10 arguments that will help you understand why we do not support lithium mining in Serbia.
1. There is a lack of important decisions and documents in the form of strategies and plans of a higher hierarchy, in which a decision would be made whether we want to become a mining country. As with many other large projects in Serbia, lately the decision-making process is going wrong, so they are discussed before the bigger issues are strategically resolved. Thus, our country still does not have a Development Plan of the Republic of Serbia, which should determine the directions and models of social development, economic, social, environmental and other general issues. It should be the result of a broad dialogue and should answer whether we want to base our development on extractive industries or we have our own idea of a green agenda for Serbia.
2. The previous Spatial Plan of the Republic of Serbia for ten years expired in 2021, without a new one being adopted. The published Draft PPRS, which passed the initial public hearings, was written in a non-transparent and non-inclusive manner, without the RS Development Plan that must be relied upon, and contains a large number of projects that are harmful to the environment, such as, for example, dozens of new mines, several new thermal power plants, reduction of nature protection for the development of mass tourism. For this reason, civil society organizations sent hundreds of objections to the text and demanded its withdrawal and rewriting. In 2024, we do not know the fate of that draft, and Serbia does not have its own Spatial Plan.
3. Serbia is a country with a high level of corruption, questionable democracy and weak institutional capacities, both in environmental protection and in regulating the work of large corporations. Serbia has a poor implementation of environmental policies even where they exist, especially affirmative policies regarding the energy transition, which could be seen in the example of small hydropower plants. Local communities do not have any political power, and the state of democracy is illustrated by the “disappearance” of the popular initiative to ban lithium and boron mining in the National Assembly, which was signed by 38,000 citizens of Serbia. There are no guarantees that the situation will improve as long as the company, which in other countries has had a bad reputation for decades of impunity and lack of concern for the environment, is operating.
4. Food sovereignty, which is the only guarantee of stability in the context of the global crisis of production and the food market, is directly threatened by pollution and the very risk of water, air and soil pollution, and the displacement of the rural population. The areas that are intended for exploitation are mostly agricultural and feed our entire country. Any government that works in the public interest would have to take care of the safety of its citizens, and turning fertile agricultural areas, with quality water, into a “sacrifice zone” at the dawn of a food crisis is, to say the least, an ill-considered decision. Incidents and property losses are already occurring in many areas that have only been affected by exploratory wells.
5. The Balkan region of Europe is extraordinarily rich in biodiversity and any deterioration in the ecological status of the environment represents a setback, not progress, in the European Green New Deal. We are witnessing the dramatic sudden extinction of species due to habitat destruction, as well as the great ambitions of the European Union regarding the preservation and revitalization of rivers, forests and other habitats through the Nature Restoration Law. The countries of the region are areas that have an abundance of plant and animal species that are often on international red lists due to threats. The environment knows no borders, and that is why we consider the unilateral support of the exploitation of lithium and other minerals that will not solve the problem of climate change, to the detriment of the whole set of (adopted!) policies for the protection of nature and the environment, by some EU officials hypocrisy.
6. Serbia’s local energy transition is not directly related to lithium production, and globally, not a single study shows that electric cars really remedy climate change. We need an energy transformation, not a transition that continues the same level of energy consumption, and just replaces one problem with another. The lithium that would be exploited for the sake of lectic cars currently serves to preserve the profits of the car industry, and not to help sustainable transportation that would benefit everyone, which is public transportation.
7. The economic profit primarily goes to the company (foreign or domestic, “western” or “eastern”) and there is no material justification for Serbia’s development direction towards raw materials at the bottom of the value chain. In addition to mining rents that are devastatingly among the lowest in Europe, an even bigger problem is that mining closes off all other opportunities for development in the long term. For example, ecological agriculture or tourism are impossible in the conditions of lithium mines, and groundwater pollution brings special risks to safety and public health.
8. New technologies change the need for raw materials every day and change their value, it is almost certain that lithium battery technology will be surpassed in the future. This explains the great haste and pressure to open the mine as soon as possible, even though we didn’t even discuss that we want to put everything on the line with lithium and batteries that may end up in the dustbin of technological history tomorrow, and new generations with the additional burden of suffering and remediating the consequences of mining despite the climate crisis.
9. Even if lithium needs were a long-term constant, the source of secondary raw materials from recycling is nowhere near being used, and digging new mines relieves companies of pressure to recycle more. Companies that produce batteries, as well as those that use them in their products on the market, must be responsible for the entire life cycle of their product and ensure the maximum percentage of recycling or reuse of parts and raw materials. Also, before we dig new mines for new raw materials, let’s make sure that the production of devices allows for repairs and maximum technological duration of them, in order to break the consumerist market chain of ever shorter life span of devices.
10. The geopolitical aspiration of the leading economies to diversify the sources of critical minerals must be harmonized with the proclaimed values of environmental protection and must not be an argument for the local government. Lofty goals for carbon neutrality in a few countries will do little to combat planetary climate change if they are achieved at the expense of other sustainable communities. The race for minerals in the so-called developing countries, which enable the energy transition in the countries of the so-called high development, is currently a global field of conflict and a critical issue of environmental justice. Unfortunately, Serbia is by no means the only example of the “curse of resources”, but fortunately we can be proud because we are part of the widespread resistance to extractivist practices around the world.