As electric cars get pushed to the forefront as bulwarks of the ‘green’ economy, there’s a global resource crunch – demand for lithium used in their batteries is outstripping supply. No wonder then that the Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto has been prospecting for new locations to dig it up. This search led it to Serbia – not because it has the richest stores of the soft metal but because it is a relatively low-income country with high unemployment, an increasingly authoritarian political regime, weak regulation and a seeming lack of any political project other than ‘catching up’ with the EU. The ground was laid for the $2.4 billion Jadar project, named after jadarite, a lithium sodium borosilicate whose deposits the company discovered in western Serbia in 2004.1
But Rio Tinto’s proposed ‘green’ investment in Serbia, supported by the EU’s ‘green’ policy agenda and many foreign officials, encountered a major snag – Serbian protesters. That’s what happens when the so-called pursuit of sustainability, instead of questioning the organization and priorities of richer societies, relies on destruction in far-off lands. For three consecutive weekends in November and December 2021, protesters – in numbers unseen since the toppling of Slobodan Milošević in 2000 – blocked highways in many Serbian cities demanding an end to Rio Tinto’s plans on the grounds that they were detrimental to the environment and the local rural community. The strength of feeling in the country after years of resource plunder, especially since the 2008 financial crisis, has made the environment a popular and uniting cause. The mobilizations were enough to show Rio Tinto the red light – for the time being.
