This is one of the main means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions: the electric car. Its sales are exploding, public policies encourage us to drive electric. But is the electric car without consequences for the environment? Where does lithium come from for batteries? The eye of the 20 o’clock sets course for Serbia.
The Jadar Valley, in western Serbia: this is the site chosen by the Anglo-Australian multinational Rio Tinto to build the largest lithium mine in Europe. A project promoted on Serbian TV: “green technologies, electric cars, clean air, “lists the commercial against a background of birdsong.”It all depends on one of the richest lithium deposits in the world, which is right here in Jadar, Serbia.“.
A green speech, far from the reality of the future mine according to the inhabitants. “It will look like the moon, Mars!“laments Nebojsa Petkovic. This local resident knows that the mine will use enormous quantities of sulfuric acid, and could generate arsenic in particular, as around these first wells dug by the multinational.”These are two exploration holes. We found arsenic around, and in summer nothing grows within 10 meters of these wells. “
According to Nebojsa Petkovic, this mine wedged between two rivers would represent a risk of pollution for the whole region. “I think this is the first time in human history that such a mine has been made in an inhabited area. There are 20,000 people living here. It’s gonna be a disaster. “
Rio Tinto says it conducts 12 environmental studies, which it will publish later. But this is not the company’s first environmental controversy. In Papua New Guinea, she is accused of not having cleared a mine after having abandoned it 30 years ago. In Australia, the company destroyed a 46,000-year-old sacred Aboriginal site last year. Rio Tinto has since apologized.
In Serbia, while the work has not yet started, the municipality of Gornje Nedeljice already looks like a ghost village. In a few months, the multinational has bought some fifty houses from their inhabitants … By paying up to five times more than the market price. “These people received an average of 200,000 euros per house, “explains Nebjsa Petkovic.”It’s a huge sum for Serbia. “
In this modest neighborhood, those who left their homes went so far as to take everything they could: doors, windows, roofs. Zlatko Kokanovic, breeder and member of the association “Ne damo Jadar” (“Let’s not give the Jadar”), is one of the last to refuse to sell. “I have about four hectares of fields in the mine area. I won’t sell them. But the old people, who are all alone, have a harder time resisting the pressures and threats of expropriation. “
Rio Tinto has planned to invest more than two billion euros in this mine, whose lithium should allow, according to it, to manufacture more than one million electric cars each year. The multinational has yet to obtain authorizations from the Serbian state. A simple formality according to Sreten Djordjevic, lawyer specializing in environmental issues. He denounces a risk of collusion between the authorities and Rio Tinto, and takes as an example a field study made public in a surprisingly redacted version. “The authors of the study, the director“: everything is blackened.
“There is a risk of conflict of interest on the part of the Serbian experts who carried out these studies for Rio Tinto, and who may very well sit in the governmental technical commissions which validate these same studies, without being able to verify it. . “
Sreten Djordjevic, lawyerto France 2
Rio Tinto did not wish to grant us an interview, but said it had blacked out part of this report “because it contained sensitive business information”.
“It is no coincidence that Rio Tinto is investing in Serbia, “adds the lawyer.”Here the law changes according to the interests of investors. “
This Serbian lithium deposit is far from being the largest in Europe. There are other reserves elsewhere, unexploited, including in France. For Aleksandar Jovanovic Cuta, leader of the opposition to the mine, the countries of the European Union, of which Serbia is not part, would refuse a project of such magnitude on their soil. “Are there such lithium mines in France, Germany, Czech Republic?he asks sarcastically.
“It is a form of hypocrisy of the European Union that wants to breathe clean air, even if it involves dirty technologies, which makes Serbia a dumping ground.”
Aleksandar Jovanovic Cuta, environmental activistto France 2
Other lithium extraction projects, often smaller, do exist in Europe. To date, the European automotive industry is almost 90% dependent on lithium imports.
Rio Tinto website: Jadar Project, Juukan (Australia)
Rio tinto’s past casts a shadow over serbia’s hopes of a lithium revolution, Daniel Boffey, The Guardian, November 19, 2021
Electric cars: lithium mine will devastate Serbian region, Louis Seiller, Reporterre, November 9, 2021
Australia: mining giant Rio Tinto admits having destroyed prehistoric aboriginal caves, France Info, May 27, 2020
Bougainville: Rio Tinto in the turmoil of the old Panguna copper mine, France Info – the 1st, 1 October 2020
Lithium reserves in Europe, EuroGeoSurveys
Non-exhaustive list.