Every day, the correspondents’ club describes how the same current event is illustrated in three countries.
Whether in Canada, Spain or Sweden, mining companies seek at all costs to operate lithium mines, but sometimes come across strong reluctance on the part of the local population.
In Sweden, a huge deposit near the Arctic Circle
In Sweden, the mining giant LKAB has announced that it has discovered the largest rare earth deposit in Europe, in Kiruna, 200 km from the Arctic Circle. Estimated at one million tonnes of strategic minerals, it could on its own meet a good part of European demand, very dependent on China for these materials essential for electric batteries and wind turbine rotors.
These views on this deposit arouse the anger of the Sami, the last indigenous people of Europe. They oppose the opening of a new mine because it threatens their ancestral activity: reindeer herding. The indigenous communities are against it, but they are in the minority (20,000 members throughout Lapland). The politicians and the inhabitants of the city, they are very favorable to these new mining developments, after the big iron vein which founded the city of Kiruna 130 years ago and which still supplies 80% of the demand today. European.
The mine full of promise in Spain
Infinity Lithium promises 1,000 direct and indirect jobs, 30 years of activity, 300 million euros in salaries paid over this period and 900 million in taxes, for the project of an open pit mine located just two kilometers from Caceres , in Spain. But faced with protest from local residents, scientists, environmental groups and even the town hall of one of the large and beautiful cities of Extremadura, declared a UNESCO heritage site in 1986, the company changed its focus. ‘shoulder.
She filed a new license application for an underground mine, saying that finally, after reviewing her calculations, the costs are higher, but that it remains profitable. For the moment, this strategy has garnered initial success. The developers have been granted an exploration license and the local mayor says he now sees more positives than negatives. Ecologists are still far from convinced, they continue to demand the pure and simple abandonment of the project.
Industrial Strategies in Canada
“To source their own equipment, companies turn to Quebec and Canada because we do things the right way.” This statement by Justin Trudeau did not go unnoticed. It was pronounced by the Canadian Prime Minister from a mining region of Abitibi, in northern Quebec, focused for years on gold, but which is now betting on lithium.
Associations challenged the position of the Prime Minister. Certainly there are rules, but they are poorly applied. Rodrigue Turgeon, environmental lawyer, denounces for example on Radio Canada the multiple strategies deployed by manufacturers to avoid Canadian environmental standards.
The Cree, an indigenous people in northern Quebec, who have a traditional way of life based on hunting and fishing, also fear the appetite of mining companies for lithium. Their projects could cut in two the habitats of caribou, geese or moose. For environmental protectors, the most important thing is not so much to extract rare minerals as to question ways of life. And therefore, for example, to have fewer individual vehicles and more electric public transport.