Technological Fixes, or Rights of Nature for a Better Future?

Por Javiera Barandiarán

The salt flats where lithium is extracted are seeing their surfaces disfigured by ever-expanding evaporation ponds. Their water cycles are disrupted as underground stores are emptied of brine, and the water content is left to evaporate into the atmosphere. At each salt flat, scientists continue to study the exact ways in which water cycles are disrupted. But the consequences are the same across them: Salt flats and saline lakes worldwide are disappearing and, with them, the microbial, plant, and animal life that depend on them. In turn, the human communities that live nearby are losing access to clean, flowing water. Their fields for crops and pastures for animals are drying out, and they have fewer opportunities to interact with the diverse wildlife with whom they have long had relationships of mutual care. As wildlife becomes increasingly rare, the range and richness of the relationships and cultural meanings human groups attach to them are reduced.

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Términos mencionados en esta doctrina: disrupted.