Sitting in his eighth-floor office adjacent the presidential palace, Cristi, a PhD economist, lays out a map of Chile showing key watersheds for mining. Swaths of the mineral-rich north are colored blue, denoting areas where aquifers are over-exploited.
Soon, if Cristi gets his way, they will be red, meaning new water rights will be banned.
Reams of water rights were granted by Chilean governments over decades with little consideration for their cumulative impact as miners scrambled to stake claims on the small pockets of water available in the salt flats of the Salar de Atacama.
The Salar sits in the world’s driest desert. The water trapped beneath the salt pan feeds the world’s biggest copper mine and holds in suspension more than one-third of the world’s current supply of lithium, the ultra-light metal used in electric car batteries, mobile phones and laptops.
Read more