Yue Yu

Lithium resource extraction companies are scattered throughout the countries of the Lithium Triangle. In Chile, in order to speed up the exploitation of lithium by global companies and earn economic benefit, the Water Code was designed by the Pinochet regime (1973–1990), and water resources became privatized and tradable. For example, in the Atacama dearest, there are a large number of mineral companies. These companies constantly advertise that their mining process is 100% solar (e.g. SQM's website). Compared to the well-known coal mining, the impact of lithium mining is still unknown and therefore more acceptable to indigenous people.

At first, no one knew why the flamingo population began to slowly decline, only to complain that there weren't enough flamingo eggs for breakfast. In my research, it was found that an imbalance in the lagoons' ecosystem was the cause. The mining of lithium resources destroyed the salinity of the original water system, algae began to bloom, and an ecological imbalance occurred. Eventually, the ecological imbalance led to a small-scale species extinction that made it inevitable that the flamingos would lose their food, their feathers would no longer be bright, and they would have difficulty attracting mates and go extinct. But where does the salt in the water come from - no one knows the exact answer.

In my opinion, the flamingo reality claim is neither a political nor an economic or social issue. In my opinion, it is a spiritual issue, and it is called structural violence, or slow violence. Chilean law defines brine as a mineral resource and not a water resource. In this covert way, the law turns indigenous people's "right to clean air and pure water" into "the ability of the inhabitants to buy minerals".

Even though mineral companies have set up environmental monitoring systems (for example, SQM's monitoring system has over 286 monitoring sites), they sever the relationship between the data and the real landscape by cleverly presenting the data - the data does not represent the natural environment. When one sees lagoons with a salt concentration of 296g/L, one does not associate, them with green water, pale flamingo feathers, or a small-scale ecological extinction.

It is worth noting that the voices of indigenous people are ignored, whether the environment is represented by simple data, or whether environmental impacts are measured solely by Western science. Such a system of knowledge is a new form of colonialism. Whether it is the silent alteration of a natural ecology or a broken culture, it is driven by the epistemologies of the North, which are “based on the negation of the inhabitants and knowledge of the territories that are subjected to colonization and exploitation” (de Sousa Santos 2019).