The Growing Demand for 'White Gold' to Accommodate the 'Green' Transition: The Role of Discourse in Shaping the Cooperation Between the European Union and Chile on Lithium

Abstract

University of Glasgow student number: 2656577Z University of Trento student number: 307539 Charles University student number: 64652184 The Growing Demand for 'White Gold' to Accommodate the 'Green' Transition: The Role of Discourse in Shaping the Cooperation Between the European Union and Chile on Lithium Abstract Academia and the international political arena consider lithium, also called 'white gold', as an essential component in the 'green' transition to a carbon-neutral society. However, the socio- environmental challenges linked to the extraction of lithium, as well as other minerals that are labelled as 'critical', raise the question of whether this transition can actually be called 'green'. This thesis critically examines the role of discourse in shaping the geopolitics of lithium, which is based on the post-structuralist notion that social and discursive practices are linked. To research this, a critical discourse analysis is conducted, which analyses how the lithium cooperation between the EU and Chile has been shaped by their respective dominant discourses on critical minerals. The lithium cooperation between the EU and Chile is an important geopolitical topic, as Chile holds the greatest lithium reserves globally and in the EU demand for the mineral is increasing drastically as a result of the...