Citizens say government “has lost legitimacy to represent public”
Rural communities fighting off lithium exploration in the district of Vila Real feel completely abandoned by the government. The latest battle – apparently lost – involves the government’s granting to private company Savannah Resources of a so-called ‘administrative easement’, giving the company the green-light to ‘invade private property’ for the next year of exploratory drilling.
Landowners banded together, pooled resources, and managed to lodge an injunction – their fears always based on the damages to the environment that they believe Savannah’s mining activity will cause – and the ‘mistaken narrative’ (in their opinions) of the whole ‘energetic transition’.
According to the association Unidos em Defesa de Covas do Barroso, the EU approach to mobility (its focus on mining lithium and other rare earths for the purposes of producing electric vehicles) is sacrificing people, communities, animals, water sources and areas of outstanding agricultural ‘wealth’.
When the injunction was upheld by Mirandela Administrative Court last month, locals in Covas do Barroso and nearby Romainho were heartened. They knew it was only another small victory, but it at least bought them some time.
At least that is what they thought.
Now, the government has delivered what is called “a reasoned resolution”, claiming the project is of public interest. And as such, it cancels the effect of the court’s embargo, allowing Savannah to resume its activity.
This is what has further outraged the local people of Barroso, and the wider borough of Boticas. They say that by siding with private interests, the government has lost its “legitimacy to represent the populations it claims to serve”.
To be fair, the argument of public interest did seem to come from ‘out of the blue’: the mining project has never before been considered what is known nationally as a PIN (Project of National Interest).
But Savannah has been having an uphill struggle with Covas do Barroso: it is on its third CEO since the project was first mooted in 2018, and has had to successively move production targets forwards.
Initially, the plan was to start open-pit mining in 2024. That date has now moved on by three years. In the meantime, Savannah has managed to attract a number of heavy-hitting investors.
Says a source for the struggling association of landowners/residents trying to stand their ground: “We have no doubt that a lot of lobbying has been going on behind the scenes.”
Savannah has also ‘slapped’ the association’s president with two SLAPPs (strategic lawsuits against public participation).
Boticas mayor against lithium exploration
Locals feel there is a campaign to wear them down and persuade the wider public that lithium mining will actually bring the country great benefits, when this is, in fact, debatable.
As Unidos em Defesa de Covas do Barroso has stressed: “From academia to civil society, there are more and more voices and studies highlighting the inability of transition policies being pursued to tackle the global ecological crisis.”
Covas do Barroso is a long way from most of our readers’ stamping grounds – but it is a ‘test case’ for pushing through with the government’s 2030 energy and climate plan, which toes the line of the European Green Deal, no matter how loudly communities complain about it.
For now, Unidos em Defesa de Covas do Barroso has the support of Boticas mayor Fernando Queiroga. But no one can predict the future (will the doughty mayor even be in place after municipal elections this autumn?).
Almost an allegory for the situation of Ukraine, because of what lies beneath its soil, Covas do Barroso is seen by outsiders as just too valuable to be left in the peace that its population so desires.
“Lithium is not the answer”, warn specialists
In the welter of soundbites that have become our everyday, the voices of specialists speaking out against lithium mining in Portugal have been drowned out.
Former PSD environment secretary Joaquim Poças Martins, for example, has said categorically that lithium is not the answer to the country’s path towards decarbonisation. He told Lusa two years ago: “You cannot destroy a mountain in order to extract a few kilos of lithium… Batteries won’t be the solution (…) It is simply not possible: there aren’t enough materials in the earth for this effect.”
Martins’ belief, underpinning the fears in Boticas, is that “in half a dozen years”, lithium deposits ‘identified in Portugal’ may well have run dry. Then “we will have a serious problem”, he warned, not least “because of the destruction the lithium mining itself will have created”.
International experts have also tried to warn the European Parliament to “stop and think” before forging ahead with a lithium strategy that “raises serious environmental, social and security issues”. They have even cited structural deficiencies in certain projects (including Savannah’s).
American hydrologist Dr Steven H. Emerman of Utah University, and anthropologist and energy project specialist Dr Alexander Dunlap of the University of Ohio gave their testimonies at the Public Hearing on “Social and Environmental Impacts of Mining Activities in the EU” back in 2021.
Both experts encouraged the European Commission to “review all its own plans, not only in order to avoid long-term environmental and social damage, but also to live up to its principles of transparency, democracy and its ecological standards” – but very little appears to have come from their efforts.
Meantime, Savannah Resources has been regularly cited for “underhand tactics”, not least by mayor Queiroga, who has accused the company of using a “colonial and abusive tone” with the population.
Savannah claims it actually has a lot of local support.
A positive for Unidos em Defesa de Covas do Barroso is that it is wholeheartedly supported by scores of NGOs and activist groups, 115 of which have signed a manifesto against “the false green transition and liberal extractivism”. Among the signatories are well-respected collectives like Quercus, GEOTA, ÍRIS, as well as the Portuguese Association of Anthropology.
Galician-based group MiningWatch has also called for a public debate on the true costs of the energy transition’s industrial renaissance for rural communities like those in Northern Portugal.
MiningWatch regularly takes this fight directly to Brussels, where it has joined campaigns against other extractive projects in other countries. Whether it can get any results to help the communities of Boticas in time, however, is the big question.
