‘We’ll lose everything if the mines come’

A women attending a protest against lithium extraction in indigenous communities in San Salvador de Jujuy, Argentina. As lithium mining has gained a greater global spotlight, the fate of water in the region has increasingly fallen out of the hands of those communities. — AP

IRENE Leonor Flores de Callata, 68, treks along a bone-dry riverbed, guiding a herd of llamas and sheep through stretching desert.

Flores de Callata’s native Kolla people have spent centuries climbing deep into the mountains of northern Argentina in search of a simple substance: fresh drinking water.