24 September 2025. UN Human Rights Council - 60th Session
Panel discussion on the rights of Indigenous Peoples in the context of a just transition to sustainable energy systems, including in relation to critical minerals
Vice-President,
I deliver this statement on behalf of FIDH, CELS, Observatorio Ciudadano, and our partners from the Licanantay Indigenous people in the Salar de Atacama.
Critical minerals, such as lithium, are essential for the energy transition: they enable batteries, electric mobility and the storage necessary for decarbonisation. But the climate emergency cannot justify irreversible social, cultural and environmental impacts.
In the high Andean salt flats, brine extraction is mining for water — an element sacred to the local Indigenous peoples — which reduces water tables, damages wells, wetlands and marshes, degrades the habitats of native fauna and flora, and increases the risks of salinisation and contamination.
Socially and culturally, it jeopardises camelid livestock farming, high-altitude agriculture, ancestral knowledge and community cohesion; it also affects health through dust and socio-environmental stress. Economically and in terms of governance, the benefits are concentrated outside the territory, with little transparency and insufficient oversight, only reproducing inequalities like those exacerbated by metal mining.
The transition must incorporate environmental justice and human rights, with independent and participatory assessments, free and informed prior consultation, precautionary measures to protect water and biodiversity, effective oversight, and clear mechanisms for redress for those who are harmed in the name of this transition.
States must promote governance with community leadership and circular economy policies that reduce primary extraction.
Only with transparency, accountability, joint planning and genuine consent will the transition be fair, respecting the life, territory and self-determination of Indigenous peoples.
I thank you.