think that i i'm gonna have to guess a little bit at what the question asker is is sort of thinking about here but i'll bring up a couple of things that i didn't mention in the talk just kind of add to the conversation um so we see a few different things um um one is and i'll speak from the chilean example but i think that there are parallels in argentina in australia and the other top producers and emergent parallels in the places that will have new attractive projects like in the eu and us so one is that we see a collusion between state and companies to expand extractive projects to sometimes repress community descent and to kind of see lithium extraction as a quote strategic sector this word strategic sector might be familiar to people in the room because it's often used to talk about oil and it should immediately trigger like our skeptical critical impulses because when states consider sectors to be strategic they often as i said collude more with the corporations in those sectors and they often also take a repressive carceral coercive response to any kind of protest around those around those sectors right so that's one thing we see that in chile and we see that in all the other contexts another thing that i didn't directly mention in the talk today that i certainly observed in chile um and that also uh policy makers in in bolivia and argentina are attempting these are countries at the extractive nodes of the supply chains right but what policymakers want to do in those contexts is move up the ladder of of added value of added economic value what they want to do just it's kind of i or i don't know ironic's not the right word but it's kind of interesting because it mirrors what's happening in the global north and the global north it's like we want to onshore the extractive nodes um i'm simplifying a bit but you know we want to onshore those nodes and the global south the extraction may already exist and what they want to onshore or or attract is the more value-added parts of the supply chain and so chilean policymakers have used various tools to try to attract battery investment for example and battery factory so that they don't because the extractive raw materials always get the least economic value on global markets compared to compared to more technologically sophisticated goods i'll just say that that has been a challenge for them they have not been able to attract that investment despite offering a lot of incentives to multinational corporations to locate in chile and i think it shows the kind of enduring and we might say actually neo-colonial kind of world order where there's a division between the less value added and the more value-added um forms of production um even as the global north attempting to extra actually appeal and attract that less value-added piece and actually control the whole chain so it's it's it's re it's kind of reinforcing some historic patterns but also reconfiguring them at the same time right you may have partially answered this question but let me let me read it out to you i was struck by your argument about the parallels between green statecraft and green capitalism both invoking themes of security and sustainability i would love to hear more of your thoughts on the conflation of various models of security national security and supply chain security yeah i i love this question because it allows me to actually say a couple things that i didn't mention in the talk um um which is what i think is so politically useful about the terms politically and economically right because the question asker wants to know about states and firms so what's so strategically useful about the term security and sustainability is that they are very polyvalent they can mean different things and they're kind of porous and you can imply multiple meanings at once so with security states and firms mean distinct things kind of but it's those multiple meanings that i think is politically powerful so when states talk about security they mean security in the sense of like you know what we hear about like border security national security geopolitical status right it often brings to mind war and and military and kind of like the protection of the national interest um and and that's usually what they mean by security and states across the world not just in the global north um are seeing these supply chains all of a sudden as key to security in that sense of the word when firms talk about security they they mean something a little different they mean the security of supplies meaning that they want to ensure that the market has available raw materials so when they ramp up battery production they know that the lithium cobalt nickel etc is there on the market for them to buy as i said that concern about security is actually motivating them to undermine market availability by acting in ways that are that reduce comp market competition right so that's kind of an interesting irony but the point is security can mean these different things for for states and and firms sustainability is kind of similar um and and states and firms use it in this kind of do away one can mean environmental sustainability or social sustainability these kind of nice things that i think many people would would agree are important the other can mean something closer to supply security which is making sure that there is sustainable uh you know ongoing supplies and so we have the idea that like security sustainability can be conflated and can carry these multiple meetings in a ways that can appeal to investors to constituents um to uh sort of consumers on the market um and serve these different ends of states and firms but in a way that is becoming increasingly in lockstep like i'm seeing very similar language used on the public you know across the public private um sector divide um let's move on to uh the protest and the uh around the exploitation of these um minerals how are gendered relations of production and exploitation present in the green energy frontiers that you observe and how if at all do they shape social conflicts wow i love these questions they're so interesting and they they definitely like push beyond the presentation a bit um um and in some cases are going to push beyond my knowledge a bit like in this one so let me contextualize for people in the room about this gender and extraction piece because i sense that the person asking the question knows a lot about it um and and why gender is so relevant to attractive sectors and then i'll i'll i'll say you know i'll say a bit about the specific sector at hand so um generally it's not nothing is is a hundred percent um and i'm going to simplify a little bit but generally what we see in extractive sectors mining oil um um and and many of the other ones that i that i brought up today are um that we see a mostly male workforce um often times of men that don't necessarily come from the immediate communities that are migrant workers sometimes they might come from other countries like the country of the mining company in question sometimes they might just come from other you know areas of that same country that don't have many economic opportunities right these result in like temporary living situations for workers that are working oftentimes short term you know uh jobs right and what uh these are often referred to as are man camps um and what that means is just again like temporary housing mostly men living in them uh and men that are there for an economic purpose and may or may not have like deep ties to the community what researchers have found is that this can pose a grave threat to women in the community and i think that it's probably apparent why there's been a lot of research demonstrating the connection between forms of of sexual abuse and assault in in man camps or between man camps and the surrounding community this has happened a lot in the us actually with the fracking boom um and also is takes on a particular additional sense of of violence um uh when we're talking about indigenous communities and there's been linking of disappearances of indigenous women to the extractive uh male you know workers that that are that are suddenly inundating the area right so this is what the question asker is asking about and and i think that the question is also about something else which is that we've seen actually especially in latin america and some of the places that i've researched uh previous to this project like in in ecuador and elsewhere that a lot of the time the frontline resistance um in indigenous communities two attractive projects is is women and part of that is explained by what i just said like women may not really get many of the economic benefits and therefore the negative effects are like more apparent and starker for them um in other cases there are a lot of communities in which women kind of like are are important in the reproduction of of indigenous culture and so they are very attentive to the effects on on their you know on cultural integrity basically of their communities so so there's a lot going on there um um in terms of the gender of gender and extraction i kind of have seen some of this in my initial and i want to emphasize like an ongoing project so i haven't done all the research yet i have definitely seen that the people working in lithium installations tend to be men um so that definitely is the case um there have been complaints that i've heard from people in indigenous communities that the influx of workers has some male workers um has some of these effects um i also do want to note that those male workers fake face their own forms of of oppression because they have tried to organize unions and the company and state have sort of retaliated against them right so you know they're intersectional oppressions always right um i haven't per se observe but i just want to say this is my own anecdotal evidence based on my ethnographic work that the main form of resistance in chile to mining and indigenous communities is is women um but that might be the case and i'm just might not be aware of it right i've i only did four months of research thus far i definitely think that those gendered patterns though tend to hold um in general um and it's something that actually now that i've been asked i want to research a bit more in the lithium sector yeah absolutely i'm going to combine like um three questions that are around a similar theme so um lithium is presently linchpin of the ortho industry uh transition are we locked into lithium or can we choose less impactful forms of storage following that is lithium extraction possible from sea water instead of fresh water so that you know we don't damage that and if so who provides the green certificates that they also companies ask from the leading companies and can we talk a bit more about certification process yeah okay great questions um so we are kind of locked into lithium batteries for the time being um whenever there's like technological development um or kind of a moment of a new technology being institutionalized which is the case with lithium batteries and electric vehicles there's a lot of discussion of like well isn't there an alternative technology right and that discussion is certainly taking place in the in the sector of lithium batteries um but despite that conversation there hasn't yet been a viable replacement there have been pilot tests of other like zinc batteries and other types of batteries i'll just note though that other batteries just mean different raw materials right i think that what we need to really kind of understand is that there's nothing no technology is produced without somewhere along its supply chain requiring raw materials requiring water requiring energy right nothing just drops from the sky and so everything contains earthly matter the question is like how can we reduce how much new extraction we need how much how much can we make sure that we recover and reuse and recycle the materials and you know the batteries that are already produced um or produce them in ways that are just less resource intensive um and also i'll just note like ironically one of the main uh you know kind of competitors to lithium-ion batteries are solid-state lithium batteries i won't get into the difference but um but but they use the lithium in different ways and what you can tell is that they both use lithium right it's just that they kind of are designed differently um in a chemical sense so so yeah we're locked in we're locked in for now um i would suggest that the that the person asking the question look into um hydrogen fuel cells i i don't think that they've scaled yet and it's interesting my research partner jack walker is really interested in these and is working on on his own research project on them um but i don't think that we've gotten them to scale yet and they require their own form of infrastructure in order um uh to get the hydrogen to cars and anyway i won't get into it but i think that lithium-ion batteries are where we're at for the foreseeable future is extraction from seawater possible it's it's a it's a good question because not just lithium but a lot of of um there's a lot of interest in like deep sea mining um which is a little different than what the person is asking they're asking like there's all this lithium in seawater can we just like like kind of uh filter it out or or somehow get it from the seawater the deep sea mining is in like deep sea beds um so it's a different process there are a lot of um environmentalists and and and marine ecologists are very concerned about the potential for unleashing this like mining all over our oceans which we actually don't even fully understand how marine ecosystems work and we could be making species extinct or impacting habitats that we don't even know about yet and so there there's a lot of concern there um and i'd also just remind that you know any time you're trying to extricate something from seawater for example um the way that desalination desalination is used to to create fresh water out of seawater um um kind of the opposite you know direction it's very energy intensive right and so again nothing's free environmentally and so you have to weigh all these different um aspects of their of their resource intensity certification is a range i think that the most kind of prominent and respected um uh form that certification takes is the international responsible mining association i hope i have that acronym right irma irma they have a pretty detailed multi-faceted process that involves third-party auditors um there are other forms of certification that are a little less transparent what's happening um you know like just firms that offer themselves like we will certify you but it's there's a perverse incentive structure because the mining company pays the firm to certify them right so it you know it's it's a weird world of these certification uh programs um and they're not all very stringent even the more stringent certification programs like irma are often questioned by activists like are you rubber stamping irma has a detailed response to that there's a lot of stuff you can you know research on their website and they're quite transparent about their protocols um but i would actually say that this certification thing i think will emerge as itself like a node of conflict um not just between activists and um and companies and and the certifiers but also between regulators who might start to rely on those certifications to implement more sustainable regulations for batteries so it's something that i've just begun to learn about and it's very fascinating um so as you argue the problem the problem isn't uh just the source of energy i.e shifting
from oil to solar uh et cetera but how much energy is consumed and how energy is consumed is this an insight used in the highest level of climate debates and negotiations yeah uh not as much as it should be um because i i think that those negotiations um as important as they are are often like unmoored and decontextualized from these material supply chain processes and from the material requirements whether it's energy water minerals you know or other requirements to produce the technologies that will help lower emissions right and meet those targets so no i don't think they're attended to enough what i try to do in my research is connect the dots between global or international climate politics as usually understood and these questions of material political economy and and social protests but i do just want to validate the the motivation for the question which is especially in the u.s we're the most egregious i think in the world in terms of how inefficient our our energy system is um and we also have the highest per capita emissions i know like u.s policy makers always like to say china has the highest emissions that's true but if you weight it by population the u.s has the most per capita right and so we're kind of you know we're among the worst for sure um and so there is a lot to a lot of benefits that can happen with just making our energy system simultaneously transitioning to renewables and making it more efficient by changing our built environment weatherizing insulating doing all sorts of things i'm making communities denser so there's not as much commuting needed you know i could their list goes on um because the more energy we use the more built capacity we need the more batteries the more turbines etc and the more raw materials we need there's a direct relationship between the inefficiency of our energy system and its resource intensity um and so i i absolutely think international climate negotiators should think about that question um and that u.s policy makers are obligated to think about it too that's great well this is all we have time for thank you thea for your presentation and for your thoughts those perspectives i also want to thank you the audience for the terrific questions i hope you'll be able to join us for other virtual programs you can find out about future programs and watch videos of past events at rockcliff.harvard.edu thank you again
for joining us today and have a good rest of the day bye
2021-05-01 05:26
