Seminar:"How Does an Extractivist Frontier Come to Being?", by Nina Djukanovic

Nina Djukanović, PhD candidate at University of Oxford, will give a seminar at ICTA-UAB.    

Seminar: "How Does an Extractivist Frontier Come to Being? The Case of Lithium Mining in Serbia"
 

Speaker: Nina Djukanović, PhD candidate at University of Oxford
 

Date: Wednesday, March 20th 2024
Time: 14h
Venue: Sala Montseny (Z/022 & Z/023) ICTA-UAB


This presentation examines the alternative visions of sustainable futures that emerge from the resistance to lithium mining in Serbia. Lithium is widely understood as crucial for the green transition for its use in batteries of electric vehicles and other “green” technologies. However, in January 2022 the Serbian government was forced to officially cancel the Jadar lithium project led by the mining corporation Rio Tinto following months of mass environmental protests. While long histories of colonialism and extractivism mark a divide between the Global South where mining takes place, and the Global North where the materials are enjoyed, the urgency of the green transition reveals core/periphery relations as dynamic and expanding towards new extractivist projects closer to the geopolitical centres. Through ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews, this research project investigates how extractivist frontiers emerge and are contested in Serbia. The mass local resistance marked a critical point of contestation of the green transition where dominant climate strategies fundamentally rely on the logic of green extractivism. Such challenges open up the space for imagining alternative sustainable futures that are rooted in the profound connection that local communities, primarily small-scale farmers, maintain with their land and soil.
 

Nina Djukanović is a PhD candidate in Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford whose research examines the relationship between extractivism, environmental justice, and contested understandings of sustainability and green transition. In her current work, she focuses on resistance to lithium mining in Serbia. She holds a BASc in Arts and Sciences from the University College London and an MPhil in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance from the University of Oxford.