Jadar River in western Serbia. The proposed site for the Europe’s biggest lithium mine is on the bank of the Korenita River, a tributary of the Jadar.
In July, Rio Tinto announced that it would invest $2.4bn in a project in the Jadar valley, in western Serbia, overlooked by the Cer and Gučevo mountains, building what it says will be Europe’s biggest lithium mine, and one of the world’s largest on a greenfield site.
The team had been looking for borates, used in fertiliser and building materials, but found something unexpected: borates and lithium in one mineral, a combination that would later be given the name jadarite, after the valley.
The project is gathering momentum. But anxious and angry campaigners, including the thousands of protesters who have taken to the streets of the Serbian cities of Loznica and Belgrade over recent months, say they are witnessing an unfolding disaster in the country’s “breadbasket”, responsible for around a fifth of total agricultural production, raising questions about the strange bedfellows being made in the maelstrom of the green revolution, and whether lessons have been learned about consumption and production that has made the transition to a decarbonised world so urgent.