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Bolivia’s election of centre-right President-elect Rodrigo Paz Pereira could see the country open its vast lithium resources to foreign investors to bolster its faltering economy – a move that could benefit the US after years of hostility toward Washington, analysts say.
Paz, a senator and the son of a former president, won the country’s election earlier this month, ending two decades of left-wing rule, which constrained foreign investment in the South American nation’s mineral wealth.
The change in government may be welcomed by investors in the US, which is seeking to secure access to minerals that are critical for clean technology and military equipment, to counter China’s supply chain dominance, and has previously raised concerns over Chinese investments in the region’s lithium industry.
Lithium is a key material to manufacture rechargeable batteries for electric vehicles and energy storage.
Bolivia makes up less than 1% of global lithium production despite possessing some of the world’s largest reserves, with an estimated 23 million tonnes, or 20% of the global total.
Paz has pledged to seek overseas partnerships to tap these reserves. But he will have to balance engaging the US with maintaining investment from China and Russia initiated by his predecessors.
“Exactly what he does on this issue will determine his relationship with China and Russia,” said Farit Rojas, a professor at the Higher University of San Andrés in La Paz.
At the same time, the political reset could provide Bolivia with a critical opportunity to set clearer and stricter environmental and social standards for developing its burgeoning lithium sector, analysts told Climate Home News.
Bolivia’s lithium dream
Paz’s election comes at a pivotal moment for the country. It is mired in an economic crisis spurred by runaway inflation caused by a foreign currency shortage, leaving people waiting in long lines for fuel and essentials like cooking oil.
Converting lithium reserves into a profitable export industry would bring much needed dollars into the country.
But doing so would require amending Bolivia’s constitution to allow private firms to extract the mineral. That privilege was restricted to Bolivia’s state-owned companies under the 20-year rule of the Movement for Socialism (MAS), the party formerly led by ex-President Evo Morales.
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Constitutional restrictions and past rejection of foreign investment mean Bolivia’s lithium resources remain largely untapped compared to neighbouring Argentina and Chile, whose deposits are of higher quality.
A significant share of Bolivia’s deposits also lie beneath the Salar de Uyuni salt flats, a major tourist attraction.
Paz, whose party does not have a legislative majority, has yet to say whether and how he will amend Bolivia’s constitution. But he has pledged not to “sell out” Salar de Uyuni.
US, China and Russia: a balancing act
His first months in office will be watched closely by the Trump administration. Following Paz’s election victory, the US Department of State pledged to work with him on “shared goals of regional and global security, economic prosperity, and growth that will benefit our nations”.
For the US, this could be an opportunity to break China and Russia’s grip on Bolivia’s lithium reserves, said Pablo Hamilton, a Chilean mining lawyer connecting foreign investors with energy opportunities in Bolivia.
In 2024, Bolivia’s state-owned Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos lithium company signed contracts worth a combined $2 billion with Chinese and Russian firms to extract lithium beneath the Salar de Uyuni salt flats. The year prior, it signed a $1.4 billion deal with Chinese battery manufacturing giant CATL to develop its lithium resources.
AI and satellite data help researchers map world’s transition minerals rush
But those contracts – which have yet to be approved by Bolivia’s legislature – have been sharply criticised by scientists, Indigenous peoples and local communities because of a lack of transparency over the consultation process, inconsistencies within the contracts and environmental risks. Paz has pledged to review the contracts.
Cancelling the contracts could cause investors to worry about policy volatility, Hamilton told Climate Home News. But the administration could justify doing so if it can prove allegations of corruption that have swirled around the deals. It could also provide an opportunity to establish stricter mining standards that provide certainty to potential investors.
Investors “don’t know what to expect”
“The rules are not clear enough. It’s very concerning that investors don’t know what to expect,” Hamilton said. “This is a great opportunity to [mandate] a free, prior and informed consultation process and environmental impact assessments – really professional ones, not just to tick the box.”
To attract foreign investment, Paz will likely seek to build public-private partnerships, which will require greater engagement from local actors than in the past, Hamilton said.
In the area surrounding Salar de Uyuni, Indigenous groups have lost trust in the government, citing the shadowy allocation of mining contracts and saying their communities have not benefited from mining.
They also worry that additional extraction would deplete the limited freshwater resources they rely on for farming, said Gonzalo Mondaca of environmental organisation Cedib, which works with communities living in the lithium-rich region.
Efforts to green lithium extraction face scrutiny over water use
The proposed Chinese and Russian extraction plans would use direct lithium extraction (DLE), a group of technologies that proponents say can help extract more lithium with fewer environmental impacts but which still uses large amounts of water.
But existing environmental assessments are not sufficient to understand the impact of the technique on the salt flat’s ecosystem, said Mondaca.
On the campaign trail, Paz also said he would seek to export the magnesium byproducts of lithium extraction to the US and China.
However, that plan requires a high level of technological development and Bolivia currently lacks the necessary infrastructure, said Mondaca.
Even if the new president manages to clear constitutional hurdles to liberalise the country’s lithium sector, “there is still a long way to go,” he added.
The post Bolivia’s shift to the right renews ambition to mine vast lithium reserves appeared first on Climate Home News.
Bolivia’s shift to the right renews ambition to mine vast lithium reserves
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An older teaching about land acknowledgement
As I have come to understand the spirit and intention of land acknowledgement, I often return to fond memories of my grandmother and her words of wisdom. She taught that the health of the places we call home comes first, because the wellbeing of the people depends on it.
In her teaching, land acknowledgement began with the land. Long before it became a paragraph read at the start of a meeting, it was a way of recognizing a homeland: its waters, its species, its seasons, and the spirit that revealed whether the place was well.
Her teaching echoes a practice found across many Indigenous Nations. Haudenosaunee gatherings, for example, have long opened with the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen, the Thanksgiving Address, often translated as “the words that come before all else.” The speaker greets and gives thanks to the people, the earth, the waters, the plants, the animals, the winds, the sun, the moon and the stars. Only after everything that sustains life has been acknowledged does the gathering turn to its own business.
That order changes what an acknowledgement is for. Its purpose was to share the story of a place with neighbours and to draw them into the work of tending it. People entered the story second, as the ones responsible for what had just been named.
Understood this way, an acknowledgement does more than open a meeting. It asks us to reconsider where we stand, and what we owe the ground beneath us.
Nations among nations
In her teaching, people are one nation among many. The salmon are a nation. So are the cedars, the bison, the medicine plants, and the pollinators. Each belongs to a place, carries its own responsibilities, and offers gifts no other nation can give.
This idea of kinship runs through many Indigenous philosophies. The phrase “all my relations,” heard in ceremonies and gatherings across Turtle Island, is a reminder that family extends beyond people to the animals, plants, waters and lands that make life possible. Some Indigenous languages carry the same understanding in their grammar, speaking of many plants, animals and natural forces as living beings rather than objects.
Sovereignty, understood through this relationship, is a kind of standing more than a form of control. Each nation belongs fully to its place and carries its share of that place’s life. No nation thrives alone, and none thrives by taking over the whole.
The land is also the source of instruction. Over generations, people watched how a river valley or a stretch of prairie kept itself well: who arrived when, who fed whom, and how much could be taken before the giving stopped. In my grandmother’s telling, those observations became instructions, and those instructions helped shape law and protocol. They guided when to harvest, where to camp, how to enter a neighbour’s territory, and what was owed in return.
Indigenous legal scholars today often describe this as law that comes from the land itself, learned by watching how living systems sustain one another. A plainer name for it is knowing how to live somewhere.
The host and the guest
One of the clearest teachings in this understanding of the world is the relationship between host and guest. My grandmother invited us to recognize that relationship in the lives of plants and animals.
A host prepares the place before anyone arrives. A beaver family dams a stream, and the pond becomes a home for fish, frogs, birds and plants. A fallen tree becomes a nurse log, feeding the next generation of seedlings as it returns to the soil.
A host offers first. A flowering plant sets out nectar. A berry bush ripens fruit. These provisions come in their own season, not whenever a visitor happens to want them.
A host also makes its presence known. Birdsong, scent and the marks left along a trail tell newcomers that a place is already inhabited. The visitor does not arrive in an empty world.
The guest has responsibilities too. A guest attends to the season and to what the place can offer. A guest does not assume that everything within reach is theirs to take. A guest leaves something that helps sustain the relationship.
A bee takes nectar and carries pollen. Read through this teaching, that exchange offers an image of visiting well: receiving a gift while helping the host continue its life.
Many Indigenous harvesting protocols carry the same ethic into daily practice: ask before taking, take only what is needed, offer thanks, and leave enough for others and for the plant or animal to recover.
None of this suggests that every relationship in nature is peaceful or generous. These are ways of seeing responsibilities that people can learn to carry.
Everyone is both
No being is only a host or only a guest.
A tree makes room for other life while depending on soil, water, sunlight, fungi, and relationships beyond itself. People, too, may welcome others into their homes while remaining dependent on the larger homeland that sustains them.
The distinction between host and guest is therefore about roles, not ranks. Everyone receives. Everyone has something to give.
The question is whether the exchange sustains the place.
A visitor who takes without restraint leaves less for those who come next. A host who neglects the place has less to offer. Both have responsibilities, and neither can fulfil them alone.
This is the heart of reciprocity, a principle found across Indigenous philosophies: relationships stay healthy when gifts move in both directions. The Haudenosaunee teaching of the seventh generation extends that exchange across time, asking that decisions made today leave the place well for those not yet born.
Mutual benefit begins here, with the recognition that different beings carry different gifts and obligations.
What people carry forward
My grandmother’s teaching connects these relationships to the ways people meet their neighbours.
The host prepares a place, offers food and rest, and explains where the visitor has arrived. The guest makes themselves known, explains why they have come, listens to the terms of the visit, and brings something in return. The gift may be material. It may also be labour, knowledge, news, or a commitment to help.
Nations around the Great Lakes carried this ethic into treaty. The Dish with One Spoon, an agreement among the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe and allied Nations, describes shared hunting grounds as a single dish. Everyone eats from it with one spoon, takes only what they need, leaves enough for others, and keeps the dish clean. The Two Row Wampum, between the Haudenosaunee and European newcomers, shows two vessels travelling side by side on the same river, each keeping its own ways and neither steering the other.
In this understanding, acknowledgement is more than naming the people associated with a territory. It is learning enough about a homeland to behave responsibly within it.
Whose home is this? What sustains it? What laws and agreements guide our presence? What can we receive, and what must we return?
These questions make acknowledgement a relationship rather than a recital.
They also make it diplomatic. A guest who recognizes the host’s homeland recognizes that they have entered a place with its own relationships and responsibilities. A host who welcomes the guest makes room for an encounter governed by those relationships.
Neither arrives without standing. Neither arrives without obligations.
Beginning with place
I write from the shores of the Bay of Quinte. Here, the teaching asks me to begin with the water, the shoreline, and the life they sustain. Before I describe myself, I must attend to where I am.
That does not make people or history less important. It places them within the homeland that gives them meaning. The people, their laws, their agreements, and their responsibilities all belong to the place.
In a time of longer fire seasons, troubled waters, and uncertainty about what the next season will bring, this teaching asks something difficult and useful of us: pay attention before you speak.
An acknowledgement cannot tell the story of a place if the speaker has stopped noticing it.
The land came first. Beginning there again means learning to name what sustains us, and accepting that what sustains us also asks something of us.
By Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock
Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash
The post The Land Came First appeared first on Indigenous Climate Hub.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and cement are projected to fall by around 0.4% in 2026 to 38.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), according to new figures from the Global Carbon Project.
This guest post is by:
- Dr Zeke Hausfather, Carbon Brief’s climate science contributor
- Prof Pierre Friedlingstein, chair of mathematical modelling of climate systems at the University of Exeter and part of the Global Carbon Project team.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and cement are projected to fall by around 0.4% in 2026 to 38.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), according to new figures from the Global Carbon Project.
The 21st edition of the annual “global carbon budget” report, published today, says that this small decline is largely due to a 1.9% drop in emissions from oil and the energy shock triggered by the Iran conflict and the closure of the strait of Hormuz.
Emissions from coal continue to increase slightly.
The Global Carbon Project’s projections for fossil fuel and cement CO2 emissions in 2026 are preliminary, with a range that spans a fall of -1.5% to a rise of +0.6%.
This means a small increase in emissions can not be ruled out.
Emissions from land-use change, such as deforestation, are projected to rise in 2026.
This is primarily driven by peat fires and forest degradation in south-east Asia and is linked to the development of a strong El Niño event this year.
As a result, total CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and land use are projected to reach a record high of 43.3GtCO2 in 2026 – marginally above 42.8GtCO2 in 2025.
Research published alongside the report by the same team in Nature Climate Change finds that the growth in solar, wind and electric vehicles (EVs) now offsets around two-thirds of the emissions that would otherwise come from rising energy demand.
However, the deployment of these technologies is not yet enough to push global emissions into a sustained decline, according to the study.
The 2026 global carbon budget report also estimates that:
- Fossil emissions are projected to fall in China (-0.9%), the US (-1.3%) and the EU (-1.5%) in 2026, but rise by 4.4% in India.
- Oil emissions are projected to fall in every major region, with the largest drop in China (-4.6%).
- Land-use emissions averaged 4.9GtCO2 per year over 2016-25, around 21% lower than the decade before.
- Total CO2 emissions (fossil and land-use) grew by an average 0.3% per year over the past decade (2016-25), compared with 1.7% per year over the decade before.
- The remaining carbon budget to limit warming to 1.5C is 150GtCO2, or less than four years of current emissions.
- The land sink in 2025 was the highest on record, rebounding after being weakened during the 2023-24 El Niño. The current El Niño is expected to weaken the land sink in 2027.
- The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is set to reach 427.7 parts per million (ppm) in 2026, 54% above pre-industrial levels.
(For more on previous editions of the Global Carbon Project’s annual report, see Carbon Brief’s coverage in 2025, 2024, 2023 and 2022.)
Total emissions edge up as land-use emissions rise
Total global CO2 emissions, which combines fossil fuels and land-use change, are projected to reach a record high of 43.3GtCO2 in 2026, up from 42.8GtCO2 in 2025.
The increase in 2026 comes entirely from a projected rise in land-use emissions, which are more challenging to estimate than fossil emissions.
(The global carbon budget groups emissions from fossil fuels and cement production as “fossil emissions”.