COP30 was initially celebrated for the unprecedented effort to promote Indigenous participation. Yet this effort quickly rang hollow, as only a small handful of Indigenous delegates were granted access to the conference’s Blue Zone, where actual negotiations and high-level decisions took place. The resulting resentment and criticism were hardly surprising, given that Indigenous lands are among the first to bear the brunt of deforestation, resource degradation, and broader extractivist pressures. While Indigenous voices were formally sidelined from decision-making in the COP process, the summit was marked by numerous Indigenous-led protests that made visible a different reality: Several indigenous communities are actively building their own spaces of environmental mobilisation rather than waiting for recognition.

In the Chile-Argentina-Bolivia tri-border region, indigenous peoples have developed cross-border, self-organised initiatives to defend collective rights to land, territory, and resource management in the face of escalating lithium extraction. These communities are not passive victims of the green transition, but key political actors whose struggles expose the contradictions at the heart of global climate governance.

Mining and Indigenous communities in the Lithium Triangle

Lithium is a mineral essential for energy transition because it is the primary component in batteries that power electric vehicles and store energy from renewable sources. Characterised by the presence of lithium-rich salares (salt flats), the area of the Andes mountains that spans the borders of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile is known as the Lithium Triangle. It holds approximately 58% of the world’s lithium resources.

Exploration and mining in the Lithium Triangle occur on lands inhabited for thousands of years by Indigenous communities, including the Aymara, Atacama, Colla, and Quechua. Mining projects are generally governed by national and provincial authorities, with laws regulating resource extraction, environmental impact assessments, and land rights. However, these legal frameworks often overlook and violate Indigenous rights, particularly the principles of free, prior, and informed consent.

Mining activities also have harmful environmental impacts on the surrounding ecosystem, depleting water sources and contaminating the land, as well as harmful socio-economic impacts, compromising traditional livelihood activities and encouraging forced evictions.

Tensions within communities are also emerging between those that oppose mining and its long-term consequences, such as desertification, and those that welcome mining for its immediate material benefits, such as job opportunities. Nonetheless, tensions within communities have not yet escalated into open conflict. They are being carefully managed and contained by community leaders determined to preserve harmony and coexistence.

By contrast, tensions between communities and government authorities have frequently escalated into violence and open confrontation. This occurs when the communities’ anti-mining protests are met with disproportionate police force, including the use of rubber bullets, tear gas, and other crowd-control weapons. In several cases, anti-mining protesters have been  arbitrarily detained or criminalized through dubious legal charges (such as accusations of ‘terrorism’, ‘sabotage’, or ‘obstruction of public services’) designed to delegitimise their demands, suppress activism, and instill fear.

Cross-border patterns of cooperation

Facing persistent tensions with their own governments and systematic exclusion from international decision-making spaces, Indigenous communities across the border regions of the Lithium Triangle have been coming together to defend their collective rights to land and resources and to oppose the expansion of lithium mining.

Among those cooperative initiatives, the Latin American Water Summits for the Peoples stand out. Begun in 2018 in Argentina’s Catamarca province, its goal is to reunite local communities and Indigenous peoples whose water sources are affected by lithium mining and who resist extractivism. The most relevant Summits – co-organised by Indigenous peoples themselves and held in Indigenous territories – were convened in September 2024 in El Moreno, Argentina, and in October 2025 in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. When I visited Jujuy, Argentina, in October 2025, I sat with an Indigenous leader who was preparing to travel to Chile. The seriousness and passion with which he talked about the upcoming event clearly communicated the importance that locals attach to these cross-border inter-community forums.

The Water Summits involve debates and presentations by regional communities that are directly affected by lithium mining, as well as by people with scientific, legal, and academic expertise who are supporting the communities in their struggle. Activities such as the mapping of socio-environmental conflicts are carried out during those events to spread knowledge and awareness across communities on the specific realities that each of them is facing. Training sessions are also devoted to strengthening the capacities of communities to protect their water sources from the effects of lithium mining.

Plenary discussions are then used to advance common strategies aimed at continuing and sustaining cross-border anti-mining cooperation. In both 2024 and 2025, the Water Summits culminated into a final declaration in which the various communities collectively reiterated their determination to defend the Pachamama (Mother Earth in Quechua), reaffirmed their rights to their territories and resources, and denounced the current patterns of extractivism led by foreign companies who pretend to act under the banner of the green energy transition.

In the same spirit of the Water Summits, in January 2025 Jujuy also hosted the first Andean Intercultural Summit of Communities Affected by Lithium Exploitation, a meeting of more than 200 Indigenous representatives from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Peru who convened to reject lithium mining in their ancestral territories. During the Andean Summit, community representatives expressed unanimous rejection of the serious environmental, social, and cultural impacts caused by lithium mining. They also signed a powerful declaration that called for free, prior, and informed consent of all Indigenous people prior to the initiation of extractivist projects and reaffirmed the unity of Andean peoples against mining: ‘We identify as a single Andean people, without any division established by borders… . We share the same problems caused by mining and racism, and we will take joint action to protect our Mother Earth.’

However, it should be noted that the impact of these nascent and expanding initiatives of cross-border cooperation has so far been largely limited to amplifying Indigenous voices against lithium mining and encouraging greater awareness – both within the region and internationally – of the social and environmental costs of the green energy transition. By contrast, their ability to generate tangible political change remains comparatively modest, constrained by structural power imbalances, weak institutional channels for Indigenous participation, and the dominance of state and corporate interests in resource governance.

Conclusion

In the Andes, we are witnessing unique and unparalleled forms of Indigenous cross-border cooperation that demonstrate the resilience, agency, and transnational solidarity of Indigenous peoples in the face of systematic exclusion from international decision-making spaces and conflictive responses by local governments.

The Water Summits and the Andean Intercultural Summit reveal the power of self-organised, cross-border cooperation through which communities share knowledge, strengthen their advocacy capacities, and collectively defend their territories against harmful extractivism. These initiatives matter because they articulate approaches to resource governance that are inclusive, community-centered, and culturally grounded – offering valuable lessons and models. They also matter in that they show how Indigenous communities are building alternative channels and practices for environmental action that transcend national borders.

Recognising and integrating these Indigenous-led networks into formal policy frameworks – through advisory roles, strengthened consultation mechanisms, and the application of free, prior, and informed consent – could help ensure that resource governance aligns with both ecological sustainability and social justice. In this sense, grassroots practices in the Andes not only challenge the limited engagement of Indigenous voices at forums like COP30 and the persistent repression of Indigenous demands within their own countries but also point toward more equitable and effective models for managing natural resources within and across borders.

This views expressed in this article are those of the author.