Summary: Lithium Mining in Mexico – Public interest or transnational extractivism?

PUBLICATION

23.02.2023

Lithium, like many other minerals projected to be extracted in the name of reducing global warming, are not strategic minerals for the energy transition. Instead, these minerals are being mined to expand the market of certain supply chains deemed by some as “green,” but that represent false solutions to the global socio-environmental crisis we are facing. Far from seeking to replace or reduce its ecological footprint, these markets continue to feed ever more energy use and consumption, further entrenching the same exploitative model of resource extraction that has led to global warming in the first place.

In Mexico, the government promotes the exploitation of lithium as part of an effort to strengthen national sovereignty, justifying mining by designating lithium extraction as being in the public interest. But what is being promoted as positive and necessary for the country’s development is in fact a project strongly tied to private capital – one that poses high risks to the public treasury, while being based on the dispossession, destruction and militarization of the territories where this mineral is located.

Read the executive summary of the 2023 report, “Lithium Mining in Mexico: Public interest or transnational extractivism?” in English. The full report and executive summary are available in Spanish.