Opportune but vulnerable

It is said that fortune favours the brave. India has been making consistent efforts to promote green mobility and tap the fast-emerging green market, globally. The electric vehicle sector has been a major thrust area in this concern. Until now, India’s prospects in the sector were crippled by the import dependency on lithium-ion cells. But now a silver lining has emerged in the form of the discovery of lithium reserves; it has the potential to not only take the country towards self-reliance in the EV sector but to also tap the larger global market. More importantly, the discovery can prove to be a game-changer towards ensuring a green economy.

Lithium (derived from the Greek word ‘lithos’ meaning stone) is a silvery-white alkali metal that is the lightest solid element and the backbone of batteries that power our phones, laptops, pacemakers, solar grids and, most importantly, electric vehicles (EVs). India currently imports its lithium from Australia and Argentina. Cheers and groans greeted the February 9 announcement by the Geological Survey of India that it has discovered 5.9 million tonnes of lithium reserves at Salal-Haimana in Jammu & Kashmir’s (J&K’s) Reasi district during a preliminary exploration stage. This discovery in the foothills of the famed Mata Vaishno Devi shrine in the Himalayas — if verified through future studies and if determined as viable for economic extraction — is being viewed as a huge boost for India's ambition to expand EV penetration by 30 per cent by 2030.

Experts and environmentalists are concerned about the impact of any further mining and development activities in the fragile and disaster-prone Himalayan region. Disasters are not new to the Himalayas, which were formed 40–50 million years ago when the northward-moving Indian plate crashed into the Eurasian plate. Tectonics are still very active in the region; every year, the Indian plate moves northward by about 5 millimetres and the Himalayas are elevated by about 1 centimetre. The continuing movement has resulted in numerous faults, with sheets and slabs of deformed and sheared rocks that are weak and loosely bound. The Himalayan region between J&K is an eco-sensitive region, and mining could lead to a significant loss of biodiversity. The fact that the Himalayas are the source of so many rivers, any mining activity is going to pollute the entire riparian ecosystem.

Experts point out that lithium is geologically rare because it is unstable, atomically, due to its lowest binding energies per nucleon than any other stable nuclide. This is good for nuclear reactions (lithium was used as fuel in the early nuclear reactions in 1932) but hard to be found in nature. Further compounding its volatility is the fact that lithium is an alkali and will combust if allowed to come in contact with elements it reacts with, such as those found in the air. Incidentally, pure lithium needs to be stored in oil to be transported safely. The biggest concern expressed by many is the fact that mining companies do not follow eco-friendly practices, and this is more pronounced in India because of its lax environmental regulations.

Most of the world’s lithium brines are concentrated in a region known as ‘The Lithium Triangle’ — an intersection of Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina. This triangle is believed to contain over 75 per cent of the existing known lithium reserves. The most common lithium mining technique in salt flats is brine extraction. Although this process is lower in CO2 emissions than hard rock mining, it requires excessive land and water use. Excessive water waste in the salt-flat regions of each country affects local communities, particularly when concerns about drought and clean water make food security an issue. Mining and processing lithium can further jeopardise food security through its excessive carbon emissions, water, and land-use methods. In Chile, 5,00,000 gallons of water yield one tonne of lithium. In areas that already struggle with clean water availability and accessibility, lithium water-mining techniques could cause local water basins to be contaminated and use an already scarce water supply meant for rural communities, livestock, and crops.

If lithium mining projects are going to be pursued, there must be a fair and thorough assessment of their effects on agricultural production, especially since the sector is already susceptible to climate change. It is also important to ensure we extract these materials as responsibly as possible, otherwise, it will mitigate the very reason for building these green technologies in the first place. Finally, it is up to the people of J&K to ensure that whatever decisions the Union government takes to make India ‘atmanirbhar’ (self-sufficient) — as far as this critical mineral is concerned — to achieve its net-zero goals, it is not at the cost of the union territory’s fragile environment.

Views expressed are personal