From the Second Cold War Observatory
Perhaps more than any other material, lithium has, in recent years, been increasingly presented as the silver bullet for the so-called twin transition—the digital and the green transitions. Lithium is essential to most conventional batteries used in diverse technologies, from phones and laptops to increasingly and overwhelmingly so in electric vehicles. It has become the symbol of growth-based solutions to climate change where technological fixes, rather than more equitable and just structural changes, take the primary role.
Escalating concerns within the EU regarding its material sovereignty and security have been intensified by the conflict in Ukraine and the growing awareness about China’s dominance of the battery supply chain, as well as other green technologies. As a result, ensuring access to critical raw materials such as lithium has emerged as a paramount priority for the Western powers. The introduction of the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) in 2023 has further underscored this goal, signalling a strategic shift towards mining closer to “home” for better control over supply chains.
In line with this objective, the EU has strongly supported mining projects in member states as well as in its “immediate outside.” Notable plans for lithium mining include projects in Portugal, Spain, Germany, and the Czech Republic, where they have also attracted significant opposition from the local communities. In Serbia, an EU candidate country, the construction of Europe’s biggest lithium mine was to begin in 2022. Led by Rio Tinto, one of the largest mining companies in the world, the Jadar Project in the western part of the country has been portrayed both as a green solution for the EU and as an unprecedented economic opportunity for Serbia.
Yet, the project has attracted widespread resistance from part of the local community that refused to sell their houses and leave their land. They are predominantly farmers and agricultural workers fighting for their right to say no and to protect nature, the environment, and their way of life. Their resistance also becomes a fundamental challenge to the hegemonic understanding of sustainability and the green transition coupled with digitalisation and electrification based on relentless mining and extractivism (see Voskoboynik and Andreucci 2022). Following months of mass protests that erupted in the autumn and winter of 2021 and attracted tens of thousands of people that blocked roads, bridges, and highways, the Serbian government was ultimately forced to cancel the Jadar Project in January 2022, before the construction of the lithium mine could have even begun.
The cancellation marked a notable triumph for the anti-lithium mining movement. However, Rio Tinto continues to operate in Serbia, openly supported by the government, President Aleksandar Vučić, and some Western embassies. Locals and activists maintain their resolve to prevent lithium mining, opening space to envision different green and sustainable futures from the semi-periphery. Based on ethnographic research and close collaboration with the locals and activists resisting lithium mining in Serbia, this short essay attends to questions of peripherality and the making of an extractivist frontier in the Balkans.
Nina Djukanović is a doctoral candidate in the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford. She is an environmental geographer whose research examines the relationship between extractivism and environmental justice and the contested understandings of sustainability and green transition. Her current research focuses on lithium mining in Serbia, where she conducts an ethnographic investigation into the lived experiences of local communities affected by the prospect of lithium mining.
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