Lithium, Salar de Uyuni (Bolivia)

The largest salt desert in the world holds one of the vastest lithium resources ever recorded, and produces almost none of it. The brine's high magnesium and the instability of contracts (Sino-Russian deals contested in court) have kept Uyuni off the market for fifteen years. The world's number-one reserve remains, on the map of actual flows, a dead point.