A lithium mine in Serbia may rev up Europe’s e-vehicles, however opposition is fierce

JADAR VALLEY, Serbia — Vladan Jakovljevic’s bees are indignant. As he slowly lifts a canopy from atop one in every of dozens of hives, they swarm, one in every of them stinging him within the cheek. He calls it a “bee kiss.”

The 63-year-old beekeeper’s hives are scattered alongside a hillside overlooking the Jadar Valley’s bucolic inexperienced hills and pink clay tile-roofed villages of western Serbia. Bees, he factors out, are delicate creatures. Adjustments within the surroundings can wipe out their hives. That’s why Jakovljevic is apprehensive about plans to construct one in every of Europe’s largest lithium mines on this valley.

“If there is any pollution in the river from this mine, bees in this region will die because they drink the water,” he says. “We’re talking about 10,000 bee communities that pollinate the crops that grow in the valley. This could cause a devastating chain reaction.”

The transition to a decrease carbon emissions future is dependent upon electrical automobiles, and the batteries in these automobiles rely upon lithium — a mineral in brief provide and in large demand. However mining and refining lithium can have a big effect on native environments, and the residents of Jadar Valley have fought to guard theirs, spurring a nationwide protest motion that has make clear the environmental underbelly of the electrical car (EV) trade.

Within the valley beneath Jakovljevic’s beehives lies the village of Latina, “salty” in English. Lots of of toes beneath the floor of the Jadar Valley lie salty mineral deposits that give the consuming water right here a particular style.

A long time in the past, scientists right here found a brand new mineral they named jadarite, one wealthy in lithium and boron. After the Balkan wars of the Nineteen Nineties, British Australian mining firm Rio Tinto started drilling exploratory wells in Jadar Valley, confirming that it has one in every of Europe’s largest deposits of lithium. It is so large it may meet an estimated 90% of Europe’s lithium wants. It could possibly be a boon for a continent targeted on transitioning to electrical automobiles to chop emissions, and for mining large Rio Tinto, assured earnings.

Scientists warn of potential environmental issues

The corporate just lately drilled extra exploratory wells, however the water that surfaced from deep beneath the earth has killed surrounding crops and polluted the river, in response to a examine revealed final month within the journal Nature. Scientists discovered “substantially elevated concentrations of boron, arsenic, and lithium downstream from the wells.”

“With the opening of the mine,” the scientists wrote, “problems will be multiplied by the tailings pond, mine wastewater, noise, air pollution, and light pollution, endangering the lives of numerous local communities and destroying their freshwater sources, agricultural land, livestock, and assets.”

Beekeeper Jakovljevic says he was shocked when he learn the article.

“After I read the findings of those scientists, I didn’t need to hear more about this project,” he says. “This mine must be stopped.”

Officers say it should meet strict requirements and increase GDP

However officers in Serbia’s authorities say the mine holds nice potential for the nation. “We are all drinking the same water and we all breathe the same air, and we all have kids living here,” says Dubravka Djedovic Handanovic, Serbia’s mining and vitality minister. “So we want the project implemented, yes, but we want it implemented according to environmental standards.”

Djedovic Handanovic insists the proposed mine would adhere to strict European Union environmental requirements, although Serbia has not but grow to be an EU member.

And she or he highlights the mine’s financial advantages. “Around 20,000 people could be employed in the whole value chain,” she says. “And when we are talking about value chain, we are not only talking the exploitation of the mine but actually refining processes, including the production of cathodes, production of batteries and ultimately the production of electric vehicles.”

She says this lithium mine has the potential to extend Serbia’s gross home product by 16%.

Protests towards the mine have gotten routine

However many Serbs stay unpersuaded. Large protests towards the undertaking have grow to be routine in cities all through the nation since June, when a courtroom determination cleared the trail for the federal government to approve the mine. The choice got here two years after a earlier prime minister revoked Rio Tinto’s license following comparable protests.

Jelena Isevski was one in every of tens of hundreds who just lately crammed the streets of the capital of Belgrade to protest the mine.

“We are here to say that we are saying no to corporate powers that extract our country, just dig it out and leave trash, literally trash, for future generations,” she mentioned over the chants of protesters.

Critics of the mine like Isevski additionally query the political motivations of the Serbian authorities. Serbia has utilized for EU membership, and the EU’s largest financial system, Germany — house to the continent’s largest electrical car corporations — has voiced its sturdy assist for this mine. For years, Europe’s wealthiest economies have wished to shift away from relying on China, which refines 80% of the world’s lithium for EV batteries. Just some weeks after a authorized path had been cleared for the Jadar mine, the European Union signed a memorandum of understanding with Serbia’s authorities, launching what it known as a “strategic partnership” on sustainable uncooked supplies like lithium in addition to battery worth chains, and electrical automobiles.

Isevski says the EU ought to look inside its 27-country bloc for its lithium. “It’s not only Serbia that has lithium,” she says. “Why is this being done in a country like Serbia, that allegedly doesn’t have the right to fight back? There’s lithium in France, right?”

Opponents of the mine additionally query the monitor file of mining large Rio Tinto, which has a checkered historical past in creating nations all through the world, together with a mine in Papua New Guinea whose environmental destruction spurred a nine-year civil conflict.

Rio Tinto commits to “transparency” and unbiased evaluations

However Rio Tinto’s supervisor of its Serbia operations, Chad Blewitt, says instances have modified. “We are committed to transparency,” he says. “We’ve learnt from all those incidents, including where there was a civil war in Papua New Guinea 35 years ago. That created a lot of our local content programs globally because we have to give back to the community.”

Blewitt’s personal historical past at Rio Tinto consists of working as a supervisor on the firm’s Simandou iron ore mine in Guinea in 2011, the identical 12 months that firm officers have been discovered by U.S. Securities and Change Fee investigators to have bribed a Guinean political adviser. Final 12 months, Rio Tinto settled with the SEC for $15 million over the violations.

Blewitt says within the case of the Jadar mine, Rio Tinto can be keen to permit unbiased consultants to finish an environmental overview of the undertaking if it might assist persuade those that query its influence on the ecosystem. Because it stands, Blewitt calls Jadar “the most studied lithium project in Europe,” saying Rio Tinto has spent greater than $600 million on it up to now and says the research discovered it might be protected.

A part of the corporate’s effort is outreach — Blewitt says Rio Tinto has held 150 data classes for the local people and Serbia’s mining ministry has arrange a name middle to attempt to calm fears concerning the undertaking, and about his firm. “Last year we spent $85 million on community programs globally,” says Blewitt. “We gave back to governments around the world eight and a half billion US dollars in taxes. So I would say don’t judge Rio Tinto by what we are in the past.”

Again within the Jadar Valley, beekeeper Jakovljevic says if he and his neighbors can’t choose Rio Tinto by its previous, then how, he asks, ought to they choose the corporate?

He’s joined by a neighbor, a literature instructor named Marijana Petkovic, and her canine for cool drinks within the shade on a sizzling summer season’s day. Petkovic factors to houses throughout the sphere behind her property the place some neighbors have offered their land to Rio Tinto. Dozens of houses within the valley are cordoned off with tape and are being demolished to make approach for the undertaking.

Petkovic has been following this difficulty intently. She says she thinks that Rio Tinto nonetheless wants tons of extra acres of land to construct the mine however that the remainder of the valley’s residents are usually not keen to promote. “They’re going house to house asking our neighbors if they need anything or if Rio Tinto can help them in any way,” she says.

The staff work in an data middle the corporate established within the valley, however Petkovic calls it a “disinformation” middle. She says the Serbian authorities has already tried to vary the legislation so it may well expropriate land from owners, however protests a couple of years in the past put a cease to it.

However she says the native authorities just lately rezoned her and her neighbor’s land from “agricultural” to “construction,” which has her questioning if the federal government is about to attempt to take her land once more. She says this makes her fear about the way forward for this valley, and for Serbia.