“Sacrifice Zones” The Blind Spots of the Green Energy Transition - BSC 2022

[Music] thank you [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] good afternoon everybody please excuse the partial presence uh some are kept Away by geography others by Health but we are here to talk about the sacrifice zones and what we call the blind spots of the green energy transition obviously decarbonization is is the big buzzword these days but it does take a lot of effort and a lot of uh exploitation of existing resources to get there uh the increase in mining especially some precious and Rare Minerals and rare earth do have a high environmental cost and also lead to geopolitical power struggles around the globe so that's what we're going to discuss both in a global context a technical environmental context and a local or Regional context for the Balkans before we do that I would like to ask Olivia Lazard um from Carnegie Europe who is an environmental Peacemaker a mediator and an expert on the geopolitics of climate to give us a short presentation please Olivia thank you Martin um when I started with this topic originally I started in Conflict zones in Africa and in the Middle East and I noticed that when a lot of people were talking about how to decarbonize we were talking mostly about how to increase pledges for mitigation we were never really talking about the actual nuts and bolts of what it means to decarbonize and today with this presentation I want to give a sort of backdrop to what needs to happen in order to decarbonize starting with the biophysics the Geo ecology and geoeconomics of it all today we're reaching 490 parts per million in terms of carbon dioxide concentration into the atmosphere this means that we're reaching 1.2 degree celsius of global warming compared to pre-industrial levels the map that you see on the left hand side shows you essentially the type of global anomalies that are resulting from a process of global warming and how it's essentially wreaking havoc in terms of regional temperatures weather patterns and climate disruptions in the forms of drought fires inundations and other types of issues we know from a paper that was published about a month ago that the Paris agreement which tells us that we need to keep global warming under two degrees of Maximum threshold is actually incorrect what needs to happen is that we need to keep it maximum at a 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming lest we actually Usher the world into a series of tapping points which will mean that we will lose the amok system in the Atlantic we will you we will lose the Amazon it will seven eyes it will desertify and it will essentially wreak havoc on a number of issues including the hydrological cycle the carbon cycle and it will accelerate towards a number of fundamental issues regarding how natural resources are distributed all around the Glo the globe and how human civilizations are built around a certain type of resource distribution around the globe the left hand side's graph tells you and this is a a graph that was issued I think two days ago in the emissions Gap report by unep for 2022. it tells you essentially where we're at in terms of our emission Pathways and it tells you that with the red line the existing policies we're about to shoot way over two degrees of warming what needs to happen is that we need to follow the blade blue line and we need to accelerate towards decarbonization what does that mean that means that we need to move from a fossil economy to a mineral economy we're still 80 dependent on fossils today in 2022. globally we need to massively accelerate towards a set of energy mixes in various regions of the world which are going to be reliant on renewable energy renewable energy comes in many different forms and at the moment the push towards the most important part of renewable energy is around solar wind and battery in order to move towards the age of electrification in order to do this we need to rely on over 120 different types of Supply chains for various different types of critical raw materials including rare Earths lithium graphite tantalum Palladium and others these various minerals have it in common that in order to produce the same type of power density that we have with the energies produced by fossils we need many different types of materials and we need huge quantities of each of them to create the so-called cleantech and in the context of a global demand which is essentially exploding around those critical raw materials we need to ask where current deposits are being extracted and where perspective ones to meet the demand are going to be located this map tells you where deposits are located the various Green Dots all around the globe essentially gives you a sense of the various different types of materials that we can find and that we need in order to decarbonize their deposit size and their location as you can see there is a huge concentration in Australia there is a relative concentration in the U.S there is a very important concentration in China and the other types of materials are concentrated in various different types of material of deposits in Latin America in Africa in parts of Europe and in the indo-pacific and Central Asia that means that everybody is essentially competing at the moment to try and gain access to various types of materials and the problem one of them at the very least is that these deposits often coincide with countries that rank very high in terms of corruption and in terms of fragility so that means that fragility can actually be used in some circumstances and in with and within geopolitical models to gain access to deposits the other aspect which is which is extremely important to take into account is that the same countries which are well endowed in terms of Natural Resources mineral resources are very well endowed in natural resources such as critical ecosystems that help to regulate the global climate regime that means that essentially there is a fundamental tension between the decarbonization part and pull of climate action and the nature-based agenda and we need to preserve to legalize protection and to regenerate the um these ecosystems in order to stabilize biophysical fluxes in order to stabilize the carbon and the hydrological cycle and the very last aspect that I want to touch on which gives you a sense of the background in biophysical fluxes is that a lot of the of the countries that are critically endowed in critical raw materials in an ecosystems are also the most climate vulnerable so that means that any type of decarbonization process any type of extraction needs to take into account how those countries will be impacted by climate change and whether or not extraction will actually accelerate climate disruptions in those National contexts now this is the global planetary picture let's move to a different picture what is happening around geoeconomics and what is happening around geopolitics there is a story that we know very well at the moment which is essentially how the US and China particularly are within engaged Within A System's rivalry a competition parts of this competition plays out around critical raw materials China over 20 years ago has managed to vertically integrate Supply chains for rare Earths from extraction to processing to clean tech development to export resulting in a massive dependency of the rest of the world on China if you look at the European Union for example there are over 90 dependent on China for the provision and for the provision processing of our Earth and this is not the only story China is responsible for the processing of materials such as lithium graphite tantalum which are absolutely critical to the age of electrification and China has a track record of weaponizing and instrumentalizing Supply chains and this is something that has accelerated particularly since the age of covet and since the you know the the Havoc that um the pandemic has wrecked on the entire sort of global economy and globalization but this is not the only story that we should pay attention to because this is a story where essentially we focus on the cleantech part on the decoupling part including the European Union but there is a larger story at play here once one with which plays out around extraction systems and on this I want to focus particularly on the role of Russia which is important here Russia is an actor that has played on different narratives regarding climate change for a really long time they said that climate change didn't exist then that it would benefit China then that you know the Russian sort of federation had managed to collapse its greenhouse gas emissions at the moment when the Soviet Union collapsed and that it didn't need to do anything the reality is that Russia has been extremely active in terms of trying to gain access to various types of deposits around the world and one story that I want to tell you about is about Madagascar back in 2018 Russian actors supported the presidential candidate called Mr rajuwel against the support which was given Russian operatives which belonged to the Wagner Universe gained access to critical raw materials particularly chromite chromite which is used to create solar panels Russian operatives which belong to the Wagner group were sent for about a year and a half to Madagascar parts of what they did over there is develop a system of personalized Security Forces for the president Diversified forms of corruption diversification of misinformation and disinformation systems to the extent that Madagascar is now a full disinformation bubble which is associated to how Russia wants to counteract European influences or european access to natural resources and European Partnerships in Africa when the Russians gained access to those particular permits within the chromite mine what they did is that they collapsed the price of production to 70 a ton and they sold back to the Chinese at twice the amount and then when they were done they sent their operatives to the Central African Republic where the Wagner group arrived back in 2018 under the guise of trying to stabilize a country which is 80 controlled by armed groups and very little governed and monitored which is also extremely well endowed in natural resources including critical raw materials the left hand map with the gray dots tell you where the critical raw materials such as rare earth and Cobalt are located the right hand map tells you where the Wagner Group is located and how high the civilian casualties are in the vicinity of the Wagner group and when the war in Ukraine happened the Wagner Group which was located in the in the Central African Republic came back to Ukraine where the story of the war is essentially about how Russia is trying to reinvest the country with an imperialistic identity and try to erase essentially the Ukrainian identity I personally believe that the war in Ukraine is partially about the future because Ukraine had struck a strategic partnership with the European Union back in July 2021 in order to diversify and develop critical raw material supply chains and interestingly if you look at the map and we're only looking at where Earth deposits here not lithium not uranium not other types of materials we're looking at Rare Earth minerals and a lot of them are located in the exact places that Russia wants to Annex this story tells you essentially that there is a new type of war and competition playing out in which a number of countries stand at the heart of a new Scramble for resources this story tells you that at the moment within the context of a system's rivalry we are essentially facing a geopolitical a geo-economic competition where pressures are being applied and tactics are being deployed which include aggression the use of force the use of corruption the use of misinformation the upending of the rules and the rules-based system in order to try and assert new types of global dominance and critical raw materials stand at the very heart of this story because one of the key aspects when I look for example what's happening with the European Union is that if extraction is controlled then that means that all of the elements and Investments that go into the development and innovation of clean tech are compromised if you look at what's happening these three articles date back to two weeks maximum the clean tech ecosystem for the wind turbines in the European Union is suffering from Price fluctuation which means that it's staggering essentially innovation in the deployment of europe-based deployment of cleantech the result of the war in Ukraine is that the European Union vastly increased its import of solar panels from China embedding its dependency on China at a moment when it's essentially trying to not reproduce the mistakes of the past including those that were made in Russia and interestingly you find that and this is an article that dates back from today I think um agree on one thing which is not the competition with China but the competition with the US because the U.S has just introduced the inflation reduction act with massive subsidies towards clean tech actors that risk essentially moving all of the clean tech infrastructure and ecosystems to the us at the detriment of other actors that are trying to push forward with their climate leadership including the European Union so where does that leave us it leaves us in a place where essentially we need to realize that what we've called green and what we've what we've called fluffy and soft diplomacy or soft security is actually now at the very heart of every types of multi-dimensional security we're talking here about the future of International Security in the global balance of power we're talking about the future of democracy we're talking about the future of accountability and transparency and we're talking about the future of geo-economic moves towards the deployment of a clean energy which is essential for a clean energy future and therefore for the future of international and planetary security and as we go forward with the panel I will be very happy to hear about what is going on in Serbia at the moment due to a number of different discussions that have been happening um with the opening of a lithium mine but it's not the only one and how Serbia determines its future within this decarbonization era so Martin bye to you back to you thanks that was super Illuminating before um I'm uh fall into the Trap of uh not introducing everyone duly uh please let me make up for my earlier Mission so our other panelists are Dr Anne maest did I say that correctly yes okay nice like waste yeah who's the geochemist in Colorado uh and a senior technical advisor to the initiative for responsible mining Assurance or Irma for short and uh on location we also have Marta who is uh from uh senior fellow from the center for Eastern studies in Poland and specializes in energy poverty and energy transformation and energy activism issues um and I guess has a very intimate knowledge of uh of how that is playing out in the Balkans and myself I am Martin and I am a journalist covering the Balkans for the financial times when I'm not down with covet um so uh uh first of all uh do either of you have any uh immediate thoughts um on that presentation by Olivia I was glad to see on that last slide Olivia that you kind of had green in quotes um you know I have worked for about 30 years and Mining especially on the environmental effects of Mining and responsible mining more recently um and if you really look at the entire life cycle of how we need those materials and where we can get them and how we get them um I've kind of stopped using clean um energy transition green energy transition because we have to look at the entire you know potential effects and actual effects of getting these materials out of the ground uh which is often a dirty process um but we do need to and there are you know approaches now Irma is one um to get these materials that we so desperately need out of the ground in a responsible way environmentally and socially yeah thanks a lot for that presentation uh uh yeah so like thank you very much for your presentation so probably you are now understand why Serbia and its lithium deposit here are so important and how it influence the the position on Serbia vis-a-vis European Union but also us and you know why we are mainly speaking about like this this deposit because we don't have money in European Union like we have some kind of spec in Spain but it was like the the government decided not to extract it we have some in Czech Republic and and um and also Germany but here it is said that this one are the richest one in the European Union and you know it's like bring us to the question like how to um uh when like how this kind of uh investment and instruction can be realized in this corrupt uh autocratic model we have here in Serbia because you know we all know that it's it will be dirty business the question is if it can be really it can it can we extract lithium here um with the respect of the environment and what is also important here in case of Serbia which you of course know that you know this is uh this deposit in the is this area which is you know agricultural land so it's not like we have this kind of like sacrifices on blind spot in Serbia where the extraction is taking place and we know how it looks like we know bottom Island pack and you know this is the this is the this brings me to the question about like development model because you we we heard a lot about like clean energy decor and decoration but what is happening here like I'm speaking mainly about Serbia but we can couldn't speak about all the Balkans but actually what the government is doing here it's like it's implementing the business model which is based on extensive economic development on the dirty industry on the like heavy one uh on also on the explanation which is um which is also some kind of like really problematic because Serbia is outside of the European Union and environmental rules are not applied here and what is also problematic for me uh it's you know somehow government maybe not pointed out openly but somehow it's how it presents itself that it is somehow comparative advantage of Serbia that there is no environmental rules implemented here and we have seen it everywhere we have seen it in bar Maiden pack now like with lithium that all this dirty investment here which we have from from China but also from from Western Europe we have tiger ties in in Period like you can go and see how the how the pollution is there that you know the Western companies and also the Eastern companies actually are take like you know they are taking advantage of not following the the EU rules in terms of environment of course and also in terms of labor law and stuff like that and this is like the business model the Serbia is based on and we can see it you know in all indication we can see that now Chinese Chinese companies CG mining smederevo uh and also like tiger tasks this dirty industry are the biggest exporters these are the companies who are developing the the business model here and somehow uh so like government is somehow allowing them to do this you know and there is no environmental rule which which is implemented which is also problematic that all this investment and are implemented against the local community so invest investors are not communicated with the local communities because of course I do believe that you know we need extraction we need also lithium extraction but when the investors are coming here they are mainly uh talking to the government and the government it's protecting and supporting the business model also using the Secret Service we know that the activists here in various places are harassed by the by by the sacred like the about like the security structure If they raise the issue about about what is happening um uh in this in these areas that you know in some kind of communities like we have a smarter level people got used to you know living in this area which is highly transformed by the industry but the problem is that now they are not participating in decision making so it is mainly company and government and you know they have no influence what is happening with their environment around how the how the how the Investments are implemented how they uh influence the the whale of life the way of living and this is also some kind of problematic it's not only about Chinese companies but also the Western one which in European Union they are really focusing on this community aspect of the investment about respecting the right to the community to protest you know we have like all kinds of regulation in IMF in European Bank of investment but it is not happening here you know this this these rules are somehow suspended when the investor is coming to to Serbia it is like government investor deals like Community each like Community interests are not respected anymore and we have like all this investment are also you know what is lacking it's like transparency so and when we combine it with the huge suspicion against the government how the how how different communities are influenced by by this this kind of investment what we are having here now in Serbia that any investment is create protest movement and we can see it also in case of the lithium because like people don't believe that any of this investment can be implemented without with respect for the community and environment and this is also starting to be a bit problematic for the government because what we see on the ground on the field where the the big investment are are implemented if we can say about mining exploration but also the infrastructure investment people are just protecting protesting because they don't see themselves as a partner and the government as somebody who in like Democratic societies should protect the people but here you know the the government it's actually protecting the the investors and they interest so when we are coming back to the model of investment here it was like good good study of henridge Bowl Foundation who pays for profit it was about the small hydropower plant but this is a problem like this is society who is paying the bills because there is no access to the water clean water there's like the the the agricultural land is Con is contaminated but who is profiting it's like mainly investors and because they this we have also a lot of corruption so it is also governing Elite who is profiting from this investment so it's not something when we we have we can hear the government here in Serbia that you know this lithium investment will bring the prosperity to the people like no it will bring the prosperity to the investors maybe some some governing Elite but not to the people the like this is this is the general notion here that Society will only pay the bills for not following the environmental role here during the in in terms of investment if I may ask a follow-up question to that um in the specific case we're talking about the jadar valley lithium mine uh the people did manage to stop the government for now anyway to go forward with the with the investment of the Mind which was uh from a an anglo-australian company Rio Tinto right not a Chinese one but uh uh what I wanted to get to I guess from this is that lithium is still there and it's attractive and people at some point will want to exploit it now what we need to make sure uh I guess is that it's exploitation which will probably be necessary as we say for the green transition is done in such a way that respects uh not only environmental but social standards and so on and so forth so I wanted to ask Ann about that because as an expert on you know responsible mining uh I guess you have some sense of what needs to be done so so that so that you know in the event of an exploitation it's done in the right way and what safeguards need to be put in what are do you see some uh good practices somewhere in the world where where it's done well uh yes definitely and you know even if the Serbian government does not require communities to have a voice when it comes to mining um the companies coming in can decide on their own to you know kind of raise the level of transparency of their operations in terms of availability of information and data and also collaboration with the communities and um you know Irma is one um tool that can be used and you know I think Irma is probably has more kind of focused on community engagement um and one of the things we like to say is that without Community consent there is no security of supply and I think we've seen this loud and clear in Serbia um you know as you said Martin and uh you know even though uh the government wanted it they you know the people rose up against this and that deposit is still there and you know as are a lot of large deposits this is a really important lithium deposit so it's probably going to be extracted and used at some point in time so um Rio Tinto is a large company um they they could come in there and decide to do it in a better way um but uh you know they would have to be doing it on their own um in terms of the European Union the EU has some very strong goals that they're aiming for like in 2030 essentially to have no pollution um and then you know there's a taxonomy that goes along with that they're having a hard time with the mining sector you know because mining is a unique animal it um there's a lot of waste that is left on the surface in perpetuity um the pollutants coming from it are so-called geogenic pollutants they aren't necessarily if there's more of a problem with the geogenic like metals and sulfides and sulfate then what is added so so it's a different way it doesn't fall into the usual you know boxes that an industrial activity does but there are you know I think because we're having a lot of pressure from communities and also from uh products for example a lot of the car manufacturers and battery companies and wind companies Etc uh have joined Irma because they're getting pressure from the people who are buying their products you don't really see the metals um you know so much in society um but the you know the companies that are using those those raw materials to make products are getting pressure from their um buyers to to do the right thing so I think it's changing in a positive way um but the the enormous pressure it's almost like a panic attack you know to get all these Metals out of the ground as quickly as possible um is something we really need to keep an eye on how do you think competition among countries figures into all of this uh I'm asking because uh when I was reporting on the Rarity into lithium mine in Serbia last year uh I was shown um a complete supply chain which would have included battery production electric vehicle production and so on and so forth uh in Serbia which obviously would have made a lot of Economic and Industrial sense having everything in the same location and indeed the the British Administration was shooting for something like that now since then Hungary has become a sort of a battery Powerhouse electric vehicle production is more focused in in places like Slovakia um but it looks like the countries in the region are going out of their way to please these industrial investors and uh and indeed there can be instances where uh where green considerations are sort of cast aside um Marta have you what's your sense of this sort of regional competition between countries and and how it's potentially detrimental to to the safeguards that we all need the regional um politician between Serbia and other countries I think he was asking uh you mean like for the uh for establishment the investment here in the in the supply chains yeah that's that was the question yes these countries are competing and so you know whoever attracts investors with the least hassle put it that way will get the investment right but uh green standards environmental standards can be bothersome to maintain for and for a company I think if I think like of course like Serbia is the strongest strongest economy here so so like all the big Investments are coming here and I don't think like there is a much capacity in the neighboring countries to attract this kind of investment and the question is really if even Serbia can really profit from this this kind of investment that it will be like some some kind of like boost for for economic development because what is happening now and we can speak about like cop like copper and you know how uh how the supply chain chain is established here is that mainly Serbia is exporting not transfer minerals from here so it's not like that that we have really high tech industry here no it's like the old types Mining and you know all all what is you know dig from the earth it's just exported to China and to other like European markets so so this is some kind of problematic that I don't I don't see capacity here in Serbia to really build on uh built on future development on this kind of extraction and you know I think this is what people really afraid that you know it will be like the mind will be there but we know the like this promise that it will also bring the rep like industry back to Serbia will not happen and you know I think like it's really this kind of um a threat or anxiety which should be somehow addressed but as for now I think like yeah this is like a big problem that you know you don't have like really uh industry which is generating uh like value added here it's like mainly simple simple things uh have industry with environmental cost who are staying there and this is a problem if um if Martin you allow me to intervene because it's a bit difficult to be on the panel with a moderator online um but I think that I mean what has struck me really in the debate here in Serbia is the level of polarization and Indigenous anxieties around the lack of transparency the lack of information the lack of national debate yeah so I think I I want to rebound on two things one what Anne was saying and one which you've been just explaining now Anne was saying technically there's a lot of um interest for this particular deposit because it's high quality there is enough you know to go for another 50 years in terms of the mine life etc etc so it will keep on attracting interest um at the moment the the level of protest and Democratic mobilization has managed to put the the projector Halt and therefore to create a healthier debate in terms of um uh trying to make sure that at the very least there are there is a tension about this so I find that this is a really really great thing there is a potential that due to the global competition that we were talking about before um it's quite likely that at some point or another there will be an extraction yeah now the question is what choice and what quality will the process of extraction be and in my own experience in countries like Madagascar for example I've noticed a very very strong difference between the Western so-called you know oecd related companies that are stock market listed and which are now which have a very very strong business case and business imperative to respect environmental social governance standards within their business model and within their technology of extraction which essentially also means that they need to obtain this so-called social license to operate right which does require them to engage with local communities with the government with other sector you know like private sector actors etc etc this is something that I haven't seen in companies emanating from China from Russia from other places because they function with a completely different case which is indeed very extraction oriented and I've seen in Madagascar Chinese companies essentially leaving radioactive waste within their wake taking all of the materials sending them to China because they have the facilities over there and they have every interest interest to keep it there not to invest into countries like Serbia for example it leads me to the next point if we look at the type of modules related to the geopolitical competition but also related to the sensitivity around climate vulnerability we realize essentially that a country like Serbia is incredibly interesting as a case for how to make sure that extraction is not a Scramble for resources does not fit that bill but rather how extraction can be transformed and harnessed to create the type of ecosystems for industry for technological development I agree with you and that it's not clean per se I was using it as a sort of you know sort of anchoring word and how it re how it is connected essentially to value added Partnerships and I know since I'm based in Brussels that there is indeed obviously of strong interest in Serbia but the interest in Serbia and the lithium mine is not just oh let's harness you know like let's extract the lithium and then you know transform Serbia into a sacrifice so it's how does the fact that there is a deposit here many in fact um create a different type of conversation about how to invest into Serbia how to create Economic Development what is the type of Economic Development which is going to be um context sensitive because we couldn't really see it on the map that I showed before but if you look at the climate vulnerability Serbia is actually the most climate vulnerable country of the entire Balkan area which means essentially that when I hear hear some people tell me with complete legitimacy uh where green we're Agricultural and we want to keep being agricultural my question is will you be able to 10 15 years from now and if not what are the other types of development patterns that can be developed in Serbia that will not transform Serbia into a waste Zone because this is out of the question but we'll rather essentially sort of help to move Serbia and therefore also the entire regions of the Balkans into the era of electrification diversification of energy sources stabilization and potentially a different type of economic modeling in relation to the EU if this is so if this is the choice of Serbia and the Western Balkans but I think that we need to sort of move away from this conversation which is about anxieties which are not based on how mining can actually function to the benefit of local communities and National Economic Development and this is a very technical conversation that need to happen around local content subcontracting transparency monitoring and the type of you know dialogues that can happen indeed between an actor like ryotinto which has an interest again a business interest in doing so um with a lot of different constituencies in in Serbia like I have a follow-up question do you have like any positive example how this kind of really complicated investment where it was implemented in the non-democratic context well interestingly I'm looking at Kazakhstan at the moment and there are um so if you look at the oil and gas sector it's not it's not great if you look at the critical raw material sector in becoming because Kazakhstan is also extremely well endowed there are cases essentially you know Kazakhstan trying to make sure that any foreign direct investment is related to National companies so this is the part around local content the particularity of Kazakhstan is that it is compared to Serbia it's underpopulated so there are less um there is less of a propensity for uh mobilization of people because it's it's less Direct in terms of impact it can be but rather Kazakhstan is in fact creating what they call monocities to try and accompany essentially the extraction of certain you know critical raw materials and things like this so yes we do have you know some examples which are in becoming um across the world I think that what defines the good examples and we're talking in relative terms because again mining is invasive it's destructive there's no question about this the question is how can it be the least invasive and least destructive possible and how can it be transformed into virtuous Investments what I find particularly striking about Serbia and you know for that matter also a country like Kazakhstan is that there is an educational base that is there that can contribute essentially to the extraction itself to the monitoring to the safeguards that need to be put into place that need to pressure afterwards the government and to sort of you know being extremely consequent with the mining code with the so-called sort of critical raw materials in League um or or strategic resources um sort of applications of Law and how to then request demand even for that matter and that's where I think that you know Democratic mobilization or popular mobilization needs to be oriented how the sector of mining is better understood from a technical perspective how it is accompanied by legal Frameworks that become extremely stringent and that create also some relationships between private sector actors and then the constituencies that you were talking about and you think like in case of Serbia it's supposed to be investor who will push for this kind of attitude for this honest discussion what how the in because who like like can I be like they will Advocate because we have society which is like anxious and against yeah we have the question of trust there is no trust here like to the government to the investor and like and go and there is no willingness for honest discussion from the side of government so the question is like who should be the actor who'd push for this kind of attitude in case of this investment this particle so I'm a big fan of systems thinking and maybe afterwards we can go back to people online um actually and and maybe maybe you want to come in on this question um yeah you know just thinking about everything that you two were just talking about um Olivia mentioned the word Partnerships and and I think that's going to be very important in the future that countries will have Partnerships with each other nobody can do it alone and Olivia I think you threw up a map that showed where critical mineral deposits are located around the world and we don't have a paucity of deposits and I want to say something about you know where these materials could come from maybe a little later but um but Battery Technology For example is changing a lot you know there's a way now to not get rid of cobalt in batteries and replace it with something else we haven't really figured out anything about lithium but you know Serbia has a lot of raw materials that are really critical for the renewable energy transition including Cobalt and nickel and you know aside from lithium um gallium and others but not every country has everything that is needed okay so you know Partnerships are going to have to be formed and hopefully they can come up with a vertically integrated way of getting these out of the ground you know um processing them and turning them into the kinds of products that we want and um I guess I'll just throw this out here right now since I don't know how much more time we have left really but um you know you showed maps of deposits but there you know in terms of thinking about this more broadly in circularity and you know turning waste into products there has been a big move by some countries including anglo-american to extract Rare Earth elements from coal ash and they're pursuing deposits in the eastern United States a lot of countries around the world have coal ash deposits that are waste that potentially can you know be turned into Rare Earth element um you know gold mines essentially so I think we need to think a little more broadly and create Partnerships um but in terms of community engagement I didn't want to derail your conversation and how you can do that in a way in you know countries that are not uh totally Democratic so by all means go ahead I think I mean to your question again it's it's to me I find that it's about systems thinking and the the stake around the Rio Tinto and the lithium extraction to certain extent I would say is not even about the mind it's about the trust prompts that you were talking about it's about the governance issue and it's about how do we ensure we in in general but particularly serves how do serbs ensure that any type of massive investment like this one is actually used to level up the discussions around democratization and you know democracy reinforcement and revitalization to a certain extent and that's why I find you know as much as um the the situation here seems very polarized I personally find a lot of encouragement and hope in the fact that there's been such a popular mobilization around environmental issues I would hope for the future that this level of mobilization is actually is is actually oriented towards okay so what needs to be put actively into place in order to ensure that an extractive sector is indeed transparent socio-economically redistributive and you know something that helps Serbia move into the age of electrification diversification of Supply systems regarding energy and that kind of thing so the the real is that the systems change has already partly started with the popular mobilization what is I find missing is a level of discussion which is technical which is legal which is oriented towards governance and my guess once again based on things that I've seen elsewhere is that a company like Rio Tinto as much as it is it remains a private sector actor right like it's interested in the business case parts of the business case have been to in how to integrate social license to operate there is a framework within which to engage with um you know a company like ryotinto and it is about how like you know I come from a mediation background where trust is always an issue in any conflict Zone what are the confidence building measures that actually work to try and create the level of trust that needs to be there between ryota and local activists as long as obviously like there needs to be some kind of level of cooperation or the willingness to move forward but beyond this how because Rio Tinto does have an interest considering the Fairly complicated sort of reputational issues that it has um been through in the past it has an interest in making sure that it is seen positively in Serbia how to use this to the advantage of advanced advancement and Democratic settings I find this a super interesting question and it is oriented towards very specific things yeah it's like maybe I will play a role of mother moderator because maybe we can open the presentation for the public and if they add a question from the public because we are discussing right yeah so thanks for that Martha and I like don't see anything so okay hello everyone my name is Dana georgievic and I am advised to the president of the Chamber of Commerce industry of Serbia so some local actor not in this kind of a big let's say public opinion against by per se extraction of fleetium and Rio Tinto but also worried citizens citizen one can say but so allow me maybe a few more minutes because to just enter to the question first I was like really how to say somehow triggered by your comparison to Madagascar and Wagner group interestingly enough the first group that started organized protests against Rio Tinto and lithium in Western Serbia is an organization heavily openly linked to Russia who's Advocate is large and georgievic very open I mean he doesn't disguise that he is like supporter of annexation of Crimea was in donbass it was like even he portrays himself as a kind of a mouthpiece of of of uh Putin in Serbia so this is the first really organized group that started the activities against Rio team to interview I don't see there is really a lot of concern among the local population than green groups against that because of really pretty lousy I would say communication campaign of Rio Tinto lack of trust coming between the citizens to the government which I agree that's that's the case and there's the biggest lack because there is this lack of kind of say uh communication between the government and such and the groups but it's for me it's interesting and then the old groups and political parties they took after took over this kind of first movement was against the extraction per se they didn't discuss about okay maybe we should do this and that way have a better way transparency extraction have a development model and not only extraction but uh development having the battery factories and so on and so forth no it's a yes and no similar polarization in all other aspects so like I would say it's it's similar also with respect to the status of course or other things no discussion no nuances yes or no so I think this is the first thing that all advocacy groups against Rio team to and go against extraction should take into consideration thing is do we really put the equation between the Chinese model of extraction and may be ryota 's models in the world they had a various kind of how to say uh success stories or not success stories but do we really put an equation in Serbia there is a now there is an equation initially it wasn't Rio Tinto was the Enemy Number One Chinese others were like maybe on a now it's becoming a bit more kind of you know against that model third thing is Serbia opened the cluster on on green on openness ecology cluster with European Union last year isn't it also the responsibility of local actors Brussels member states to enable this kind of you know like obligations stemming from the opening of the cluster to also be valid also for extraction in Serbia or we should because of the current distrust the authoritarian Tendencies of this government simply completely stop any development or the third thing Europe should be a band zone for extraction we should not have the any X because that's dirty business in past decades that was completely stopped in Europe we were completely relying on dirty Technologies in Africa wherever we were fine with this we were all heading out from iPhone 5 one to iPhone 13 14. but now the things change a lot now we are thinking of in our background if the if we have some like Minds to extract of course the importance is the how we do it what is the impact on environment what is the impact on the oral Society yeah yeah my problem is that in in Serbia I didn't see from the opposition parties ecological organizations any thinking of that to say yes maybe we should use this opportunity if it's a there is a possibility for this opportunity but under different auspices yeah and so my question is do we really want everything to stop here or to for the government to change to have some bright new future or not and this one and just one information for the panelists there is a factory that is developing a local model of battery production based on the model of actually having the the lithium from some Serbia very high tech in subotits and I really recommend all of you calling 11 is to go to subutita talk to them see what is their model so it's not only extraction but it should of course be somehow put on the on the mainstream of the whole society to understand that thank you very much it's like I think like we agree that you know there is no trust and I think like that's what we try to expect it's just me I was trying to explain that like Society activists they don't believe that this investment can be implemented with the respect of the environmental standard and local community and that's why the stance is like it is that you know and we are also like trying to you know show their way out of it that you know what is it should be built at the very beginning it's like Trust that such investment can be realized in Serbia with the respect to the like the the interest of the society in the community and this is like a problem and so so we are not saying that we it should be stopped but rather that you know we have to think how to you know enable this kind of investment with uh uh with respect to the proposed proper standards and you know of course like I'm from Poland we have a problem with mining also but we have like Judicial System we have European Union we can go to the tribes people who are in during the investment they are uh they are somehow they in they risks are endangered they go to the court you know and in case of Serbia we know with this week Judiciary there is no possibility to do that and this is a problem this is like the question is how to uh how to implement this highly controversial investment in non-democratic environment yeah um I'm gonna try and be as short as possible okay we I think that we discussed in the panel that there is no there is a very clear difference between the Chinese model of extraction and a company which is stock market listed and therefore has a business case around ESG if however the strategy in a context where trust is a fundamental issue towards governance systems if the strategy is to say it's Rio Tinto or it's even worse then it's not going to help with the trust environment because what matters is essentially trying to focus on what is mining going to do how does it need to be done best regardless of the actors that come in and therefore what does it mean in terms of the governance standards Serbian determined governance standard that need to be ensured that whatever investor comes in is not going to put at stake either the environment or the Democratic environment or for that matter the information environment what is however being and this is where I find your first point quite interesting we are in an environment at the moment or context where this notion of mistrust is being manipulated instrumentalized and weaponized I don't know enough about the Serbian context to know whether or not there were Russian supported influences that helped to kick-start some of the popular protests but at the end of the day that part here doesn't really matter because the protests expended to a very large constituency which cuts across different sections of the society that means that it resonated with a message and the message is particularly directed towards the government saying we need trust we need transparency we need checks and balances and there is no compromise that can be made and if this is not what is being worked upon then the people will raise themselves as forcefully as possible against any type of extraction so here is where I find that this conversation is interesting because if there is that much of a popular demand for better governance standards including around mining then this is a better opportunity to push essentially an economic development that will benefit serbs but I'm guessing also potentially the vision of including of the current government to try and push towards how to make Serbia a mover into the age of so-called clean tech or clean energy and that requires once again looking at very technical issues very very legalistic issues and fundamentally investing into how do we redirect conversations around the checks and balances narrative and on the last Point around the ecological cluster I I don't know exactly what you refer to what I do know once again working with counterparts in the European Union is that there is no doubt whatsoever that the EU wants to do as clean of a transition as it can knowing again as Anne was saying that clean is entirely relative it goes through many shades of brown before we can reach the green but um there is an opportunity essentially to create a leveling a Level Playing Field and to sort of you know invest into better standards including with forces such as the European Union which for all intents and purposes as much as they've walked on their head and have had a very lopsided logic around the decarbonization era they are investing into very powerful tools such as the taxonomy for example which can be applied here in Serbia especially if there are Stakes essentially in the how to make sure that an actor like ryotento is connected to indust an industrial and Tech ecosystem including for 11x for example but 11x that needs to be connected to other types of actors going Beyond Serbia which also include those of the region and this is where the conversation goes beyond that of Rio Tinto even though Rio Tinto does need to play a role into that but there is a much more political and economic conversation that needs to take place between the EU and Serbia and the partners of choice that Serbia will choose the question becomes what is the quality of the partners and what are the outcomes of the type of conversations that will be taking place around this ecosystem of clean tech and Industrial Development yeah we can go back to Martin how are we doing I can't see the clock here but I suspect that our time is up the time is up time's up yeah yeah time is up okay well then the last thing that I say is thank you very much for this I would like to I mean I would love to continue for another hour and I might just do that with some of you privately but thank you patience yeah thank you yeah this was great thank you

Channel: Belgrade Security Conference

Views: 5,369

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Id: lr6RTO9HDvg

Length: 64min 24sec (3864 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 04 2022