As demand for Lithium continues to grow, the white metal continues to forge connections between diverse contexts. Globally, the metal is said to allow for a transition to “green” and “sustainable” energy. Demand is fuelled by car-manufacturers situated mostly in the global North and China, who do not want to miss the switch to EVs. They shape further South-North connections of resource flows, which impact different contexts with stark disparities.
On October 27th of 2021, most members of our editorial board participated in a panel on “Lithium Connections” at the annual Energy Ethics conference, organized by the Centre for Energy Ethics of the University of St. Andrews. David and Felix moderated the panel, where the above issues were explored in three papers looking at different connections made through lithium. In this special issue we are presenting all these papers in a slightly edited form, making them accessible to a wider audience.
At Lithium Worlds we are especially interested in the connections between the diverse discourses, or debates, around lithium. Discourses are usually not limited to a regional level, rather they overlap on different geographical scales. Mostly, but not exclusively, in the Global North, the resource lithium is connected to a narrative of green energy transition, and especially to the transition to electric vehicles and renewable energy. The emphasis on these technologies as a “solution” to the global climate crisis highlights the inherent techno-fix. The “techno-fix” describes the notion that if scientific research and industry progress rapidly enough, the solutions to all our problems will eventually present themselves.
A sustainability narrative is reproduced in the extraction regions, where it is often accompanied by a deep-seated discourse of economic development. If resources are extracted responsibly, the discourses say in conjunction, there can be lasting development for the regions they are taken from. Finally, in many regions we can observe the emergence of anti-extractivist (counter-)narratives. They come from diverse sections of societies where extraction is taking place, and are often allied with, or emerge from, indigenous groups taking critical and anti-capitalist positions. However, indigenous communities, while usually depicted as unitary or even timeless, often find themselves divided along the same lines of conflict.
These findings are particularly important to understand the effects, perceptions, and reactions of different stakeholder groups. Over the coming weeks we will be publishing blog articles on the papers presented at the Energy Ethics 2021 conference, exploring these issues mostly looking at South American contexts of lithium extraction.
