Colcha K stirs to life at sunrise. It is just past six in the morning when the first rays of light gild the high mountains encircling the small town in southwestern Bolivia. Nestled at the foot of two long, arid slopes, the traditional brick houses with corrugated metal roofs are the last to catch the sun. By the time they do, most residents are already awake.
Among them is Gladys Caral. The air is crisp despite it being a summer morning in February, but she doesn’t mind. “In summer, we make the most of the early hours to work,” she explains.
When I spoke with Caral in February, the quinoa harvest—the flagship crop of Nor Lípez Province, where part of the Indigenous Lípez community has lived for centuries—was just around the corner. The farmland, green with neat rows of crops, stretches across a broad plain at the entrance to the village, flanking a long, unpaved road that connects Colcha K to the outside world. “In March, everything will be bursting with colour from the quinoa,” Caral says with a flicker of excitement in her eyes.
Yet a growing sense of unease is spreading among residents, many of whom are unsure how much longer they will be able to remain in the town. The source of that concern lies about twenty miles away: In the middle of the white expanse of the Uyuni Salt Flat, the largest salt desert in the world, stands a vast lithium industrial plant that could soon put the local livelihood and environment at risk.
Bolivia holds the world’s largest lithium reserves, with an estimated twenty-three million tons hidden beneath the country’s salt flats. In recent years, demand for the mineral—dubbed “white gold” due to its high value—has surged due to its central role in electric vehicle batteries and large-scale renewable energy storage, making it a strategic resource in the global green transition. Alongside bordering salt flat regions in Argentina and Chile, the Uyuni Salt Flat belongs to what is known as the lithium triangle, which holds more than 50 percent of the world’s lithium reserves.
Bolivia’s bet on lithium began in 2008, when the socialist government of former President Evo Morales moved to nationalize the industry. Since then, the country has invested more than $1 billion in the sector—a figure local residents repeat with growing frustration.
Extraction has struggled to take off, however. Pilot projects lasted a decade, as construction on the industrial plant near Colcha K did not begin until 2018, and it took another five years before it began operating in 2023 at just 13 percent of its capacity. The state-owned company Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB), which oversees operations at the plant, has faced technical challenges, allegations of mismanagement, and delays related to Morales’s forced resignation in 2019. As a result, the government is seeking new international partners to accelerate development.
John McAulay
Several signs in Uyuni offer tours to the Uyuni Salt Flat on February 7, 2026.
The main concern for local communities near the plant is water use. The plant’s current evaporation-based extraction method consumes up to two million liters of water per ton of lithium produced, according to the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense. The process requires both mineral-rich brine from beneath the salt flat and freshwater drawn from underground aquifers near the Uyuni Salt Flat—the same reserves on which the people of Nor Lípez depend.
The plant’s water use poses a serious threat to those living nearby, says Gonzalo Mondaca, a researcher at the Bolivia Documentation and Information Center. According to Mondaca, the surrounding communities have already seen the water they rely on decline as lithium mining has advanced. “In isolated communities where digging a well by hand is often the only option” for residents to have freshwater, he explains, “if the [water table] drops, people are left without water.”
In this arid region, where water is already scarce, the limited supply in Colcha K is prioritized for household consumption and for growing quinoa, potatoes, and vegetables—a municipal model of self-sufficiency residents take pride in.
For now, the effects on the water supply have barely been noticeable for the community, given the slow pace of lithium production, which has remained stagnant since the plant began operations. But Caral worries that water shortages could jeopardize future harvests and the local way of life. “Once the industry really gets going, we’ll feel it,” she says.
That moment may come sooner rather than later. During former President Luis Arce’s administration, the country signed two agreements with Russian and Chinese companies in 2024 aimed at improving the efficiency of YLB’s operations at the plant. But the agreements—which have been the subject of controversy as critics argue they grant significant control to foreign state-backed companies while offering limited transparency and uncertain economic benefits for Bolivia—are both still pending approval from Bolivia’s legislature.
Meanwhile, rightwing neoliberal President Rodrigo Paz, who took office last November, has proposed opening the door to greater foreign investment in key natural resources, including lithium. In late December, Paz issued Decree 5503, stipulating that projects related to key natural resources would be approved within thirty days, leaving no room for environmental impact studies or consultation with affected communities, and would remain legally protected for fifteen years. The decree was withdrawn in January following widespread protests in Bolivia.
“We don’t want lithium industrialization,” Caral says, echoing what she describes as a widely shared sentiment in her community. “Most of us know things are getting worse, and the threat is no longer distant.”
Through its deals with Russian and Chinese companies, the government plans to replace the traditional evaporation ponds at the Uyuni plant with direct lithium extraction (DLE), a technology billed as more efficient because it extracts lithium in hours or days rather than months, and boasts higher recovery rates. YLB has stressed that the system will use “only a small part of the water available in the region,” pledging to manage the resource in a “responsible and sustainable way.”
But these plans have done little to reassure residents of Nor Lípez. Mondaca warns that projected freshwater consumption under the new system could be up to fifteen times higher. “The technological shift has not brought greater certainty,” he says. “To refine lithium, DLE requires much more freshwater, and that is the communities’ main concern, because it is the water they use.”
Climate change is likely to exacerbate water shortages from lithium mining. Mondaca warns that rainfall in this already parched Andean region could decline by an average of 71 percent over the course of the century. “If that happens, communities’ demand for groundwater will increase, yet the government has not proposed concrete plans to guarantee drinking water or supplies for livestock,” he says. “That is why people feel unprotected.”
Caral expresses a similar sense of vulnerability. “Over time, this will become a desert,” she says. “We’ll have to migrate to who knows where. It’s a catastrophe waiting to happen, and we don’t know what to do about it.”
Río Grande, another community in Nor Lípez, is also bracing for what residents fear could become an imminent water crisis linked to lithium extraction. Located about an hour’s drive from Colcha K, the village serves as the gateway to the industrial plant on the Uyuni Salt Flat. Every day, trucks rumble through its dusty streets, ferrying materials in and out of the facility.
Cousins Nelson Alli and Franz Alli have grown accustomed to the constant traffic. Both lifelong residents of Río Grande, they have become vocal advocates for protecting their community from the effects of the drought. In February, I spoke to them in Uyuni, the main urban center near the salt flats, as they waited for the bus home after running errands in town.
Nelson owns about 150 llamas. Like him, many in Río Grande depend on livestock, making the primary sector central to the local economy and way of life. It was here that the government drilled the first wells to supply freshwater for lithium extraction, and residents say the effects are already noticeable.
“In recent years, they’ve taken over our grazing lands,” Nelson says. “YLB has gradually taken control of the land and the natural watering holes that used to be there.” He recalls taking his llamas to graze along the edge of the salt flat, in wetlands where lush grasses once grew. “It used to be green,” he says. “Now it has dried up, and we have to take them farther away.”
John McAulay
Cousins Franz and Nelson Alli, two community members-turned-activists from Río Grande, in Uyuni on February 7, 2026.
For now, the impact in Río Grande is more evident in livestock than in agriculture, partly because crop fields lie farther from the salt flat. “But over time, they will be affected too,” Nelson adds. He is also concerned about changes in wildlife. “There used to be partridges, rheas, Andean foxes, flamingos . . . . The animals have left this area and haven’t come back.”
Franz, who’d been listening closely with a cup of fresh yogurt in his hand, joins in. “The new government has given the green light to investors which are not interested in nature or in defending the people who live here—they just want our resources,” he says. Nelson nods in agreement. “That’s our main concern: the excessive use of water,” Nelson says. “Water is life. If there is no water, we won’t be able to live here and we’ll have to leave. That’s what we’re trying to prevent.”
In their testimonies, both Caral and the Alli cousins voice the same grievance: a persistent sense that their concerns are not being heard. Julieta Uyuli Bartolomé, who was one of the region’s highest-ranking authorities between 2022 and 2025 as secretary general of Sole Provincial Center of Indigenous Communities of Nor Lípez (CUPCONL), voices similar concern.
Uyuli notes that CUPCONL, the official representative organization of the Indigenous people of Nor Lípez, has held collective title over the province since 2011, meaning land ownership is vested in the community, rather than by individual members. “No public institution, and certainly no private company, can carry out economic activity here without the consent of CUPCONL,” she says. Any industrial project in the province, she says, should have been accompanied by a formal consultation process with affected communities. “But that did not happen.”
There is another underlying problem, according to Uyuli: a lack of information and transparency from the government. The absence of a publicly available hydrological study, for example, means communities do not know how much water is available and how much of it is being used for lithium extraction. In pressing for answers, CUPCONL has found itself at odds with the government and YLB. “Communication should be fluid, but they are very closed off with us,” Uyuli says. “They see us as enemies, which we are not.”
That opacity, Uyuli argues, extends to other actors seeking to tap the reserves of the Uyuni Salt Flat. In early February, a delegation from the European Union visited the industrial plant in an effort to explore “cooperation mechanisms and strategic alliances” related to Bolivia’s lithium, according to a press release. The group met with various stakeholders, but excluded CUPCONL. “That upset us,” she says. “Nor Lípez must be present at any such meeting.”
John McAulay
Julieta Uyuli Bartolomé, former secretary general of CUPCONL, in Uyuni on February 6, 2026.
For Uyuli, the European visit underscored a deeper irony: While the Global North demands vast quantities of lithium to power electric vehicles and renewable technologies, Nor Lípez sees few of the benefits and instead bears its environmental costs. “All of this is for them, for the benefit of the West. For us, it’s something else,” she says. “This is our home, and we will have to pay a high price in terms of water and the environment.”
The sense of grief is sharpened by the memory of how the province initially welcomed the project “with open arms,” Uyuli says, believing it would drive local and national development. “It has been a disappointment because none of that has been true,” she says. “There has been no positive impact—only negative ones.”
Across Nor Lípez, locals are increasingly calling for a long-term economic model less dependent on extractivism. Yet vast distances and geographic isolation have slowed the development of tourism in much of the region. The place that has most successfully capitalized on the landscape’s appeal is the city of Uyuni.
Uyuni still retains the pulse of a quintessentially Bolivian town, where dirt roads, brick facades, and sun-bleached signs shape a stark streetscape. Tourists are everywhere, from older couples and organized tour groups to backpackers. It is hardly surprising—the Uyuni Salt Flat is Bolivia’s leading tourist attraction, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors every year.
Vilma, the owner of the Hostal Quinua Dorada, is among those who benefit from this steady influx, on which much of the local economy now depends. “Tourism is in everything,” she says. “It’s in the food, the hospitality sector, the woman selling soft drinks or water, the clothing shops . . . it touches everything.” In conversations with neighbors, she has detected a shared anxiety: When lithium extraction reaches its peak, will the Uyuni Salt Flat’s landscape be permanently altered?
Mondaca, the researcher, warns that intensive brine extraction could lead to a reduction in the salt level on the surface, potentially altering the distinctive color of the white desert. Increased freshwater consumption in surrounding areas could also affect nearby businesses and force tourist routes to shift. Residents’ concerns, then, are not unfounded. “Everyone is thinking about it. That fear is there,” Vilma says. “If people stop coming, what will become of us?”
For now, the salt flat remains as mesmerising as ever. After recent rainfall, a thin layer of water blankets much of its 4,200 square miles. Sky and water merge into an almost infinite mirror of blues and whites, interrupted only by distant mountain silhouettes and the four-wheel-drive vehicles carrying tourists that cross the surface in every direction.
John McAulay
The entrance to the Uyuni Salt Flat, with several stands selling souvenirs to visitors on February 7, 2026.
Behind a sign welcoming visitors to the flats, a cluster of parked vehicles and makeshift stalls offers tourists souvenirs before they venture into the white expanse. One vendor, who has worked there for more than a decade, says she has witnessed subtle changes.
“It’s happening. There used to be more water, the level was higher,” she says. “Not anymore. It rains and it doesn’t fill up.” She points towards the distance, in the direction of the industrial plant. “That’s because they’re already working, they’re taking the water out. And it worries us.”
Meanwhile, back in Colcha K, Caral prepares for one of the most important events of the year. With the arrival of Carnival, the village celebrates by dancing in honor of quinoa and potatoes—a tradition deeply rooted in the community’s Indigenous heritage and reverence for the land. Elders watch as the young dance, their hands laden with the precious plants.
“We thank Mother Earth and hope that the next harvest will be better,” Caral says. In a region facing the looming threat of drought linked to lithium extraction, it is a prayer that will have to be uttered with increasing urgency.