Ignorance as permission in lithium extraction from the high-Andean salt flats of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile

Aguirre-Lanegra A.J. · Revista Kawsaypacha: Sociedad y Medio Ambiente (2026) · DOI: 10.18800/kawsaypacha.202602.a022

Resumen

Lithium extraction in the high-Andean salt flats of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile is justified by its role in decarbonisation. Peer-reviewed hydrogeology holds, by contrast, that causal attribution between extraction and water impacts remains indeterminate, because the system dampens the signal of its own alteration, its water derives from ancient recharge, and a prolonged drought coincides with increased pumping. This article analyses how that indeterminacy is managed by the institutional discourse of the energy transition and distributed by the three national legal orders. The study is documentary and combines three procedures: critical discourse analysis of the four International Energy Agency reports on critical minerals published between 2021 and 2026, an integrative review of the hydrogeological literature, and a comparative case study of eleven primary legal instruments. The institutional corpus acknowledges that brine extraction affects interconnected water systems and quantifies it as a water footprint, yet the remedies it proposes are confined to monitoring, technology and governance. Doubt is voiced where it threatens investment and social acceptance, never where it would prevent authorisation. The three legal orders differ in the status they assign to the resource and converge in that none makes authorisation conditional upon knowledge sufficient to attribute effects. If the system dampens its response, the absence of an observed effect carries no demonstrative value, which grounds a reversal of the burden of proof. The proposed category names the process whereby uncertainty becomes distributable risk while the benefit of the doubt favours the operation.

Instituciones: Universidad Tecnológica del Perú