LITHIUM FOUND IN INDIA
0n 9th feb India ministry mines made an announcement that encourage some people to invite Elon musk to the country. They announced that in the Reasi District of Jammu and Kashmir almost 6 million tones of lithium was found.
The things that lithium is considered a white gold. From the battery in your smartphone, to the electric vehicles, everything that was a lithium ion battery drives up the demand for lithium. Today it has become a highly valuable natural resource. According to one estimate if you look at the global lithium reserves in the country with the highest reserve in Chile at 1st with 9.2 million tones reserves. Followed by Australia at 2nd reserves of lithium.
Does mean that the nation heat a lottery ? Similarly to how the gulf counties become rich due to oil reserves, can India rich due to lithium reserves?
In this topic, Lets try to answer all such question .Lets clear the one thing.
There is no uncertainity that lithium is a valuable metal. All smartphones irrespective of the brand your phone has either a lithium ion battery or lithium polymer battery. Additionally an electric vehicle that is manufactured today by an company, almost every one of them has a lithium battery .
This is because in comparison to other type of battery such as lead acid batteries, the lifespan of lithium batteries is almost 10 times longer. They weight about 50-60% lighter. and have higher efficiency. So much so that for storing renewable energy power grids are also using lithium batteries. In India almost 88 billion worth of lithium battery and 1.7 billion worth of lithium metal was imported from other countries in 2020-21. And the global lithium market is total value in 2021 was 600 billions. It is projected that by 2028, its value would cross 1.3 trillions. As people move away from petrol and diesel vehicle, towards electric vehicle as solar and in wind energy are used more, replacing coal power plant , we will see a growth in lithium demand. The lithium reserves discovered in J & K have been categories as Infrared resource. Resource whose quality and quantity can be estimated. But we cannot say for sure the quantities of lithium reserves actually present here or the quality of the lithium or whether it will be economical possible to mine it or not., we don t know how much about these.
Look at the graph on top of the inferred resource are the indicated resource and them Measured resource, Proven resource, Probable resource.
y axis represent how much we know about the geological area and the x axis represent other factor. Such as whether it will we economically possible to mine or not. The ecological survey of India have put into the G3 categories of initial assessment. They have claimed that more research and studies are needed to take it up to the G1 or G2 categories. Once they reach those category they can be considered minable reserves only after that the ministry of mines would be able to know that exact tonnage of lithium present. How much of it could be upto 5-7 years before we can commercially they found 600 tones of lithium. Even that the government announced they found 1600 tones of lithium. But in the current news the quantity of lithium is much higher and so it is significantly more important.
At the beginning we told you that the larger lithium reserves are in Chile in South America at 9.2 millions tones and 2nd Australia. Does it mean that India is now in the 2nd spot ? Not yet because the reserves is still in the category of inferred resource, 21 millions tones. The Global known supply is at 89 million tones. Even so it mean that in India 5.5% of global lithium reserves are present. Thats a huge number if the top players in the lithium industry are compared more than half of the global lithium reserves are in three south American countries ( Chile, Argentina, Bolivia ).On the other hand China is no. 1 player of producing lithium ion batteries of all the produced in China. According to recent study by an international energy agency China controls 58% of the lithium processing globally.In 2nd spot is Chile at 29% and Argentina at the 3rd with 10%. In terms of lithium extraction, Australia shares is the highest at 52% followed by Chile at 22% and China at 13% it is interesting to note that China has not discovered many lithium reserves, but lithium processing is the highest in China. They have focussed so much to devlop this industry .Obviously a high environment cost of lithium Mining, similar to Mining for other resource lithium mining is produces water, apil, air, pollution too. The process of extraction lithium from its ore ia water intensive. A lot of water is wasted for this. According to an estimate to produce 1 tones of lithium 2.2 million litre of water required. The same amount of water is an olympic size swiming pool..
2nd lithium is often extracted from hard rocks and underground brine Reservoirs. This beg's the question will lithium mining increases the chance of incident like joshimath? We will if the government ignores its environment impact.
3rd what about the air and soil pollution produced by mining?
Its true that lithium is being used to manufacture electric vehicle and electric batteries that is reduced the overall carbon emission. But here we cannot ignore the carbon emissions from mining. We will have to balance it all. We will have evaluate the negative and how we can counter them. In country like Argentina & Bolivia people have been protesting the adverse environmental empact. But ,for a 2nd term if we believe a 6 millions tones of reserves become proven reserves and it will be Economically profitable to mine them. It won't have a high adverse environment impact and that everything accounted for how will empact the indian economy and geopolitics? This is the most interesting part because if we work with the assumption 'The situation would be very Similarly to that in the gulf countries. The hit the jackpot when they found oil reseves . It is interesting to see that historically reaction in various countries and its impact whole some natural resource found in any country. There are several positive example of this. Apart from the gulf countries, oil was discovered in Norway, Australia, countries like Botswana and Rawanda which develop a lot. But at the same time there are several example too. Countries for whom their natural resource have been curse where the countries have to have misfortune because of that such as Congo,Bolivia, Netherland. The case of the Netherland is so famous that the phenomenon is named after it. The Dutch Disease. What is Dutch disease? It can also that have abundance of natural resource, but it doesn't happen. In 1977 the economist magazine used the phrase " The Dutch Disease"to expain the case of Netherland. They began exporting natural gas the unemployment rate increases upto 5.1%. If the export of natural resource are high enticing foreign .In case of the Netherland government you can assume that the currency will be stronger strengthing of the currency be considered a good thing.
Some industrie benefit from this while other suffer. Because everything being exported would become expensive such as Manufacturing Industry. They had to suffer loses. they will require some labour for the mining activities living or them amazing impact in other sector if the other sector of the country current developed additionally the mining sector is not very skill intensive they will adversely impact the skill development and knowledge among the masses literally the Gulf countries would have no economics without any impact on any other sector this country would avoided the Dutch disease the diversifying masterfully among other sectors because the government government spend on the education of their citizen the first oil field in Norway was discovered in 1969. Countries like Venezuela and Iran warrant so fortunate in 1908, while was found in Iran and in 1922 while was found in Venezuela. in both these countries The Other sector wear and S develop citizen wear and very educated and the oil attracted for the funds and Labour and the enter economic trees to survive on only one resource in both countries the rest of the economy suffered heavy losses another shirt that way of awarding the Dutch disease that was used by Norway is to use the economy funds from the natural resource for the benefit of the masses it's student we get on only a handful of individual become billionaire from the inflow of money due to oil instead each citizen benefit from it to do this easiest way would be create sovereign wealth fund. the excess money fund from selling the natural resource should be collected in the nation. The wealth fund of Norway holds more than one trillion dollar the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world the axis money is banned on education and infrastructure the Gulf countries are playing a lot of attention to this lesson. Countries like the UAE and Saudi Arabia that we are one dependent and oil today they are trying to diversify their economist today Dubai has become tourism hub. today 95% of the Dubai GDP is not while please rather it is non oil on the 30% of the GDP of the UAE depends on oil and gas. if you conducted the developing country foods Paniya in Africa is one of the positive example of this which has successfully avoided Dutch disease but the negative example would be countries like which like Congo, Zimbabwe were due to corruption and mismanagement and natural resource help through to be in the infrastructure of the Lithium ion battery. Cobalt is another important metal that is used and do you know that Congo 74% of the Global supply in produced such as large quantity of valuable resource is one country. Congo would have become extremely rich if it wanted to.
but today you will find Congo at the bottom of nearly all list by 2015 numerous of Minds in Congo where control by lots they Run mining Mafia even mines Congo where control by virtual the rain a mining Mafia even today mining is carried out by children, there rampant child labour all across the country. The mining destroy the environment of the country and the economy did not be benefit at all.
overall the lesson very clear here if we do find her Treasure trove of natural resource we shouldn't not dependent on that treasures.
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