Wonder metal promises to make Bolivia the new Saudi Arabia

In the most remote part of the poorest country in South America lies a vast reserve of a wonder metal that fires your phone, iPod and shiny new electric car and is so clean it may save the planet. It is buried deep beneath the largely forgotten Bolivian desert where are no roads and electricity in one of the most remote and inaccessible plateaus in the world.

Salar De Uyuni in Bolivia is a little-known but expansive desert of Cactus, rainwater lagoons and ten billion tons of salt covering nearly 5,000 square miles. Now energy experts in London, New York and the Middle East predict that this unlikely windblown patch of salt could, over the next two decades, become the next Saudi Arabia. Like the Persian Gulf before it in the 1920s, the vast quantities of lithium beneath Salar De Uyuni's Northern Ireland-sized salt table, could be the answer to the transport problems of the 21st century.

A Bolivian government plant is slowly taking shape on the fringes of the salt plain. It is a mine with small-scale ambitions to extract the precious brine that bubbles below the salt crust. When first pumped from the ground, the brine looks like dirty slush. But when left beneath the desert sun, the water will slowly evaporate, leaving a yellowy mineral bath that could easily be mistaken for thick olive oil: lithium, the lightest of all metals found on Earth and the hidden power behind our modern technological life. Lithium may sound unfamiliar, but international demand for the mineral has gone through the roof. Today, the third element on the periodic table is the power in most mobile phones, all iPods, BlackBerrys and handheld computers.

The Mobira Senator, launched in 1982 by Nokia, consisted of a small handset connected to a brick-like nickel-based battery pack which weighed 22lb. Today, a typical mobile phone weighs a hundredth of this. This is largely because of the new lithium-ion rechargeable battery, it is lighter and can hold a higher charge for longer than other batteries. Between 2003 and 2007, the battery industry doubled its consumption of lithium carbonate, the most common ingredient in lithium-based products the Daily Mail newspaper reported. Today's electric vehicles are powered by nickel-metal hydride batteries, but the cars' performance is limited. Lithium, however, will allow the next generation of electric cars to go a lot further.

The sudden insatiable demand is spurring a race to find new sources of the third element. Chile, currently the world's largest supplier of the element, has estimated reserves of three million tons. The US Geological Survey claims at least 5.4 million tons of lithium could be extracted in Salar De Uyuni, while another report puts it as high as nine million tons. If the electric car is ever to become a mass-market product, the lithium here is going to have to be mined. International competition for this lithium is intense, but the government is keeping the world at arm's length until the process is fully understood. That way the country, under a socialist government which vows to protect indigenous people, will get the best deal. President Evo Morales says foreign companies must promise to produce the electric cars and batteries in Bolivia.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children