Exploring Lithium’s Off-Sites and Situated Sustainability in San Pedro de Atacama

As part of the final field activities and dissemination efforts of the Worlds of Lithium project, the PI organized a field visit to the waste management site of the commune of San Pedro de Atacama. This activity was developed in collaboration with Atacameño leaders, doctoral students from the IIAM-UCN program (including participants from the territory Rapa Nui and other international contexts), and with the support of the local municipality.

This site, far from lithium evaporation ponds, consists of landfill structures that receive the waste generated by local residents and the mass tourism industry. These spaces are rarely included in dominant narratives of lithium extraction and energy transitions, yet they are structurally tied to the extractive geographies of the region.

By paying attention to these off-sites—zones that lie beyond the conventional maps of resource extraction—the project invited critical reflection on how sustainability is imagined, enacted, and disrupted. The visit enabled participants to engage with the material conditions and contradictions of extractive life, and to explore transitions from the perspective of grounded, localized practices and challenges.