BETWEEN COLONIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL FRACTURES: THINKING ABOUT COLONIALITY AND MULTISPECIFIC RELATIONS BASED ON LITHIUM MINERAL EXTRACTIVISM IN THE JEQUITINHONHA VALLEY-MG

• Grant number: 25/05442-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: June 01, 2025
• End date: May 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Marisol Marini
• Grantee: Ana Carolina Santino de Sá
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Saúde Pública (FSP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 23/11689-1 - Common body: a non-anthropocentric approach to the unavoidable convergences between human and planetary health, AP.JP

Abstract

Lithium is widely used in high-energy-density batteries, which are vital for renewable eletrical energy-based systems and electronic devices. Because of this application, this mineral is considered essential in the current global context of energy transition, highlighting the urgent need for a structural change from fossil fuel-based energy systems to a system based on renewable sources in the face of the deepening climate crisis. The Jequitinhonha Valley, located in Minas Gerais, is a territory marked by the colonial process, recurrently updated through developmentalist discourses and projects. Currently the region has been the target of massive lithium extraction and a series of projects and preliminary studies that aim to further expand the extraction of this mineral. Given the urgency and seriousness of the ongoing process, this project aims to investigate the historical and social process of the presence of lithium and its mining in the Jequitinhonha Valley, narrating how this mineral actor relates, throughout its trajectory, to a series of multispecific actors in a scenario permeated by relations of coloniality. The development of the research will be carried out through a systematic bibliographic review of academic works related to the topic; the analysis of available quantitative and qualitative official documents; the reading of news reports that elucidate the path of lithium in the Jequitinhonha Valley territory; the ethnographic methods of participant observation and interviews with interlocutors.