​[PUBLICATION] Constructing Resources for the Transition: Geo-legal Approaches to Lithium-Bearing Brines in South America’s Salt Flats​

Congratulations to Vincent Bos from the CEA I-tésé and his co-authors Marie Forget from Université Savoie Mont Blanc and Chloé Nicolas Artero from IRD (Institut de recherche pour le développement) for publishing this chapter in the book "Back to the Ground - Knowledge, Politics and Practices of Remaking Earth Strata" coordinated by O. Labussière et al. !

The aim of this chapter:

This chapter discusses the legal construction of nature from a geo-legal perspective that separates surface and geological strata, denying circulation and links between them. Various geo-legal strategies exclude their activities from the normative framework that regulates groundwater exploitation while discursively minimizing the negative environmental externalities produced. The diachronic and multitiered approach allows us to denaturalize Chile’s legal mining and water regimes. Several authors have highlighted states’ intentionality in creating natural resource legislation designed to perpetuate colonial logics and dispossess indigenous populations. The chapter looks at how the industry stabilizes a lithium-producing stratum by establishing a withdrawal loop on a very extensive hydrological cycle (flow, aquifer, evaporation).

👉 Read the article: https://bit.ly/4pra3xz​