More than 11,000 feet up in the Andes mountains of southwest Bolivia lies Salar de Uyuni, a remote salt flat that is home to some of the world’s largest reserves of lithium.

Largely untapped, the seemingly endless expanse of bright white salt plains are on the verge of a frenzy of activity as a global scramble erupts to extract the metal and secure supplies for lithium-ion batteries – a basic building material for the electric vehicle industry.