Establishing Post Lithium Landscapes

Abstract

The increasing demand for critical raw materials like lithium, essential for clean energy technologies, presents both opportunities and challenges. Portugal, with Europe’s largest lithium reserves, faces resistance to establishing lithium mines in the Norte region due to insufficient citizen support and concerns about socio-environmental impacts. This thesis addresses the need for a comprehensive spatial strategy that guides the region’s transition from an extractivist lithium economy to a circular post-extractivist mode, while considering socio-environmental vulnerabilities and broader economic impacts.
The research involved developing a spatial strategy that integrates facilities for lithium extraction, processing, battery production, and recycling. Incorporating insights from analyzing the region’s conditions, the metabolic and spatial footprint of each facility in the supply chain, and proposing strategic locations for the facilities and their supporting and infrastructural systems. The strategy is designed to support both the extractivist and post-extractivist states, ensuring sustainable long-term development.
The key findings demonstrate that the proposed strategy effectively minimizes the nuisances of the extractive operations while supporting conditions for a circular post-extractivist state. In the extractivist state, facilities are efficiently located for lithium extraction, processing, and exportation. In the post-extractivist state are infrastructures repurposed for bio-based economies and lithium recycling, while promoting circularity and reducing reliance on new raw material extraction. The strategy enhances Europe’s independence in lithium supply, strengthens Portugal’s role in achieving green transition goals, fosters long-term circular development in the Norte region, and supports conditions in the Alto Tamega subregion for a circular bio-based economy that helps remediate the mining landscape, while connecting to the local economy and cultural identity, as well as creating additional income for these rural areas.
The findings show the set of key interventions – including urban development for (temporary) worker accommodations, infrastructural reinforcement and development, change in cultivation patterns, water and energy infrastructure development, and industrial development – that are necessary to shape the conditions that support both states. These set of interventions could inspire other European countries to establish the necessary extractivist landscapes progressively, ensuring circular long-term development. However, the thesis recommends, that future elaboration is necessary on engaging with local communities and refining the strategy through participatory methods to ensure successful implementation.