Governing Lithium, Fracturing Territory: The Failure of Environmental Cooperation in the Salar de Atacama, in Northern Chile

Ginno Martinez, University of Ottawa (Peru)

This presentation examines why the Environmental Protection Fund (EPF) of the Salar de Atacama, established through consultations between the Chilean state and Atacameño Indigenous communities to support lithium extraction until 2060, ultimately collapsed. I argue that its failure stemmed from intra-communal tensions shaped by the cumulative impacts of extraction in the Salar Atacama basin. The competing framings of protection—ecosystem borders (a holistic understanding of the basin) and technical borders (a narrow, technocratic view)—revealed conflicting environmental narratives that hindered cooperation. I introduce the concept of "technical borders" to explain how such framings hinder the formation of ecosystem borders and, consequently, cooperative environmental governance. The findings contribute to environmental peacebuilding debates by highlighting the barriers to cooperation in green transition contexts and showing that environmental protection efforts do not necessarily foster collaboration.