So I wonder if you, each of you could just speak a bit or give some reflections from your case studies about, about why in these cases these, uh, policies were adopted and how that, um, was produced, if the constellation of different actors contesting it and state responses to it.

Sure, yeah.

Um, well, so the case of Costa Rica is quite interesting because it shows, um, the possibilities of countries in the Global South to be well known and positioned within the international sphere, um, and get or use that, that international prestige also to get economic opportunities out of it.

Um, so we see that the case of Costa Rica, this ban alongside other environmental initiatives, um, because they, of course, have, um, championed the payments for ecosystem services and, and carbon forestry offsets as well.

Um, and famously, they, they reversed deforestation, um, quite early.

Um, so then all, all these features created a certain image of Costa Rica that also enabled them to, um, receive a lot of funds from the Global North and countries that were interested in, um, fostering their, their initiatives to protect biodiversity within a c-certain framework, of course.

Um, and also that enabled Costa Rica, because they have an amazing biodiversity, um, to develop tourism and ecotourism in particular.

And also again, yeah, as, as, as you, I guess, spoke about before as well, but how that also comes to be contested by a range of different actors and that contestation gets mediated by the state.

Could you tell us more about this notion of the desert scape and, and how it relates to this, um, desolate scape?

Sure.

Um, yeah.

So what was fascinating for me as well was that even though I have-- I've lived in the northern part of Chile, close to the Atacama Desert and I've worked there, I was also used to see the desert as somehow empty.Um, I've been to places for tourism, for example, um, where there are villages and, and areas inhabited and you see green, but then it's-- it was kind of an isolated or, or extraordinary phenomenon within the wider desert.

But then, um, when I was doing ethnography there and I was living there for a year, I had the luck of, um, being invited to different trips across the re-the region, Antofagasta region.

And in those trips I was able to start seeing the desert in the way that the people that were, that were taking me to those areas, um, were seeing it.

People would us-usually say that, that foreigners come to the desert and they see nothing, but it's because they don't pay attention.

C- can you tell us a bit how you understood lithium within this, uh, you know, a relational perspective that you, um, have adopted in your analysis?

Could you tell us more about this and how it also relates to processes of global capitalism and coloniality?

Yes, of course.

So, yeah, they're central to how this space has been framed.

And, well, the Atacama Desert is smaller than the Australian one.

But then, yeah, it's been said to be the driest desert on Earth.

And, of course, in Chile and elsewhere, particularly when people haven't lived in a desert, We hear the word desert and we imagine empty space, desolated areas.

And usually it's also the misconception that those are ugly places and hostile places to inhabit.

Could you tell us more about this notion of the desert scape and how it relates to this, um, desolate scape?

Could you tell us more about this notion of the desertscape and, and how it relates to this, um, desolate scape?

Sure.

Um, yeah, so what was fascinating for me as well was that even though I have-- I've lived in the northern part of Chile, close to the Atacama Desert, and I've worked there, I was also used to see the desert as somehow empty.

Um, I've been to places for tourism, for example, um, where there are villages and, and areas inhabited, and you see green, but then it's-- it was kind of an isolated or, or extraordinary phenomenon within the wider desert.

But then, um, when I was doing ethnography there and I was living there for a year, I had the luck of, um, being invited to different trips across the re- the region, Antofagasta region.

And in those trips, I was able to start seeing the desert in the way that the people that were, that were taking me to those areas, um, were seeing it.

People would us- usually say that, that foreigners come to the desert and they see nothing, but it's because they don't pay attention.

C-can you tell us a bit how you understood lithium within this, uh, you know, a relational perspective that you, um, have adopted in your analysis?

And, and, and I guess kind of in, uh, in response to that in a sense, in the next chapter, you discuss how through your fieldwork and experience with the Likan Antai people, you put forward the, this notion of a desert scape to express the ways of living for Indigenous peoples in the territories of the Atacama Desert.Could you tell us more about this notion of the desert scape and, and how it relates to this, um, desolate scape?

Sure.

Um, yeah, so what was fascinating for me as well was that even though I have-- I've lived in the northern part of Chile, close to the Atacama Desert, and I've worked there, I was also used to see the desert as somehow empty.

Um, I've been to places for tourism, for example, um, where there are villages and, and areas inhabited, and you see green.

But then it's-- it was kind of an isolated or, or extraordinary phenomenon within the wider desert.

But then, um, when I was doing ethnography there and I was living there for a year, I had the luck of, um, being invited to different trips across the re- the region, Antofagasta region.

And in those trips, I was able to start seeing the desert in the way that the people that were, that were taking me to those areas, um, were seeing it.

C- can you tell us a bit how you understood lithium within this, uh, you know, a relational perspective that you, um, have adopted in your analysis?