“We will hunt you down until you disappear, scum.” This message was received by Serbian activist Aleksandar Matkovič on 14 August from an anonymous number. A few hours later, another message arrived: “How’s the fight against Rio Tinto going?” At that moment, Matkovič knew that the threats were related to his activism against Rio Tinto’s plan to mine lithium in the Jadar Valley in western Serbia, a plan also supported by the Serbian government.

Serbian activists have already defeated the mining giant Rio Tinto once. Mass protests across Serbia in 2021 forced the Serbian government to halt the construction of a lithium mine in the Jadar Valley. Lithium is one of the main components of ion batteries, which is why it has become a key mineral resource for the transition to a low-carbon economy in recent years. However, its mining has numerous negative environmental impacts: from air pollution to water and soil contamination.

Growing tension between the European Union and China, which is the current leader in low-carbon technology development, has further increased the strategic importance of Serbian lithium for European industry. Therefore, in July of this year, Slovak Vice-President of the European Commission Maroš Šefčovič and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz signed a memorandum with Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, pledging to support the renewal of lithium mining in Serbia. This triggered a new wave of protests. President Vučić, the most powerful man in Serbia, whose ruling party is regularly accused of suppressing civil liberties, called the protests eco-terrorism and a hybrid war by the West aimed at overthrowing his government.

The Serbian protests against lithium mining became a subject of interest for Slovak media in the summer. However, they covered it exclusively as a foreign issue, seemingly unrelated to Slovak economic policy. Yet it is also Slovak economic policy that bears responsibility for deepening the conflict regarding lithium mining in Serbia, forcing us to consider the meaning of solidarity in the context of the global ecological crisis and the necessary transition to a low-carbon economy.

Ecological Imperialism in the 21^st Century

The British-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto, the second-largest mining company in the world, first appeared in Serbia in 2004 as a result of economic liberalisation by Zoran Djindjić’s reform government. After domestic and foreign investors were given equal rights, Rio Tinto received permission from the Serbian cabinet to explore the presence of strategic mineral resources in the country, which led to the discovery of enormous lithium deposits in the Jadar Valley in western Serbia in 2006.

It took ten years before Rio Tinto applied for permission to build a lithium mine. The Serbian government granted it in 2017. Just before construction began, in November 2020, the residents of the Jadar Valley started protesting against the mine. They feared environmental pollution, and their concerns were supported by several studies. Locals whose land was directly in the area where the mine was to be built did not want to lose it. Moreover, in 2021, the Serbian government amended the expropriation law, making it easier to expropriate land for projects of “strategic importance.”

The general feeling that the Serbian government, by permitting lithium mining, had elevated the interests of a multinational corporation above the safety and security of its own citizens, resulted in protests. They soon spread across Serbia, with many protesters beginning to link environmental protection with the Serbian government’s excessive accommodation of foreign investors. In January 2022, the Serbian cabinet finally announced the halt of mine construction under pressure from protests (and also in view of upcoming parliamentary elections).

However, the war in Ukraine, escalating tension between Europe and China, and the need to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy forced the European Union to seek ways to increase the resilience of its supply chains. While lithium is not a rare metal, it is currently mined in barely ten countries, with four states – Chile, Argentina, China, and Australia – accounting for almost all globally supplied lithium. This has also contributed to increased European interest in Serbian resources in recent years. In September 2023, European Commission Vice-President for the European Green Deal Šefčovič signed a memorandum behind closed doors with Serbian President Vučić on reviving plans to build a lithium mine in Serbia – this time with explicit European Union support.

The Serbian public learned about this agreement only in December 2023 thanks to a report by the Serbian daily Danas. In July of this year, both the Serbian government and the European Commission officially confirmed their interest in renewing lithium mining in cooperation with European industry. This decision sparked a new wave of protests that hit Serbia during the summer, but this time without any indication that the Serbian government would yield to the voice of the street. On the contrary, there were reports that Serbian police had detained some activists, searched their apartments, or even accused them of terrorism.

Today, due to aggressive international interest in Jadar lithium, we can consider Serbia the frontline of ecological imperialism in Europe. The concept of ecological imperialism is not new, nor is the phenomenon it describes. American historian Alfred Crosby formulated this concept in the 1980s to describe the devastating impact of European colonialism on ecosystems into which Europeans began bringing their animals, plants, and viruses from the end of the 15^th century. Marxist sociologist John Bellamy Foster adopted this concept at the beginning of this century but gave it a somewhat different meaning. Foster linked the concept of ecological imperialism with the concept of the so-called “metabolic rift,” which describes how capitalism destroys natural resources regardless of their renewability and thus disrupts the so-called ecological “metabolism” between humans and nature. Foster attributed the foundations of metabolic rift theory to Marx, who highlighted the impact of intensive capitalist agriculture on declining soil fertility in Europe. Foster connected Marx’s analysis of the metabolic rift in agriculture with the battle for guano in South America and the Pacific in the 19^th century between the imperial powers of the time, showing that the plundering of natural resources (in this case, soil) in the geographical heart of early industrial capitalism led two hundred years ago to the need to seek alternative natural resources in areas of the global periphery.

The concept of ecological imperialism as formulated by Foster can help us describe the current trajectory of the transition to a low-carbon economy, which today deepens unequal power relations between rich countries of the global North and poorer countries of the global periphery. While countries of the global North can now boast about reducing emissions and cleaning urban air thanks to support for electric vehicles and solar energy, such a “green” transformation is associated with growing demand for mineral resources in peripheral countries. The mining of many mineral resources leads to environmental destruction and destabilisation of local populations’ lives. It also negatively affects the economic development of affected countries, as most profits return to global North states where multinational corporations conducting the mining are based. Nevertheless, ecological imperialism often isn’t forced through the use of force against the peripheral state itself. On the contrary, global North states and corporations based in them typically cooperate with local politicians willing to create conditions for mining mineral resources and suppress domestic resistance – in exchange for personal or political advantages.

However, ecological imperialism in Serbia should not be just a subject of academic interest for Slovak readers. It turns out that Slovak economic policy is connected to lithium mining in Serbia, not only through Slovak European Commissioner for the European Green Deal Šefčovič but also through parts of Slovak industry closely cooperating with the Slovak government. Therefore, solidarity with Serbian residents who protect their environment from multinational corporations must also include confronting the neoliberal model of economic policy that dominates in Slovakia.

Serbian Land, Slovak Footprints

In 2019, four years after returning from abroad where he built a successful career as an investor, Marián Boček founded the Slovak technology start-up InoBat. The goal was to build a complete chain for battery production: from battery cell production to recycling and design of fully functional batteries for electric vehicles. Boček spent long months meeting with investors and politicians to obtain funding for building a research centre. He managed to secure this in February 2020 from Peter Pellegrini’s government (then Smer, later Hlas), which supported InoBat with five million euros. The state subsidy helped Boček attract other investors, including Rio Tinto.

Boček has from the beginning presented InoBat as a key partner in the European transition to a low-carbon economy. Already at the Tatra Summit event in 2018, he managed to establish contact with Šefčovič, who then as European Commissioner for Energy and later as European Commission Vice-President for the European Green Deal became a supporter of InoBat. The company soon built a position as a key player within the European Green Deal, thanks to which Boček managed to secure another two million euros from European sources in 2021.

In September 2023, two days after the secret agreement between Šefčovič and Vučić on renewing lithium mining in Serbia, InoBat announced an agreement with the Serbian government on building a factory for battery production and recycling in the Serbian municipality of Cuprija. Although it’s not clear whether Boček knew about the September agreement between the European Commission and Serbian government, there’s no doubt that this investment became more attractive thanks to the potential renewal of lithium mining in Serbia. The value of benefits that the Serbian government offered InoBat for building and operating the factory is around 419 million euros.

Today it’s clear that the new Slovak government sees Serbia as a strategic partner within its foreign policy based on “economic diplomacy.” This is also evidenced by the October visit of Slovak Foreign Minister Juraj Blanár (Smer) to Serbia, during which he met with prominent members of the Serbian government, as well as with President Vučić himself. Blanár identified as one of the main goals of the visit not only supporting Slovak companies operating in Serbia but also attracting more Slovak investors interested in taking advantage of the “opportunities” offered by Serbia, including in renewable resources.

However, Serbia is far from the only country where investors see opportunities for profit from the transition to a low-carbon economy. In January 2023, InoBat concluded an agreement with Volkswagen’s main battery cell supplier, Chinese company Gotion Hi-Tech, which is to help InoBat design and assemble batteries. InoBat and Gotion announced during the year a plan to build a battery cell production factory in Šurany in southwestern Slovakia. The construction of the battery plant was supported in October 2023 by the new Slovak government, which invested 12 million euros in it in January of this year. However, the planned battery plant in Šurany may have negative environmental impacts, including possible contamination of local water and soil. For this reason, but also due to fears of importing cheap labour from abroad, it has met with resistance from locals.

Solidarity in the Context of Global Ecological Crisis

One of the challenges facing Slovak civil society is to grasp the relationship between Slovak economic policy and lithium mining in the Jadar Valley as problematic. The Slovak government’s support for InoBat could be seen as a textbook example of how a small semi-peripheral economy like Slovakia should move upward in the global value chain while playing a positive role in the transition to a low-carbon economy.

In both liberal and social-democratic understanding, industry support is the foundation of a growing economy. A growing economy in turn leads to job creation, which increases living standards and state revenues. This is also why Prime Minister Robert Fico (Smer) recently expressed agreement with Defence Minister Robert Kaliňák’s (Smer) plans to revive the Slovak arms industry, despite the declared peaceful orientation of the Slovak government. However, is endless, unconditional growth ethically defensible, globally just, and sustainable in the long term? Is this how the success of an economy and government policy should be measured?

Aggressive lithium mining, as we can observe today in Serbia, is one of the signs of “green” capitalism. “Green” capitalism, for many an oxymoron, is characterised by efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but without any change to the economic model based on profit and endlessly growing consumption. It cannot be ruled out that such “green” capitalism will one day be able to reduce global emissions, although even this is questionable given current data. However, if it succeeds, it will be at the cost of further destructive extraction of natural resources and negative environmental impacts in the global periphery, out of sight of global North populations.

Here we must admit that even a just transition to a low-carbon economy won’t be possible without mining mineral resources including lithium. However, it’s important to distinguish between sustainable, socially just mining that takes place with the consent and under the control of local populations, and aggressive mining by multinational corporations that don’t take people and their environment into account. Rio Tinto has been accused of intimidating its employees, polluting the environment, violating human rights, and destroying indigenous sacred sites in just the last 20 years.

The way Rio Tinto, the Serbian government, and the European Commission operate in Serbia (but not only in Serbia) is why it’s necessary to approach the promises of “green” capitalism skeptically and seek ways to express solidarity with people fighting against an unjust transition to a low-carbon economy. No economic activity taking place on Slovak territory – even if it’s activity focused on developing “green” technologies – should be connected to immoral mining practices. Currently, however, the national economy (i.e., decisions about what to invest in) is largely in the hands of entrepreneurs. For ethical production to be possible, it will be necessary to radically democratise all spheres of social life, including the economic one.

The Slovak connection to lithium mining in Serbia also shows that solidarity with people beyond Slovakia’s borders doesn’t have to be against the interests of the Slovak public, however much the interests of the private sector are ideologically portrayed as identical to the interests of ordinary people in capitalism. On the contrary, the planned battery plant in Šurany, whose construction and operation (despite guarantees from InoBat and Gotion investors about compliance with relevant environmental legislation) carries significant risks for the local environment, is just further proof that the private sector knows no boundaries in its pursuit of profit. In other words, economic policy based on growth and profit is not a battle between “us” here and “them” there. Ultimately, we will become its victims too.

The answer to the challenges associated with the ongoing ecological crisis cannot be idealising the inviolability of nature. Even a sustainable economy cannot do without natural resources, including metals like lithium. However, we must not succumb to the illusion that technological progress, in the form of replacing fossil fuels with electrical energy, will allow us to maintain our current trajectory of consumption without devastating the environment and deepening global inequalities. Solidarity in the context of ecological crisis must mean coming to terms with dominant modes of production, distribution, and consumption and their impacts on the planet’s population.

Jakub Bokes

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