Based on ongoing research on lithium mining projects in Portugal, the paper will discuss the temporalities of resource politics and socio-ecological contestation. In the last few years, lithium prospecting applications in Portugal skyrocketed. In 2017 the government launched the national strategy for assessing the potentials of lithium exploration and the feasibility of industrial development projects, based on the prospective increase of lithium-ion batteries market demand – especially in the automotive industry. With the aim of attracting foreign investors, the government anticipated international bids for prospecting and exploration. The sudden interest of big mining corporations unleashed the opposition of populations in the areas targeted by lithium exploration, mostly rural and mountainous regions. Assurances of ‘green’ mining and new development prospects have not prevented the mushrooming of local platforms against lithium exploration, critically mindful of the socio-environmental legacy of past mining boom-bust cycles. As a result, the lithium rush has rapidly become a controversial subject in national debates about energy politics, ecological transition and sustainable development. Drawing on a preliminary mapping of the Portuguese lithium rush, the paper will address the construction of this ‘strategic resource’ as such, the spatial and temporal scales entangled in this process and the emergence of a new frontier of extraction, valuation and contestation.

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