In a cloud of gray dust, an excavator fills a dump truck with blocks of stone containing lithium, an ore used to make batteries for electric cars.
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In the heart of the Jequitinhonha Valley in the state of Minas Gerais, one of the poorest regions in Brazil, the red earth covered with a grayish layer, the back and forth of heavy trucks is incessant.
Long dubbed the “Valley of Sorrows”, this semi-arid region, home to almost a million people, is now considered a new Eldorado thanks to the abundance of lithium, the “white gold” essential for the energy transition.
About 85% of the reserves of Brazil, the world’s fifth largest lithium producer, are in the region.
In a bid to attract foreign investors, local authorities fancied the concept of “Lithium Valley” last month in New York at the headquarters of new technology exchange Nasdaq.
“Green Lithium”
A Canadian company, Sigma Lithium, has already taken the lead. Founded in 2012, the company began mining for lithium in the Jequitinhonha Valley in April.
The stated goal: In the first year, enough ore is to be provided for the batteries of more than 600,000 electric vehicles, and three times more when production is running at full speed.
The exploration of lithium is not without environmental consequences, the processing of this ore requires enormous amounts of water, while the reserves are mainly located in regions affected by drought.
But the company advertises itself as a “green lithium” producer: the ore beneficiation plant reuses 90% of the water afterwards and uses no chemicals, Ana Cabral told AFP. -Gardner, Brazilian CEO of Sigma.
“Our entire operation has been designed to solve the equation between mining and sustainable development,” she explains.
For them, the turning point came in 2015, when an iron ore tailings dam collapsed in Mariana, an unprecedented environmental disaster in Brazil, in the same state of Minas Gerais, some 400 km south of the country. south of the Jequitinhonha Valley. The following year, his mutual fund became Sigma’s largest shareholder.
Ana Cabral-Gardner explains that the mine at the Grota do Cirilo site is split in two to allow for a small stream that crosses it, albeit a significant deficit.
cracked walls
But the idea of turning the region into a “lithium valley” is not unanimous.
“Here, it’s the Jequitinhonha Valley, we can’t put a mineral before our identity,” says Aline Gomes Vilas, 45, a member of the Movement of Mining Dams Affected People (MAB), who believes the local population hasn’t been affected enough consulted.
She lives in Araçuai, one of the neighboring towns of Sigma Mine. “It was a quiet, rural area and now the noise is permanent. “We are already seeing ‘houses with cracked walls due to explosions’ in the rock, with the rubble being picked up by excavators, loaded onto trucks and processed in the factory.
“With every explosion, the walls shake,” adds Luiz Gonzaga, 71, who lives right next to the mine.
“At the moment they are still digging quite a distance from my house, but the dust is bothering me. Imagine when it will happen around here.”
“This region has already experienced a gold and diamond rush, but this has never resulted in development (…). The energy transition is necessary, but it must be done in a fair way,” said Ilan Zugman, director of Latin America at 350.org.
“Low added value”
Elaine Santos, a researcher at the University of Sao Paulo (USP), also criticizes that the lithium mined in Brazil is almost exclusively destined for export, “while Europe and the United States are developing strategies for the entire chain, from mining to … “the production of electric cars”.
“Brazil risks deepening its dependency by remaining a country that mainly exports low-value-added commodities,” she laments.
Lithium mining in the country dates back to the 1920s, but that all changed after an executive order in July 2022, the last year in office of far-right ex-President Jair Bolsonaro. This decree made this market more attractive to foreign investors, notably by removing restrictions on the export of this mineral.
And a government envoy of his leftist successor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, was in New York and actively supported the launch of the Lithium Valley advocacy campaign.
In Chile, the second largest lithium producer in the world, his left-wing counterpart Gabriel Boric recently announced measures to strengthen state control over lithium mining.