Special to SURFER by Katie McConnell

In Chile’s coastal Maule, Ñuble, and Biobío Regions, communities are watching new lines drawn over their territory: mining concessions for rare earth elements, or tierras raras, spanning tens of thousands of hectares.

The mapped areas overlap with rural hillsides, watersheds, agricultural land, fishing communities, ancestral Mapuche lands, and the habitats of endemic and endangered species, further risking an entire coastline beloved as the world’s cold-water holy grail for barreling, left-hand, sand-bottom pointbreaks. Those who know, know.

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Local organizations have emphasized the proximity of several mapped concessions to Buchupureo, one of Chile’s most cherished waves and communities. The pointbreak, whose name means “Big Wave” in the Mapudungung language of the indigenous Mapuche nation, is part of a wave-rich coastline increasingly recognized for its ecological, cultural, and tourism value, supporting roughly 8,000 people and a peaceful, rural way of life. 

Rare Earth Minerals and Their Extraction

At international decision-making tables, rare earth elements are touted as “strategic” or “critical” minerals because of their role in fossil fuel-free energy technologies, electronics, industrial manufacturing, and defense systems. Skyrocketing demand, combined with shifting global geopolitics, has now brought new attention to deposits outside Chile’s traditional mining centers in the north.

In south-central Chile, however, maps showing areas of expanded mining interests overlap with thriving and interconnected land-sea-sky-human systems where people already live. Rare-earth extraction varies by deposit, but the environmental concerns are well documented: mining and processing disturbs vegetation and soils, generates waste rock or tailings, can require chemical leaching or separation, and creates risks of soil acidification, heavy-metal contamination, wastewater, and impacts to surface water, groundwater, and farmland, and more.

It might be tempting to frame speculative development in south-central Chile as part of the “just green-energy transition:” wind turbines, electric motors, electronics, and clean-tech supply chains. But local watchdog organizations have raised concerns about a more complicated reality.

Public reporting points to mining concession requests associated with a small group of companies connected to foreign capital, investors, or supply-chain interests in the United States, Canada, and Australia. NeoRe SpA, a Chilean rare-earth company associated with many concessions in southern Chile, including Buchupureo, has entered into a binding earn-in and option agreement with U.S.-based Chilean Cobalt Corporation, under which Chilean Cobalt may eventually acquire up to 100 percent of NeoRe.

Chilean Cobalt has publicly disclosed its additional partners, Glencore and Madesal, and lists its membership in the U.S. Defense Industrial Base Consortium, a network tied to secure defense supply chains.

For coastal communities, that context matters. Somehow, these quiet villages have found themselves caught up in a global race for minerals– where the benefits may flow elsewhere, toward agendas the local community did not choose.

Penco

The situation around Cobquecura is not occurring in isolation. In the neighboring Region of Biobío, the Penco Module rare earth project has become a precedent for the area. For local communities, Penco matters because it shows how a contested rare-earth project can move forward despite years of opposition. Back in February 2022, citizen organizations held a public consultation on the Penco Module rare earth project, developed by Aclara Resources. Public reporting describes a turnout of more than 7,400 people, with 99 percent voting against the rare-earth mining plan.

Earlier this year, in January 2026, catastrophic wildfires tore through Biobío and Ñuble, including areas around Penco and Lirquén. More than 35,000 hectares were affected, and a state of catastrophe declared in the Ñuble and Biobío regions. The Associated Press later reported that Lirquén, a fishing town near Penco, saw roughly 80 percent of its area destroyed and 17 deaths.

Weeks later, in March, José Antonio Kast took office as Chile’s new President. The next day, Chile and the United States signed a joint declaration to begin consultations on critical minerals and rare earth elements, with the United States seeking to reduce dependence on China for minerals used in electric vehicles, semiconductors, defense, and electronics.

Not long afterward, in June 2026, the Aclara project was reopened and took its first steps towards becoming a reality again. For communities still rebuilding from disaster, the question is not only how Aclara could be on the table again. This is why vulnerable territories are repeatedly asked to absorb the next wave of strategic extraction before their existing forms of value have been fully recognized. 

Surfing, Economics, and the Value of a Wave

Could surfing offer a better alternative to the mines? For decades, much of this stretch of coast was kept somewhat secret under a loose surfers’ code, but as many lament: “Ya fue.” The secret is out. Buchupureo and the surrounding coastline are seeing a boom in surf tourism, surf media, and coastal migration. The impact has not yet been fully quantified, but it can already be felt: crowded lineups, new cabañas everywhere, more businesses, more outside attention– to put it brutally, surfing has invaded. 

Enter Surfonomics. Developed by Dr. Chad Nelsen (now CEO of Surfrider Foundation) and used extensively by Save The Waves Coalition, Surfonomics is a tool for quantifying the economic value of surf breaks as part of greater surf ecosystems. It has been used in places including Santa Cruz, California, and Pichilemu, Chile, to estimate how much money waves contribute to local economies through tourism, lodging, food, transport, lessons, gear, and more.

The point is not to reduce a wave to money. As Save The Waves has often framed it, the work is about “pricing the priceless” — giving communities and decision-makers additional economic factors to consider when balancing costs and benefits.

For a place like Buchupureo, Surfonomics could help document what is already obvious on the ground: surfing is not a fringe activity. It is part of a growing coastal economy.  But would it be enough?

Surf Culture Has Work To Do

Surfing cannot simply present itself as an opportune alternative without reckoning with its own impacts. Local relationships between surfers, fishers, campesinos, residents, and visitors are currently mixed. In many places, surf tourism has brought welcome development, but also shown an elitist, ego-driven version of surfing that has seeded local conflict. 

Local fishers, for example, often see surfers as in the way: blocking access for pangas, ignoring working-water protocols, and generally treating the coast as their personal playground for clout and the algorithm. There is a lack of respect for the fact that these waves, in this place, are people’s home and livelihoods, both of which are now facing real, existential risk.

Surfing cannot defend a coast while ignoring the people who live and work there. If surfing is to be part of a viable alternative to mining, it must also become more accountable: respecting fishers, campesinos, residents, local surfers, and local culture and ecology; supporting local businesses; and showing up as good guests, buena onda, ready to actively contribute rather than just “getting the shot” and bouncing. 

A Coast That Transcends Value

Standard development metrics often miss what already sustains a place. For the towns along Chile’s Southern Surf Coast, tightly knit communities have built lives around the land and sea– resilient networks where monetary value is not always the primary currency. 

On paper, communities like these may appear economically vulnerable. In practice, they are participating in an intricate network of abundance: they fish, farm, gather, repair, cook, host, teach, trade, and look after each other. 

For generations, people have lived with their environment; with food, water, family, belonging, wisdom, and a form of sovereignty rooted in the ability to remain in place and develop at their own pace.

Though the mining situation is a veritable David and Goliath, the community is wholly united against the mining projects, and they know they have defeated large-scale development threats before. In 2018, the “Cobquecura sin salmoneras” movement helped stop a proposed $2.6 billion aquaculture project when the Ñuble Environmental Evaluation Commission unanimously rejected the salmon-farming proposal.

From a community meeting held in Buchupureo last week, Sara Olivares of Corporación Buchupureo Acciona reported, “It’s not that we’re against development. We are against sacrifice zones. We welcome investors, but they must be aligned with the identity of the territory. We continually confront threats to our environment, and we are united against them.”