Living Minerals: Nature, Trade and Power in the Race for Lithium

Lithium has been described as ‘white gold’, the next oil, or a kind of savior from climate change. Consumers are buying electric vehicles with lithium-ion batteries motivated by the belief that they are doing good and decarbonizing society. But, is there any truth in these big claims? Is sustainable lithium extraction possible? In Living Minerals, Javiera Barandiarán examines the history of lithium mining and uses during the 20th century to understand the current mining boom and why the rush to mine more lithium is unlikely to resolve climate change unless some kind of sustainable trade is developed.

Commentator: Luksic Visiting Scholar Rodrigo Contreras-Arratia, Civil Works and Geology, Universidad Católica de Temuco, Chile

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Javiera Barandiaran is Professor and department chair in Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara and director of the CREW Center for Restorative Environmental Work. She received her PhD at UC Berkeley in Environmental Science, Policy and Management and a Masters in Public Policy also from Berkeley, and completed her undergraduate studies in Politics at the University of Edinburgh. Her research explores the intersection of science, environment, and development in Latin America. Her books include Living Minerals: Nature, Trade and Power in the Race for Lithium and Science and Environment in Chile: The Politics of Expert Advice in a Neoliberal Democracy, both with MIT Press. She has two collaboratively authored books that explore environmental aspects of Chile's 2022 constitutional reform effort, one with Palgrave called Demanding a Radical Constitution: Environmentalism, Resilience, and Participation in Chile’s 2022 Reform Efforts (2025) and in Spanish, Rights of Nature: Arguments for Chile’s Constitution (Ocho Libros, 2022). Another stream of research examines glaciers and efforts to protect them from mining and climate change, leading to the photobook, Glaciers and Society: An inventory of stories from Chile. Her articles and editorial work for special issues appear in World Development, Tapuya, Latin American Research Review, Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, and more.