We will have a few posts on this story, which really caught our interest when the President of Serbia said on November 29:
Vucic: I feel like the stupidest president in the world for abandoning lithium miningCommenting on the protest of environmental activists in front of the Serbian Government building (against lithium exploration), Vučić said that the government did not make any lithium-related decision, but that he did that.
“I don’t understand why they protested in front of the government. When they protest, they should protest in front of the presidency building, and I will address them and tell them politely that it is them who are destroying the country. The price of lithium today is 82,500 dollars per tonne and our lithium reserves are worth 100 billion,” he noted.
He added that Zijin economically dominates the town of Bor where the average salary is around EUR 800.
He also pointed out that the town of Loznica would benefit five billion euros from lithium mining as would the country, but that citizens believed in conspiracy theories and that the protest leaders were “paid off by foreign foundations”.
Does that mean Rio Tinto will get to go ahead with a project we had written off? Two stories from Reuters:
December 13: "Serbian PM sees no chance for reviving Rio Tinto lithium project"
December 14: "Rio Tinto has not given up on $2.4 bln Serbian lithium project"
It's complicated. The lithium could supply 90% of Europe's battery needs.
From the Berliner Gazette blog via Le Club de Mediapart, November 29:
Eco-struggles in Serbia: “We don’t need a green transition, we are already green.”
The mineral found in Serbia’s Jadar region is key to electric car batteries. The advocates of green capitalism, however, don’t have an easy time of it: they’re confronted by local farmers who claim they don’t need a green transition because they’re already green. After all, they say, the future is agriculture, as Mihajlo Vujasin notes in his contribution to the BG text series “After Extractivism.”
The river flows through a fertile green valley, surrounded by pastures, groves, and fields. Rio Tinto planned to open a lithium mine here – in the Jadar river valley in Serbia.
A nearby field grows corn over two meters tall. Although it was an arid summer this year, the corn was big and healthy. One of the locals active in the lithium mining opposition explains that this region, the valley of the Jadar and Korenita rivers in the Drina river basin in Western Serbia, is very rich in groundwater. That’s why his field is so fertile. Water is wealth, and the future is agriculture, Zlatko says.
Jadarite mineral, which contains a certain percentage of lithium, was found in this area about 20 years ago. The opinions about extraction are divided. The multinational corporation Rio Tinto is interested in exploiting these resources. Procedures were initiated, including research, land acquisition, and permitting. However, the government halted the project at the beginning of 2022.
Locals were firmly against it and managed to stop the project – after their resistance had grown into a nation-wide movement including a series of blockades and protests across the country.
This valley is a factory under the open sky, a food factory. We don’t need some green agenda here. We are all green already, say the locals in the valley of the two rivers.
The locals became ecological activists gathered in the SEOS, the Association of Environmental Organizations of Serbia. As the Jadar project is only one of many possible mining projects, there is a danger of Serbia becoming a mining colony, they say.
Mining research and extraction permissions have been a matter of public concern for months. Everybody knows that this is a turning point. When the mine opens in Jadar valley, the mining companies could then open another 30 mining sites. According to the draft of the country’s spatial plan until 2035, numerous locations across the country are planned for new mining projects. But the document still needs to be adopted.
Sacrifice zones“Sacrifice zones” could be a new term to consider. It emerged in the controversy around the energy transition. The term is an utterly political calculation. It didn’t come from the energy or ecology scope. That is to say, the connection between extraction and politics has spilled over into the reality of green capitalism.We are now surrounded and threatened by escapists of extractivisim. Needless to say, extractivism is not a solution. One has to grow a resolution.
The Jadar project has been halted, but activists suspect the company will try to implement it again. Politicians are lamenting over a missed chance called lithium. They’re calling for a possible revision. The mineral has been discovered in Serbia, and Europe needs it. And the world needs it, as they say. It isn’t difficult to draw a conclusion....
....MUCH MORE
