Programme 

12:30-13:00 : Lunch (Room N207)

13:00-14:30 : Seminar (Room N207)

Exhausting Minerals: Reflections from the Chile / U.S. Mineral Trade

With Javiera Barandiaran, Associated professor (University of California, Santa Barbara) et director of UCSB’s Center for Restorative Environmental Work

While’s Atacama Desert has been supplying the world with mineral commodities for over a century, yet even here the scale of mining has recently accelerated dramatically – five copper mines opened and lithium production doubled in the last decade. 

Through an analysis of the mineral trade between Chile and the United States over the long 20th century, this talk challenges today’s commitment to more mining for so-called critical minerals, and reflects on ways in which re-representations of nature, history, and minerals might provide a better footing for sustainability. Since 1880, Chile has been a leading producer of nitrates, copper, and lithium, and the U.S. a leading consumer of these materials. Based on archival documents and secondary literature, I analyze how geologists, officials, and industry professionals mobilized political memories of mining, anticipation of new technologies, and legal challenges to shape the mineral trade in a post-colonial, often violent world. Between the 1960s and 1990s, lithium proved harder to mine and regulate than experts expected, and those difficulties reveal the negotiations required to maintain the myths of mineral scarcity and control which today are exhausting life on the planet. A corrective may lie in choosing instead to see minerals as part of living ecosystems.

Speaker : 

Javiera Barandiaran is Associate Professor in Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and director of UCSB’s Center for Restorative Environmental Work. She has published three books, including Science and Environment in Chile: The Politics of Expert Advice in a Neoliberal Democracy (MIT Press, 2018) and Rights of Nature: Arguments for Chile’s Constitution (Ocho Libros, 2022; co-authored and in Spanish), and numerous articles, book chapters and edited volumes on topics including how markets for science erode public trust, the shortcomings of environmental impact assessments, energy justice and, most recently, the challenge of fossil fuel decommissioning. She is currently writing a book about lithium mining (MIT Press, expected 2025) and through CREW published two decarbonization maps: one on California and one on Chile.

Coffee break & Change of room

14:45-16:45 : AIRE Award for Environmental Student Research - Presentation of the five shortlisted students (Room B010)

• 14:45-15:05 : Justine BANEGAS, "Réclamer justice, réparer le péyi. Mobilisations antillaises et usages militants du droit face au scandale du chlordécone de la Martinique à l’Île-de-France" (Research School, Master in political science)
• 15:10-15:30 : Fiona HURREY, "Dichotomies of Human-Wildlife Conflict: Drivers of Policy Choice and Barriers to Coexistence in the Context of Wolves in France" (PSIA, Master in Environmental Policy)
• 15:35-15:55 : Sophia NOËL, "The Effect of Heat on Fertility Rates in France" (Research school, Master in sociology)
• 16:00-16:20 : Loris PETRINI, "Dancing for an Ecological Revolution: Artivism in the Paris and London Environmental Scenes" (Research School, Master in political science)
• 16:25-16:45 : Chloé TEN BRINK, "A question of protection: justice considerations in planned relocation" (PSIA, Master in Environmental Policy)